June Jazz: Monthly Missives from The Dream Pedlar
In which D turned 9 years old, a mini-vacation was had, and something surprisingly new is about to be unveiled!
June has been a wild ride!
We have a newly-turned-9-year-old at home, we've just come back from a weeklong trip to the gorgeous land of Nova Scotia, and — I bet you didn't see this one coming (I didn't either, I promise!) — I now have a brand new YouTube channel! 🎉
I have so much to share with you in today's missive, so grab a cuppa and read on!
Firstly, my short story, The Mind Meddler, is available for free until 5 July — less than a week to go — as part of The Weird, The Strange, The Uncanny promotion over on BookFunnel!
This is one of those stories that reminds me why I love writing speculative, metaphysical fiction so much!
Writing tales like these helps me delve into cherished themes of soul-searching, conscious living, and metaphysics in a way that's not preachy and prescriptive like non-fiction tends to be.
I love for my stories to be thought-provoking. But I have no desire whatsoever to tell anyone what or how to think.
If my stories help anyone reflect on their own life and see it in a new way, a way that is hopefully kinder, more compassionate, and more accepting than before, I'd consider that a job well done!
So if you haven't read this short story yet, grab a copy, read it, and let me know if it resonated with you!
On Writing (and YouTubing!)
So ... as I mentioned last month, I've started writing Book 2 of my current fantasy duology series. Book 1 is currently in edits, and Book 1.5 is awaiting a cover to be designed. Surprisingly, none of their titles are finalized, now that I think about it!
I'll have more concrete updates to share towards the end of summer. As always, you'll be the first to know!
Anyhoo, turns out I like juggling multiple projects in tandem. I had been hearing many authors speak about how they were uploading their audiobooks to YouTube. Now, I don't have audio versions of my books, so I decided to turn to my repository of Tales For Dreamers flash fiction tales instead.
I've been narrating these tales — and mixing them with music! — so the result is a collection of story-songs (I didn't even know that was a word until a few days ago!) you can lose yourself in.
I launched the channel @thedreampedlar on my little one D's birthday! Naturally, the first story-song is a tale about him, titled 'About My Favourite Woodland Creature'.
Many of you would have read this tale when I first published it in February. Take a a listen now, and tell me how it sounds!
A new story-song goes up every Friday evening at 8 PM (Eastern Time), just as a new Tales For Dreamers tale appears on my website every Friday morning at 9 AM (Eastern Time).
They'll be different stories. I'm digging deep into my archives for the YouTube versions, so there'll be many gems you may have forgotten about or not seen in the first place! You can subscribe to my channel and YouTube will notify you every time a new story-song is published.
It's been such a joy to create these story-songs and this exercise has kindled my creative spark in unexpected ways. Like my website and this newsletter, my YouTube channel is also designed to be a space of calm, creativity and deep, unhurried contemplation.
When I played these recordings to my family, little D said that I sound like Professor Trelawney! And I laughed and said, "Yes, that was the effect I was going for!"
Each story has a different audio track. The melody is not merely in the background, but the words and the music come together in such a way it's now impossible to imagine they were once apart!
This is the kind of stuff my younger self would have loved to listen to on repeat, high on weed, paying attention to every beat and inflection, seeking magic in pauses and silence just as much as in the words and the melodies.
Have a listen, and subscribe to my channel if this appeals to you! But above all, I hope you too perceive my channel as a place to turn to whenever you find yourself seeking a balm for your soul.
Tales For Dreamers
It's quite an eclectic collection of flash fiction tales this month!
Two tales inspired by decorated windows are 'the writing on the wall' and 'talking heads'. Then there's 'a lighthouse marooned' and an apparently headless tree that inspired 'a fitting response to a senseless punishment'. I also reposted 'about my favourite woodland creature' on the occasion of D's birthday!
Check out the collection here!
Life, Unadulterated
Somehow in the midst of my YouTube adventures, we managed to head out on a weeklong vacation to Nova Scotia.
