Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

• Musings
• Winners and Runners Up
• RoundTable 360° Space as Art – Are you and your space playing nice with each other?
• Greg Hickey’s Cover Reveal
• That Think You Do Volume 2 needs First Readers
• May Writers’ Workshop
• ATTENTION ALL UK-BASED FOLKS!
• A Little Game
  

Depending on your half of the globe (people with a western bias non-consciously divide the earth along a north-south axis, hence half the globe is the Americas, the other half is not (and take a moment to appreciate the hidden bias in the explanation itself! Wonderful, isn’t it?). People with a southern bias divide the globe along an east-west axis, hence half the globe is below the equator, the other half above (and again, appreciate the hidden bias), your a month or so into Spring or Fall, and regardless of bias, culture, or continent, you’re in a transition and/or preparation month.

The oldest recorded festivals are the Solstice gatherings with the Equinox gatherings a close second the further one’s culture is from the equator. Spring and Fall mark the times when we plant or gather, harvest or seed, and our agrarian rhythms are still strong in us and dominate the most ancient parts of our psyche. Solstice festivals are typically marked by beneficient and beatific deities, Equinox festivals typically by deities of anxiety and hope; Fall spirits are “we had a good year, what will the next bring?” while their Spring cousins are “The Darkness is vanquished, the Light comes!”

The northern hemisphere wakens while the southern hemisphere gathers in for Sol’s slumbers. The Great Southern Lands rest, eyes close, burrows go deep to avoid the cold, and The Wild bulks up for a Winter’s rest.

Our bodies and psyches still surge, ebb, and flow to these ancient rhythms. Seasonal Affective Disorder and Diurnal Mood Variation are extreme examples of the ancient internal tides seeking peace with modern life’s unnatural clocks.

Take a moment, if you’re willing, to close your eyes and feel the earth’s energies moving through your body, preparing it for one Solstice or the other, and remember we our visitors here. We are guests in someone else’s home, an Airbnb beyond imagination. Best to leave it nice and clean for when the owners return.

Last month’s Little Game had seven winners, one who gave me a chuckle and two who had me laughing out loud at their responses: Aiden Ryan, Dan Linton, Clarissa Wilkenson, and Linda Pirtie win an ePub version of Binky Sally Chetwynd gave me a chuckle with “It would take 60 musicians the same amount of time, but only if they were performing Beethoven’s 4.5th Symphony.” and also gets the ePub. Bob Merry and Danaeka Scrimshaw both had me laughing out loud, Bob with “Hmm, it would be difficult to determine the amount of time not knowing the instruments that were being used, or the ages and birthplaces of the players.”, Danaeka with “That’s like asking how long it takes to grow a baby if 9 women are pregnant instead of 1.”, and both get autographed copies of That Think You Do Volume 1 for their efforts.

RoundTable 360° – Our 24 April 2025 RoundTable 360° session is Space as Art – Are you and your space playing nice with each other?. Cultures across the globe and throughout history have recognized people’s energies and places’ energies need to mix well for both to prosper. Creators sense that energy exchange and sometimes rely on it to realize their creations for others. Artist and ArtFitter Anne O’Brien leads a discussion on living space, working space, me space and you space in the Thursday, 24 April RoundTable. Reserve your place at the RoundTable for Thursday, 24 April 2025, 1:30pmET (please check local times).

Brother Greg Hickey’s Cover Reveal – Greg is proud to present the cover reveal for my forthcoming Marcus Carver sci-fi crime novel Murder in Retrograde with and offers the following: To reserve your copy of this page-turning near-future mystery, pre-order Murder in Retrograde today and get it as soon as it launches this fall. Ebook Signed paperback

That Think You Do Volume 2 needs First Readers – 2025 is a year of many projects and many works-in-progress for me. One such project is getting That Think You Do Volume 2 ready for a late June 2025 release, and we could use some help with it. Specifically, we could use some first readers willing to read it through, offer comments, suggestions, edits, let us know their thoughts, write reviews, perhaps a Foreword, perhaps some backcover copy, … Email me if you’d like to be a first reader, and thanks.

Writers’ Month Long Workshop – May Writers’ Workshop – May 2025’s writers’ workshop covers many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The May workshop is on Wednesdays, 7-28 May 2025, morning and evening openings available. Sign up here. You can an idea of what craziness (and learning!) will ensue on my Experiments in Writing posts.

UK ALERT! – Sister Rika Chandra brought the following to my attention: The UK Government is proposing to weaken the copyright law that allows writers and everyone in the publishing industry to earn a living from their creativity. They plan to make it easy for AI firms to use everyone’s books for free to build their AI models. If creators are not fairly paid for their work in the age of AI, then the books that inspire us will cease to be written. That’s why Pan Macmillan has joined the Creative Rights in AI Coalition, and if you feel strongly about this too we encourage you to write to your MP to ask them to help stop this and protect creative rights. You can do this very easily at Creative Rights in AI Coalition – Write to Your MP. Note that weakening copyright will spill over into all creative work – visual, music, graphic, written, spoken, sung, …

A Little Game – Here’s one to baffle all the visual people out there: Below is a sign. Where would you expect to see it, and is something missing? The first five people to get back to me with a solution get a free Those Wings Which Tire, They Have Upheld Me ebook. The first person to get back to me with a solution which makes me laugh gets a signed copy of That Th!nk You Do Volume I (and no looking it up on the internet, folks!).

That’s it for April. See you next month!

Enjoy!