A Twelfth of Carrabis – August 2025 Newsletter

• Musings
• Sister Sally Chetwynd Wins Last Month’s Little Game
• RoundTable 360° Supplies Limited: Talent
• Robin Wilkey Gregory’s Killing Time
• That Think You Do Volume 2 needs First Readers
• Writers’ Workshop
• Greg Hickey’s Murder in Retrograde is about to launch
• Talk with the Editors
• Zen Citizen Update
• A Little Game
• I’m published here

We’re having unseasonal heat here in the northeast USA, and with global warming, perhaps this is the new norm?

Wonderfully, our nights are filled with the sounds of The Wild. The rhythms of nature are fascinating. Many people know trees breathe. Did you know you can hear them if you listen? Walk through a night woods warmed by the day and cooled by the night, and you can sometimes hear the trees exhale. Likewise, walk through a midday woods cooled by the night and warmed by the day, and you can hear them inhale.

This isn’t the dendrologists’ and aborists’ concept of trees breathing through their leaves (which is more akin to human’s exchanging oils and moisture through the skin). Tree breaths follow the diurnal flow of day and night, inhaling during the day and exhaling at night. Their breaths are long and slow, with young trees and saplings breaths sounding like prolonged whispers – as well they should. A summer inhale can take twelve or more hours, and winter exhales likewise.

Many arbor-based cultures knew trees had life cycles and honored them. Some people know about druids (the real ones, not the ones started in the early 1900s) and celtic cultures honoring trees. Many other cultures similarly revered tree species based in their locale.

Perhaps less well known are the number of cultures which recognized trees as The Standing Ones (a northeast native american term) or something similar, or that these cultures believed the trees possessed human spirts. This goes beyond dryads, mavka, and the like.

Such cultures believed these spirits were mobile and active, leaving their home – the tree – for a limited amount of time to do good or ill to humans. Good if they humans respected them, ill if not.

Cape Bretons are raised on tales of The Old Ones (including tree spirits) intentionally abandoning their ancestral homes due to human incursion. Moving on equates to the death of forests and the denuding of natural lands.

One of our charity projects involves creating and preserving environmental safety zones worldwide, part of which involves training those who come after us in ancient ecological practices. An example of this is working with a Nova Scotia based natural logging consortium.

It’s not much, and it is a start. Sometime, should you wish, we’ll take you for a walk on our land and help you listen to the trees.

Sally Chetwynd won last month’s Little Game and offered the following: Maybe it really read: “Unclean Dish Allowed Evil …” (Sounds like a most curious title to a Sunday sermon.) Or else “I” was reminding “myself” that “ Uncle and I” promised to bring a devil’s food cake to the Sunday potluck at the church. Similar to what the doorkeeper to the Wizard’s inner sanctum at the City of Oz said, “I had an Auntie May once, myself.” But I am not blubbering about it. She was a neighbor we were close to, over 60 years ago. Her husband, whom we called “Uncle Franna,” smoked White Owl cigars and offered me one every time we all visited. He was some surprised when at last I overcame my shyness and said “yes” to his offer. He never offered me one thereafter. Sally gets a signed print copy of That Th!nk You Do Volume 2 when released. Way to go, Sally!

RoundTable 360° – Our 28 August 2025 RoundTable 360° session is Supplies Limited: Talent -Is talent required to be creative? Is it required to make a living by your creations? Some people don’t know and don’t care. They follow their muses and to hell with all others. Some consider it a Holy Grail, an unobtainable thing of great value, mystical and financial. What is talent and how do we know (if) we have it? If you know you have talent, do you have to accept it? Use it? Billy Graham once said he was positive he wasn’t God’s first choice. What would #1 have been like? Why would he turn it down? Did he choose to demonstrate his talent quietly and God accepted that decision? Separate Muse for God and the same questions apply. Must creatives exercise their gifts? Publicly or privately? Do creatives have a responsibility to their art? If so, is there some kind of moral obligation involved? Since obligation may be a victimizing concept, are creatives who feel obligated to exercise their art prisoners to it? Do world-class creatives continue to enjoy their crafts or do they become just other gigs at the end of the day? Reserve your place at the RoundTable for Thursday, 28 August 2025, 1:30pmET (please check local times).

