Stephen Weinstock's Blog, page 3

Fabulous Fabulist Fiction

I’m always proud to be represented on The Visionary Fiction Alliance.  This month I look back on a guest post from 2015, about the power of fable, both classic and modern.  I look at how fable relates to my work The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, which will have a new edition soon.  Here’s an excerpt from “Fables, Italo Calvino, and Visionary Fiction.”

“We know this aspect of myth, of fairy tale, of fable, that they exist as pure story, often innocent on the surface, broad-stroke actions without inner character development or thematic commentary. But scratch a bit of that surface, do the least bit of interpretation, and worlds of meaning emerge, often the kinds of transcendental truth that Visionary Fiction embraces. How then do we include or approach these folkloric narratives, which have no original authors or first editions? They are at once the most visionary of fictions, and not technically fiction at all.

What of fable? On the one hand, this form may be the closest in definition to VF. A fable is a story intended” “to reveal moral or ethical consequences to life’s many choices.” This lesson component to the fable aligns with the higher truths that VF desires to bring to light, more literally than a myth or fairy tale. On the other hand, fables tend to have talking animals (human beings qualify), and the life lessons are often practical and homespun, not cosmic. And VF is not necessarily didactic, tied up with a ‘moral.’ Like other fictional forms, are there fables that are visionary and fables that are not?

In my own work, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles, a character remembers and recounts a past life tale every chapter. Modeled after The Thousand and One Nights, the stories include myths and fables, and since the incarnations range from Persian royalty to wombats to supercontinents, they stretch the ‘talking animal’ aspect. Every memory raises the spiritual question of the veracity of reincarnation, but few contain literal morals.”  READ MORE

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Reincarnation Blues Review

Want another fun book with a reincarnation theme?  Here’s my review from Goodreads.

I was excited to read Michael Poore’s Reincarnation Blues because it bears a strong affinity to Stephen Weinstock’s 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles. Of course I delighted in the similarities between the two works, but I also admired the unique elements of Reincarnation Blues that set it apart from 1001.

Like The Qaraq, the first book in the 1001 series, Mr. Poore’s book jumps right in, assuming how reincarnation works in operation. Many fantasy books about immortality creep up on you, or make a big mystery of the attainment of everlasting life, or what might happen after death. But here we meet Milo, a character with almost 10,000 lifetimes racked up, dragged into the interlife as if it were the daily rush hour on the 101.

Poore and Weinstock also enjoy structuring their books around a catalog of past life stories. Whereas 1001 follows the regular form of the Arabian Nights, with a past life story in each chapter, Reincarnation Blues uses a more fluid, organic appearance of the stories. Each tale clearly advances Milo’s quest for perfection and transcendence. But at times they are mentioned briefly, at times occur as extended tales, and at times are introduced with a variety of scenes in the afterlife. Both books allow the convention of past lives guiding the narrative to transport us to sci-fi worlds, historical fictions, romance, fantasy, all freely moving between genres. I love that.

There is a key difference in tone between Mr. Poore’s novel and the 1001 series. Reincarnation Blues emulates the sardonic humor and nonchalant tone of Kurt Vonnegut, especially in approaching huge, cosmic ideas. The writing is philosophical, charming, and dry, delivering the darkness in a lighter way. In 1001, the characters can be humorous and quick-witted, but each one has a unique literary style when they convey recount their lives.

There are other differences. The lifetimes in Reincarnation Blues span 8000 years, and 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles spans 11 universes (a few more years I’d say). The main character of Reincarnation Blues has a central love relationship with Suzie, or Death; the heroine of 1001 interacts with her qaraq, a group of souls that have reincarnated together lifetime after lifetime, weaving a tangle of karma.

Perhaps the biggest difference is that whereas 1001 can be heady, an intricate puzzle full of hidden structures, Mr. Poore speaks from the heart about basic values of the soul, a search for rightness and compassion in the midst of some very dark worlds. I could use a little less of the gruesome scenes, despite their narrative clarity and Vonnegutian spirit, but I happily followed Milo’s soul journey to the fullest love, dharma, and perfection.