First, there were the breathtaking views of the Atlantic Ocean to savour. Of course D had to dip his feet in the Atlantic even if the water was quite chilly.
He also loved scampering up and down the vast rock structures in Peggy's Cove. He took to saying, "I don't like rock-climbing but I love climbing rocks." Get it? 😂
There's something about these vast landscapes that helps put our lives and troubles in perspective.
In Hello, Dreamer! — my little book of 100 short poems and verses — there is a poem titled 'Relativity' (which I wrote on Day 39 of the 100-day-project that spawned this book).
There is a reason the skies are vast,
the oceans boundless,
and the mountains proudly tall.
It is to make all our heartaches and worries
appear piteously small.
The Earth has been around for 4.5 billion years whereas the origin of Homo sapiens is traced to only 300,000 years ago. That's only 0.007% of the history of our planet!
That's the equivalent of 37 minutes out of an entire year!
How irrelevant we are! There's such great liberation in understanding that.
This has also been the year of me becoming more accustomed to my increasing irrelevance in D's life — perhaps 'irrelevance' is too harsh a choice of word in this context — but D's definitely growing more and more independent.
It's a different kind of dynamic, where there's less dependence on his part and more ease as he tries on different ways of being, exploring and making choices and seeing where they lead him.
This is also the year I'm once again beginning to see KrA as his own person rather than as primarily D's dad. Without being overwhelmingly buried in the daily busy-ness of looking after a small child, we're now able to stick our heads out of the proverbial frog's well and see each other and the rest of the world with a little more clarity and attention with each passing year.
I delve more into these musings in '9 years of being a mother' and 'on being a father'.
Parenting is an utterly tricky business. I don't think anyone really figures out it until after the children have grown up and flown the nest, and then hindsight gives us all the answers we once desperately sought. 🤷🏽♀️
Books You May Love
There was little time to read this month, mainly as I was staying up late, listening to and selecting audio tracks for my YouTube adventure. But I did read two very interesting books!
I had been waiting to read Sarah Wynn-Williams' Careless People and I finally got to do so this month. She worked at FaceBook and was in charge of the company's public policy. She wrote this book after she left the organization.
It's a very interesting read as Wynn-Williams offers insight into decision-making at the senior management level in the company. I firmly believe that there's always two sides to a story, so I did read the book with a pinch of salt.
I'm no longer surprised to learn that leaders of large organizations and institutions are often driven by ego and short-term gains rather than by long-term vision when it comes to decision-making. We only need to look up the daily news for endless evidence of that.
What surprised me more was the amount of macabre glee I derived from seeing Wynn-Williams tear down the likes of Zuckerberg and Sandberg. I honestly thought I was better than that, than society at large that loves putting people up on a pedestal only to take even more delight in bringing them down. 🙈
There was a sense of, 'Oh, even with all the resources at their disposal, people at that level can be just as petty and mean and insecure as anyone else. Then why hold my small, ordinary self to lofty standards of perfection?' What a relief that was!
Then I picked up Harlan Coben's Nobody's Fool for a fun, thriller ride. I doubt I've read a Coben book before but I've watched several of the Netflix series based on his books and enjoyed them.
Nobody's Fool is everything a thriller is expected to be — fast-paced, with lots of action, everyone hiding the truth, and one man's relentless drive to get at it. I read it in two sittings and it served as much-desired distraction from the monotony of day-to-day life!
And that is how yet another missive and nearly half of this year are coming to an end, dear Dreamer!
The more I think about life and its vagaries, the more I'm convinced that it's not about 'getting it right', whatever that even means. It's probably just as simple as showing up and doing the best we can.
Because if condensing Earth's history into 1 year collapses modern human's existence into a mere 37 minutes, then the average human lifespan of 80 years translates to 0.59 seconds in that timeframe!
So tell me, dear Dreamer, if you understand how short life is, would you really spend it chasing approval or fearing lack? If not, what would you do instead?
Much love,
Anitha