January Jives: Monthly Missives from The Dream Pedlar
Life lessons from basketball, a Bingo-style reading challenge, quirky short fiction, and 7 book recommendations to mark January!
I think the Aussies and the Kiwis have the right idea of beginning their new year in the midst of summer, with most of January being a school holiday, and the madness of back-to-school (and perhaps, even work?) not hitting in full force until end-January or February.
Because on my end, between school days, snow days, and sick days, the past three weeks of this month since school and work resumed have felt like three months already, in terms of workload and stress! Not to mention the news ... let's not even go there!
But there's also been writing, reading, snow, and basketball to find lots of joy and delight in. And this newsletter comes bearing some goodies too, so grab a cuppa, settle in your favourite spot, and read on!
On Writing
My young adult paranormal mystery novel, Erased From Existence, is available for free as part of an exciting Rabid Indie Fantasy Fan (RIFF) Reading Challenge over on BookFunnel.
This is not merely another book promotion but a gamified Bingo-style reading challenge that a few authors are running in a reading group over on Facebook.
I myself am not on social media, but if you're looking for a virtual group to discuss your new favourite authors and characters in the vast and endless realms of indie fantasy, you're in luck!
Let me also introduce you to Debbie Mumford, prolific writer of hundreds of books and excellent storyteller across multiple genres, and my writing-and-publishing mentor from afar.
She's currently running a Kickstarter campaign for the first book in a new paranormal cozy mystery series, Dismally Dead. The campaign is already fully funded.
For as little as $5, you can get the ebook months before it appears on retail stores and, as of now, an additional fantasy short story since the 1st stretch goal has been unlocked!
On my end, Book 2 of the fantasy duology series I'm currently working on is progressing at a steady pace. I'm three-quarters of the way through the novel, and it's that tantalizing spot where the different threads of the story are colliding and everything has come to a head.
And — this is the best part — the characters are showing me a way out. I'm writing as fast and as much as I can to keep up with the breakneck speed at which their tales are unravelling.
I expect to bring more news on release dates, especially for Book 1, in next month's missive. So stay tuned!
Tales For Dreamers
I no longer post new flash fiction on the website, but I'm thinking it'd be fun to pluck a forgotten tale from the archives each month and highlight it here for your reading pleasure.
This month's pick is 'Upholding the Promise of Excellent Customer Service'. A quirky tale that turns the meaning of 'lost and found' on its head.
Anitha Krishnan
Life, Unadulterated
It all came about because Steph Curry was coming to Toronto to play against the Raptors during the winter break (on December 28th, I still remember).
Naturally, the tickets for that Golden State Warriors vs. Toronto Raptors game were exorbitant, so we made do with getting a Sportsnet subscription and watching the game live.
The score's tied at 122-122, and there's 2.4 seconds left in the game when Curry moves to take what could potentially have been a game-winning shot, but he accidentally swings the ball against Shead's (Raptors) head and is whistled for an offensive foul.
It then becomes the Raptors' ball. They don't score but the game gets pushed into overtime. In those five minutes, the Raptors trounce the Warriors.
Granted, the last time I saw Steph Curry play was a decade ago, during pre-motherhood era, when the Warriors became the NBA Champions (2015).
GSW was in peak form then, and of course it's not the same team now. Still, it took me a day to recover from the shock of that sudden, quirky turn that fate made with less than 3 seconds to go in their game last month.
I've been watching more NBA games to make the most of our Sportsnet subscription — (spending my time to make the most of the money I spent; smart move, innit? but I often get to watch and discuss the games with D, so that's the best use of my time by any measure) — and it's the same story every single time.
Very rarely is it clear from the start which team will win.
A huge lead can get erased quickly with a handful of turnovers.
Every shot has its own probability of being a miss or a score, irrespective of all the shots that came before.
No matter how much we try to concoct a formula for success — hard work, preparation, planning, persistence, strategy — the role of luck, timing and factors outside of our control cannot be fully accounted for.
It was a similar story when Boston Celtics played against Detroit Pistons earlier this week. At 104-103, Celtics were down 1 point.
With 4 seconds to go, Jaylen Brown took a shot he often scores.
Except, on that occasion, he didn't.
And Pistons won.
As expected, 'Brown misses potential game winner' was the headline that many media outlets carried shortly after.
As if it didn't matter that he and his team scored all those shots throughout the game in the first place that led to them having that opportunity to change the tide right at the end.
In her book, And Then We Grew Up, which I read and re-read often, Rachel Friedman quotes professional poker player and author, Annie Duke, who talks about the term 'resulting'.
"It's a really important word. You can think about it as creating too tight a relationship between the quality of the outcome and the quality of the decision ...
In chess, if I lose a game, it's pretty certain that I made a bad decision somewhere and I can go look for it. That's a totally reasonable strategy.
But it is a very unreasonable strategy in poker. If I lose a hand, I may have played the hand literally perfectly and still lost because there's this luck element to it.
The problem is that we're all resulters at heart."
We tend to put too much stock in the end result, in the individual oversized wins and failures, often forgetting that our outcomes are not entirely the result of our choices.