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Goodreads Giveaways Grows Up

Happy 1/8/18, fellow readers, authors, and qaraqis.

As 2018 approached I discovered I was on a fool’s errand.

Goodreads, the social media site for book lovers, announced that as of tomorrow Jan 9, 2018, its Giveaway program, where readers can sign up to win a free book, would no longer be a free service for an author.  Yes, authors gained the value of hundreds of readers learning about their books.  But we had to pay for the books and shipping.  Yes, Goodreads is owned by Amazon so it was a matter of time before good will sharing became capitalized.  But it will be pricey for an indie author, or any author.

I swallowed my whatever and decided to countdown toward the New Year with ten giveaways, before I had to pay, of the three books from my series 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles.  Three of each, which I started offering in November.  My true intention was to analyze the hundreds of readers who want to read The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript (say, the latest), look at their book lists, where they live etc. My series is not standard genre fiction, nor is it experimental, but lies in that mysterious land in between.  So this analysis, I decided, would give me epiphany after epiphany about who my audience is, without bothering anyone.

Foolish rabbit!  Goodreads warns authors not to contact anyone except the winners of a giveaway, and not to pester even them.  I wrote a nice note to the good folks at Goodreads, explaining that I wouldn’t bother anyone, just look at names and books like everyone does on Goodreads.  The good folks wrote back a nice note explaining that they could not supply the list of entrants in my giveaway.  I can see stats and a couple dozen names on my Author page under the giveaway status, but that’s it.  My planned epiphanies were dashed.  Perhaps shelling out moolah to Goodreads will enable an author to do this in the future, but I doubt it.  Plus I understand the protective issue.

At least I’ve put the #reincarnationchronicles out there in the Goodreads community.  The last giveaway ends on 1/11 (of course), so if you’re a Goodreader you can still win a signed copy of The Qaraq and the Maya Factor.  If you love books I do recommend joining Goodreads; it’s good fun, even if the Big Capitalist lurks in the shadows.  I’ll even try paying for a giveaway of The Qaraq this month, since you can offer an ebook that way.  My loving wife just shipped out five print copies at the post office, and I don’t want to ruin the marriage.

All things must pass.  My son signed up for Obamacare on the past possible day.  This New Year I counted down 10 … 01 of the last free giveaways of 1001 on Goodreads.  And it’s 1/8/18, authors.  A couple more hours to start yours!

P.S. – By the end of the month when all ten giveaway books were sent off, the winners hailed from Idaho, Minnesota, Canada, England, and Germany.  Half in and half out of the US.  I’m happy to support the immigration of books in the world.

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An Idol of my Youth

A great luminary of the modern performing arts has left us: Eric Salzman.

— I remember devouring Eric’s 20th Century Music History book in college;

To all you dancers with whom I’ve shared a host of new music, this man started me up!

— I remember being validated in my study and creation of outside-the-box works when I heard Eric champion the term/idea “Music Theater;”

To all my colleagues and collaborators in the theater, this man helped set us on a new path.

— I remember meeting Eric when I moved to New York to work at NYU’s Musical Theater Writing Program, and saw a man juggle a complex career as a composer, writer, and producer;

To all my friends pushing for their creative efforts, this man made me humble, but also think I could do anything!

May the next life be just as radical for you, Mr. Salzman.

(NY Times obit):

 

 

The Art of the Nosedive

To make a new thing happen, sometimes you have to go to rack and ruin. On the cover of my new book, there is an image of pandemonium, a burning tower with people leaping from it. For The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript it references the horrors of 9/11, but it is actually a very positive symbol. It is The Tower card from the Tarot deck; I used the image from an archaic deck for the cover. The significance: something has been disintegrating in your life, but if you surrender to its downfall, it will enable a new beginning to open up for you. That opposition of accepting rack and ruin to let a phoenix rise from the ashes is very powerful.

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Right now Scorpio is in a New Moon for a few days, which is an exciting time not just for Scorpios. The New Moon is a time of fresh beginnings, so it’s a good time for change. But the accompanying Scorpio energy is a time of tearing down walls, taking a nosedive, letting that stinger do its worst. The destructive energy is all in the name of clearing a path for a better situation. Together the New Moon in Scorpio is a great time to plummet, to let go of an antiquated idea, to move on from a stuck place, and start fresh. You don’t have to be Scorpio to fly like an eagle after your nosedive. But it helps.

The qaraq, my past-life-reliving characters, face the traumas of 9/11, but come out of it stronger, and ready to parse out their 1001 lifetimes. The third book in The Reincarnation Chronicles fantasy series took years to write, weathered writer’s block and gap years, but rose again to get out in the world and win some awards. As a Scorpio I’m feeling that sweet New Moon. May your lives be touched by it, too.

 

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A Thousand Years of Solicitude

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I have just sent in the final manuscript of the most difficult thing I have ever written. During the nine years I spent working on this book, I experienced my first case of writer’s block, a scam from a vanity press, and three quagmirish slowdowns during the editorial process. I kicked off these hardships with research that included digesting a thousand page encyclopedia on Arabic literature.

Why did this book require four times the work and angst as the first two novels in my series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles? Because of personal pressures? My house became an empty nest, my music for dance career heated up, and a new principal at my job threatened the mission of The Fame School: all these might have been inspirations to focus more on the book. The dense forest of research? Yes, I was fascinated by ideas like: early Islam outlawed fiction because the factions vying for power had to speak the truth about their relation to Mohammed, so falsehoods and fictions of any sort were dangerous. No, all this information may have slowed me down, but made the work fun not arduous.

The answer to my befuddled query about all the care and concern I poured into The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript lies in Magic Realism. My book begs to belong to unconventional genres like Visionary Fiction or Karma Lit, so it cuddles up nicely to Magic Realism. The 1001 series has an inherent Magic Realism structure, where a group of neighbors in a realistic present discover they have been together 1001 lifetimes and examine their karmic history in magical past life stories. The group of souls, or qaraq, also has magical experiences receiving their memories in the present, and there are past life tales with a measure of realism. As the series evolves, the interplay between realistic present and magical past becomes more intricate. Thinking about this complexity helps explain my thousand years of solicitude with Book Three in the series.

The present day narrative of The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript starts the morning of 9/11 and delves into the qaraq’s post-traumatic stress that year. The realistic context is steeped in psychological symptoms and political pressures and sensitivity. The main past life story sequence outlines the qaraq’s magical involvement in the evolution of Islamic literature, the reworking of the Scheherazade tale, and the creation of a special, multi-cultural edition of The Thousand and One Nights.

In other words, the qaraq is thrown into the past world of Islamic culture as the current world is thrown into a conflict between West and Mideast. As the War on Terrorism is declared, the characters recover from their trauma and gain an appreciation of Arabic culture and history. As they remember that their edition of the Nights included all cultures and beliefs, but became subversive when the repressive Catholic powers in Spain gained power, they can see the US moving toward a more biased, fractured, and exclusive society.

It’s a lot. To construct a psychologically true depiction of ten people variously experiencing post 9/11 stress was unnerving. To interweave how they responded to reliving a Golden Age of Islamic multiculturalism gone sour was challenging. Either narrative might have taken twice as much work as the other books in the series. Together they took four times the effort.

I regret rien, as they say in the cabaret. I just read that before Trump was elected pre-screenings of the delightful rom-com The Big Sick received pleasing reactions. But after Trump started taking down the US government, the reactions to the Pakistani love interest now rated cheering and passionate applause. And more laughing. I can relate. The 1001 series began as a love affair with the history of The Thousand and One Nights, and The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript was to be a celebration of my immersion in that magical literary work. I never thought it would bump elbows with the political reality of anti-immigration, xenophobic bully-pulpitism, and a proliferation of subversive protest.

So perhaps my slog through the writing process for the book had a higher purpose of delaying its release to 10/01/17, coinciding with this strange new political universe we inhabit. For now the noble struggle between the magical and realistic elements in The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript can reflect the Magic Realism of our current society.