In a different context, we also do this when we give more importance to the last few moments of a person's life as opposed to all the moments that came before.
When my maternal grandfather passed away 6 years ago, all my cousins were there. I was the only one absent.
That stung for a long time, until I realized that I have a treasure trove of memories of time spent with him from all the childhood summers I spent at my grandparents' place in Chennai every year.
We talk of the chance to say 'goodbye' but every time we part from someone, we do so without the guarantee of ever seeing them again.
As Friedman goes on to say in her book,
We want our lives to be like the stories and profiles we read: coherent characters, a clear line between cause and effect, linear progress, distinct beginnings and endings, decisive turning points and epiphanies.
Of course, we never really know where we are in our own story because unlike fiction (and nonfiction, for that matter), our real lives have one true ending — and unless there is an afterlife, you can't look back from there to make neat sense of all your twists and turns.
But that's scary. Life's messy. Every choice is fraught with risk. There are no guarantees, and so we cling to hope as an acceptable alternative.
Often, I want to know if this newsletter that I craft every month is even being read, let alone making a difference in anyone else's life or not. (Which is why you must write to me and let me know! 😄 Thank you to those who already do. I truly appreciate it.)
Friedman goes on to say,
I have always treated my life like a chess game — focusing on right or wrong moves and what I believed to be their attendant outcomes — when it turns out a poker game is a much more useful analogy.
"Wrap your arms around the uncertainty," Duke said. "Accept it. Know that the way things turn out has a lot of luck involved so don't be hard on yourself when things go badly and don't be so proud of yourself when they go well."
Well, I'll always admire Curry.
But I now also have a new favourite basketball team: Toronto Raptors.
And for the first time ever, I'm familiar with each of the 10 NBA All-Star Starters this year, thanks to much education from little D.
Books You May Love
This month has been an excellent one for reading. I first read The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce more than a decade ago, when KrA got me a Kindle, my first e-reader. I reached for the book again after it showed up in a reading list compiled by the local library, remembering how much I loved it the first time.
Harold Fry is a retired man who receives a letter from an old colleague he hasn't kept in touch with. Queenie writes that she's dying of cancer.
Fry pens a note in reply and sets out to post it, feeling sharply the utter inadequacy of his response — what do you say to a person who's dying? — then decides to keep walking, all the way up to Berwick-upon-Tweed, fuelled by the belief that if he simply kept walking, Queenie would go on living and that he could somehow save her from dying.
It's a very poignant tale of a man and his quiet life and all his regrets, and somehow it manages to very uplifting and not at all sappy.
The Killer Question by Janice Hallett, like all of her books, is written in an unusual format comprising emails, text messages, WhatsApp chats and, in this case, subjects for a weekly pub quiz, the participating teams, and their final scores. It's a mad romp of a story with unpredictable twists and turns, and it's hilarious and mysterious in equal measure.
Lisa Jewell's Don't Let Him In is a psychological thriller involving a man who inveigles himself into vulnerable women's lives and attempts to siphon away their wealth and assets. Jewell is another of my favourite authors, and I tore through this book in a couple of days.
I returned to Charles Todd, reading two Inspector Ian Rutledge novels. Racing The Devil is set in the aftermath of WWI and involves a group of officers who decide to race to France after the war is over to celebrate their survival. Only, each one of them narrowly escapes an attempt on his life. This incident comes to haunt them later, and it's up to Rutledge to unearth the mystery.
A Fine Summer's Day broke my heart. It is a prequel, although it's Book #17 in the series, and features a young Rutledge without the voice of Hamish whispering in his head. It begins with Rutledge proposing to the woman he loves against the backdrop of the assassination of ArchDuke Ferdinand and the subsequent events that lead to WWI.
I continue to read the Wings of Fire books to D. Book 3, The Hidden Kingdom, features Glory, a smart, snarky RainWing dragon. The plot revolves around Glory and her friends trying to find out why some RainWing dragons have gone missing.
This story continues into Book 4, The Dark Secret, which features Starflight, the NightWing dragon. Starflight is the geek of the group and also the least courageous, so this endearing story is about how he's compelled to summon his inner bravery to face frightening situations.
If, like me, you end up adoring how Glory's love story with the Nightwing assassin, DeathBringer, unfolds, check out this fan-made rap battle video! Go, watch it a few hundred times; you can thank me later! 😉
Well, dear Dreamer, every time I begin to worry I may have nothing new to say, I end up going on and on. Writing to you is like having a conversation with an old friend; we can always pick up from where we left no matter how much time has lapsed.
I hope you too feel a sense of connection and of being seen through these monthly missives.
Before I go, I must admit that it's been getting harder to come up with new words beginning with 'J' to use in the titles.
There are 3 months beginning with 'J' in a year, so I've used up many words so far: Jubilations, Jollities, Joys, Jabber, Journeys, Journal, Jollies, Jewels, Jests, Jazz, Jollity (uh-oh, almost a repeat!)
Let me know if you can think of any others. Otherwise, I'm just going to start making up new ones, or resort to French and Hindi!
Until next month then, dear Dreamer.
~ Anitha
Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savour you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in the quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. ~ Mary Jean Irion