Or maybe it’s Surrealism….

To receive information about the release of The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript, previous books in the 1001 series, and giveaways, join 1001/Qaraqbooks News.

 

This post is part of the Magic Realism Blog Hop. Nearly 20 blogs are taking part in the hop. Over three days (28th – 30th July 2016) these blogs will be posting about magic realism. Please take the time to click on the links below to visit them and remember that links to the new posts will be added over the three days, so do come back to read more.

Can Visionary Fiction Trump Violence?

A year ago, when I contributed to Zoe Brooks’ wonderful Magic Realism Bloghop, it was so easy to post about that literary genre in relation to my fantasy series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles.  But just a year later, how do I write about Magic when the Realism of the world is so violent, dire, and contentious — not Fantastic by any stretch of the imagination?  But stretch I must, so for starters I bifurcated my thoughts into this post, which pursues this question of the current reality, and my Bloghop post, which you can see here, affirming Magic in our world, even in the time of Conventions, Revolutions, Hacks, Attacks, and Donald Trump.

I never like to think of my work as escapist literature, even though it establishes worlds of its own, sometimes blissfully contrasting our real world, sometimes reflecting it as through a looking glass.  In considering an alternative to thinking of fantasy as a refusal to look at or deal with social and political problems like racism or the utter divide in the US, I like the idea of getting a distance from reality.  What does this mean?

First, getting a distance in fantasy might mean taking an everyday reality and fictionalizing it to gain perspective, exaggerate matters, or take an unusual attitude.  I talk about this approach in the other post, where in my books I’ve set my day job as a dance accompanist on another planet.  It’s called Magic Realism, and you can read more about it on the Bloghop.

Second, getting a distance might mean delving into historical fiction to get a broader perspective on events.  Take the 2016 campaigns and election.  Pundits comment that never before have two candidates had such diametrically opposed viewpoints and tactics.  Never before has there been such a nasty antagonism in the race.  And never before has the democratic process been so unusually skewed.  Yes, it’s been a wild process involving  alternative species, but Never Before?  Let’s get a little distance.

Nastiest?  When John Adams ran for President, he was described as a ‘hideously hermaphroditical character.”  But not by Jefferson, because in those days it was aristocratically undignified to campaign for yourself, so you let others be as nasty as possible on your behalf.  Party workers might also physically prevent citizens from reaching the polls to vote for the other candidate.
Lincoln was described as resembling ‘the night man,” the guy who cleans out outhouses at night.
Most divided?  Stephen Douglas was Lincoln’s Northern Democratic opponent in that election (remember Lincoln was Republican back then, and there were five candidates because of the slavery split, a kind of super Ralph Nader third-party situation that helped Lincoln win.  Douglas was the first candidate to seriously and nastily stump in the backwoods.  Secretly: he lied that he was traveling across country to visit his mother, but it took months because he was campaigning.  When Lincoln realized what Douglas was doing, he posted “Lost Child” bills satirizing Douglas’ endless trip to his mother.
So of course the vitriol and invention of the stump speech and the many candidates was because of the controversial slavery issue.  Now THAT was a diametrically opposed nation.  It was 1860, and the Civil War began when (and because) Lincoln took office the next year.
Unusually skewed process?  I just learned that in the first US elections, the deal was that the candidate with the second highest votes became Vice-President.  So one of our initial checks-and-balances was to have a President of one party and a VP of another.  Jefferson and Adams had to figure out to work together, and then they ran against each other again!
You want skewed?  Imagine that system holding today.  A Hillary Clinton-Donald Trump White House?  A Donald-Hillary ticket?  Can you see them having a tug-of-war over the suitcase with the nuclear codes?

So there, a little historical fictionalizing to get some distance on this Never Before election season.  But finally, I don’t know if any fictionalizing can give us distance on the depth, frequency, and complexity of the violence in the world this past year.  In my imagination I have a fantasy that, like someone battling an addiction, the planet is  bottoming out, reaching that most horrifying place where the only choice is a positive transformation and recovery.  The Qaraq, my first novel, imagines a group of souls who recall, recount, and process the karmic puzzle of their past lives together.  This kind of Visionary Fiction posits a spiritual evolution on the planet to lift us up from our troubled society.

But do these kind of fantasies really provide comfort today?  Can they be reconciled with the plethora of shocking events?  Perhaps we can’t get any meaningful distance from the violence, no matter how tempting or imaginative.  Perhaps the only real choice for me, and any fantasy, science-fiction, magic realism, or visionary fiction writer, is to continue writing and doing our work despite the world, while at the same time promoting some small action in our real lives, whether it be to vote or discuss or reach out to one another.

Magic in the Time of Conventions

 

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A year ago, when I contributed to Zoe Brooks’ wonderful Magic Realism Bloghop, it was so easy to post about that literary genre in relation to my fantasy series, 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles.  But just a year later, how do I write about fantasy and wonder when the Realism of the world is so violent, dire, and contentious — not Magical by any stretch of the imagination?  But stretch I must, so for starters I bifurcated my thoughts into one post pursuing this question of the current reality, which you can see here, and this post affirming Magic in our world, even in the time of Conventions, Revolutions, Hacks, Attacks, and Donald Trump.  With a free story at the end!

Giving my imagination permission to stretch, I asked myself, “In what daily reality can I find magic anymore?”  My own daily reality is working as a musician accompanying dancers.  During the school year I work at the fabled ‘Fame’ school.  Dealing with the most talented adolescents in New York City is itself a dose of reality, but no day goes by without moments of magic.  Aha!  Magic Realism at the High School of Performing Arts!

Following this theme, this summer, between long hours of editing 1001’s  Book Three, The Qaraq and the Subversive Manuscript, I played a few classes at the Martha Graham School.  Martha Graham was kind of a choreographic Magic Realist (maybe a stretch right there), combining the arcane magic of mythological characters with the shadowy realism of modern psychology.  It is embedded in the technique of her movement, which was what I strove to support with music.  Even in a basic dance class at the Graham School, I witnessed the Reality of the dancers struggling in a Manhattan heat wave, alongside the Magic and joy of working with Susan Kikuchi.  Susan is the daughter of Yuriko, one of Martha’s first important dancers and teachers, still a legend at 96, who worked on the mesmerizing choreography of the first production of The King and I.

I have also worked at Juilliard and many other dance conservatories, so I transformed the reality of my experiences as a dance accompanist into a fantastical world within my series.  My contribution to the bloghop is a free story from 1001, which merges my personal everyday reality with a magical fiction series.  The Reincarnation Chronicles follows a group of intertwined souls, called a qaraq, who recall their past lives in various worlds and puzzle out their karmic history.  In this world, on the planet Aklanon, the qaraq worked as performing artists in an alien arts conservatory called Draill U.  In Book Two, The Qaraq and the Maya Factor, the qaraq remembers their dramas as students in a volatile class.  In this tale, a generation earlier, they recall an experimental dance workshop that bred romance and vulnerability.

“The Tale of the Indaki and the Neuromistressa”

The excerpt can be found on the Stories page.

You can read this excerpt and try to decipher the alien terms for fun.  Just know the tale is told in the second person, from I-zaea’s point of view, speaking to himself as “you.”  But if you’d like help navigating the halls of this alien arts school and its technical vocabulary, here’s a Glossary:

Indaki  —  dance accompanist  (I-zaea)

neuromistressa  —  dance teacher  (Fughini, and later, beyond the excerpt, Daywa)

whakatan, whakatani  —  music, musicians

tarakan, tarakani — dance, dancers  (Daywa)

neuroscore  —  musical composition

Nerve Dancing  — basic Aklanonian dance technique, firing the nervous system as well as mind and muscle

whaka  — arts

Pr, Do’en  —  Professor (Ctatlo), Dean

multiperf  —  interdisciplinary performing arts work

freshling, sophmorist, junieur, senieur  —  the 4 years of college

Heyatt uy Budoyr  —  Heyat and Budor, tale from the 1001 Arabian Nights

sounding holes, plectra plane  —  well, imagine an alien keyboard instrument, y’all

 

Enjoy my personal dip into Magic Realism.  If you’d like to finish the complete story, there are instructions at the bottom of the excerpt, again on the Stories page.

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Magic Realism Bloghop: Free Tale

The Tale of the Indaki and the Neuromistressa (excerpt)

You said it to yourself a thrillion times, I-zaea old chawmp: you’re nothing like them. They may be great whakatani when they grow up, but these Draill U students are immature, neurotic, competitive, aggressive, unresponsive, and very, very talented. So what if you weren’t as technically gifted? In your specialized skill you had more talent than a sophmorist class. The art of the indaki. No virtuoso can accompany tarakani like you, watching movement and creating sound that’s supportive, rhythmically alive, and perfectly appropriate in quality.

Take B’narse Lima: he looked down on us indaki, but his neuroscore for the senieur tarakan concert fell flat because he was more interested in puffing out his chest than helping dancers align their bodies with the stars. Some tarakani were no better. Rashellet Kayune: the girl was so whiny, sitting out a class with the least little ache, and never finishing a phrase without breaking down and skulking across the floor. If she had let the sound release her she could have flown through the air. Sure, it’s called Nerve Dancing, but, cheena chaw, that girl was all nerve and no dancing.

Then there was Daywa. Beautiful, graceful, serene Daywa. Still, she had plenty of neurotic territory. Her specialty: punishing self-criticism. If Rashellet never finished, Daywa started over and over, stopping at the slightest error, anger subsuming her. But the movements got better and better, until your scorn at her false starts melted away when she performed the phrase immaculately, with more artistry than anyone in the school. She took your breath away three or four times each class.

Little did your skill as an indaki, your work with great artists like Daywa, or your attitude toward crazy students save you in the end. You got pulled in like all the rest, and it destroyed you. Now you can look back from beyond the grave and chuckle as you sort it out.

Like Daywa, you were drawn to Draill U because of Pr Ctatlo’s reputation: her mythic status for cross-training vocalists in movement, acting, and political orientation; the rumors that the Do’en was wrapped around her finger; her outrageous remarks infuriating the Neo-Authouritariunist Party. With her Whakatica, a poetics of the inter-disciplinary multiperf, presented in cartoon form with audio-visual enhancement, Ctatlo called on artists like Daywa and yours true to bust things up.

When you started graduate school in neuroscoring, Ctatlo’s ideas had been rebuked in traditional academic and artistic circles, and she was hell-bent on proving herself at Draill U. To work your way through school, you offered your services as an indaki to the Tarakan Dept. Given the high turnover for the lowest paying job in the arts, they grabbed you up, despite your scant experience. They stuck you in a freshling technique class where you could do the least harm. There was Daywa, in the back corner of the studio, staking out her hermitage. But she replicated every move and neuro-motor pathway as if right in front of the instructor, the venerated neuromistressa Pr Fughini.

In the next class Fughini invited Ctatlo to observe, since the radical planned an experiment with tarakani. She had worked more with singers, her vocal techniques now standard practice, so whatever she had up her sleeve was untried and daring. In class, you noticed Daywa’s nerves charging her muscles more than ever. Were you the only ones crazed by Ctatlo’s presence?

It got better: Ctatlo was interested in your music! Of course! She was the Supreme Cross-Pollinator, so the marriage of tarakan with whakatan held a fascination. After class Ctatlo asked about your experience. Something inside you chose to answer honestly: I’m as fresh as a freshling (you gestured toward Daywa). Ctatlo was delighted; she did not want an indaki set in his ways. Likewise the tarakani: she asked for volunteers, anyone willing to be open, work hard, and take risks.

The Nerve Dancing Workshop is now famous in the history of Draill U, both for its invention of extended neuro-movement and the controversial ethical debate it provoked. Ctatlo’s hypothesis: if tarakani motivated movements with pure nerve impulses, then the audience should be stimulated on a direct emotional level. Before the Workshop nerve dancing was known for tricks, like moving from lying down to leaping in a fraction of a second. To replace exhibitionism with emotional transcendence, Ctatlo needed a total commitment from performers.

Using her exegesis of the myth “Heyatt uy Budoyr” as fodder for the Workshop, Ctatlo allotted scenes from the story to small groups of participants. She believed the content of the myth was radical political action: the female Budoyr, disguised as a Prince, must bed a Princess; after facing the truth, the two women preserve the deception and live together. To convey controversial content, Ctatlo required a radical form. She wanted tarakani nerve impulses to imprint the edgy meaning on the audience’s emotions; she wanted the audience to feel a thought.

You and Daywa hung on Ctatlo’s every word, you bought into the theoretical framework, and you took on every challenge she demanded. You chose the scene in which King Apatrus offers the Princess’ hand in marriage and Budoyr in disguise fearfully considers how to respond. Daywa was to dance Budoyr’s inner monologue, running through each possible answer. Your accompaniment was the voice of the King in Budoyr’s mind, reacting to each response. For example, Budoyr imagines lying that ‘he’ already has a wife: Daywa moved as the supposed wife, with Budoyr as ‘husband’, a dance of deception. You moved your fingers casually in and out of the sounding holes: the King dismisses the problem by pointing out his multiple wives. Budoyr imagines revealing her true identity: Daywa nervously exposed her sexual identity. Barely able to contain your desire, you revealed the King’s own proposal to the feminine Budoyr with thrusting, percussive strokes on the plectra-plane. Movement and sound had to be an interwoven, intimate unity, so difficult with the multiple levels.

Ctatlo was coolly supportive of your initial efforts, but demanded much more. You were crestfallen after the first day. You wanted to process your work with Daywa over dinner, but she retreated into her reclusive world to lick her wounds. The second day of the Workshop was a week later due to Ctatlo’s busy schedule. She scolded the participants for playing it safe and using old tricks. Daywa galvanized her will in a fierce tightening of her body.

Ctatlo pushed the two of you to focus on only one of Budoyr’s thoughts, going as deep as possible. Daywa expressed Budoyr’s imagined refusal of the Princess’ hand with gracious but jittery movements; you reacted with ominous bass tremolos: the King’s rage and threats. Daywa resisted your dark sounds with demure ornamentations. Your anger at Daywa’s resistance manifest as King Apatrus’ fury. Pr Ctatlo fanned the flames of this tension by ordering you to force Budoyr to cower. On her knees, Daywa submitted with a wicked gleam in her eye, looking directly into your soul and seeing your molten fury for what it was, overflowing, frustrated lust for her exquisite body. By the end of the day you were both pools of sweat, spent and speechless.

The final session of the Nerve Dancing Workshop came a month later. During the wait, you approached Daywa many times, but her reticence stopped you. Was she remaining ‘professional’ because the Workshop was not over? Nonsense, there were teams driven into each other’s arms by Ctatlo’s emotional demands. Some participants were unhinged by the work. Was Daywa holding onto her sanity by avoiding you? Should you check on her? Console her?

What will happen between I-Zaea and Daywa?  Are they headed for tears?  Ecstasy?  A decent review in the Times?  To finish the story, I invite you to subscribe to 1001/Qaraqbooks News, occasional emails with book news, free stories, and special offers about 1001, The Reincarnation Chronicles.  Thanks for reading!

The Tale of the Heavenly Music Room

I’m proud to say a story of mine has been published in January’s  WritingRaw , an online literary magazine.   “The Tale of the Heavenly Music Room”  is one of the Path of Heaven stories that pop up during the  1001 series .

Here’s the synopsis:



Bored with walking serenely down the Path of Heaven, two musician souls, Stint and Loquat, come upon a room full of musical instruments from every place and time. They are thrilled with the exciting windfall, but as soon as they put their fingers on a keyboard or lips to a mouthpiece in the marvelous collection, their troubles begin.



Here’s the link to read the story:


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