Robin Wilkey Gregory’s Killing Time – If you’ve not watched An Experiment in Writing – Part 43: A Humbling Experience – Robin Wilkey Gregory’s Killing Time, feel free to skip it and go directly to her amazing(!!!) flash piece, Killing Time. It is one of the most brilliant demonstrations of storycrafting I’ve read in a long time. It both blew me away and humbled me. Will I ever be able to craft this well? Is this what it takes to win 1k$US prizes? If so, then I better hang it up now. Fortunately, once the intimidation passed I gathered myself and studied this piece (said study is ongoing). Gregory is a master craftsman, and I’ll be looking for more of her work wherever I can find it.

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 Sept 2025 release, and we could use some help. 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 – Writers’ Workshop – 2025’s writers’ workshop covers many if not all phases of craft and storytelling. The workshop is on Wednesdays, 3-24 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.

Greg Hickey’s Murder in Retrograde – Greg writes “Murder in Retrograde (and its prequel The Event Horizon Murder) represented a new direction in my writing, a shift into a story and world heavily influenced by a pre-existing genre. I had a blast reading and studying some of the most popular books in this genre and putting my own unique spin on the framework that made those stories so successful. I enjoyed getting inside the head of my new main character, Detective Marcus Carver, and telling a story from his cynical, street-smart, wise-cracking perspective. And from the plot to the characters to the voice, I’m thrilled with how the novel turned out. If you like stories featuring immersive, dystopian sci-fi worlds and hard-boiled detectives battling corrupt institutions, then you’ll love Murder in Retrograde. As with any novel, there’s so much content that never makes it onto the pages of the book. But I still want you to see some of the best material that helped me tell this story. So I’m offering it as exclusive bonus content to accompany the novel. When you purchase a copy of Murder in Retrograde during the launch period, I’ll send you the following bonuses: My hand-drawn diagram of Naomi Battle’s house (the home of the woman Carver is assigned to investigate and a prominent location in the novel) Marcus Carver’s old personnel file from his days as a detective with the Chicago Police Department The map of Los Angeles I created to help me plan the action in Murder in Retrograde A 50% discount on the purchase of any of my other novels

Talk with the Editors – Wilderness House Literary Review EIC Steve Glines and I (Senior Fiction Editor) hold monthly open chats with authors interested in a) writing for us, b) improving their craft in general, and/or c) increasing their chances of being accepted by other markets. Meetings are held via Zoom on the last Friday of each month from 9-10amET. So, want to know how to write for us? Want to know what gets our attention? Want to know how to write better for whatever market you’re interested in? Join us for our next “Meet the Editors” Zoom session on 29 Aug 2025, 9-10amET. Seats limited! Sign up and talk with us. We’re relatively easy going and fun to be with.

Zen Citizen – Sister Vineeta Kommineni‘ Zen Citizen portal – Vineeta continues her sometimes Sisyphian task and writes: This month began with a sense of powerlessness, but ended feeling grounded, with strength restored. There has been no movement on partnering with the government, even after the Revenue Minister personally endorsed us to his deputies. The enormity of what we’re trying to do has begun to sink in. Building a parallel movement as we are is meaningful, but painfully slow. The hard work of our volunteers could yield far greater impact if we found a way for the government to adopt our content or code, even without attribution and entirely pro bono. On top of that is the pressure of being the one person holding everything together, despite the fact that we’ve been incredibly fortunate to have a couple of dedicated volunteers who’ve taken full ownership of their respective areas. Just as the load began to feel too heavy to carry alone, a couple of timely shifts helped lighten it. A new volunteer (Thank you, Arijit) stepped up to take initiative on the tech side. We also saw a wave of strong volunteer applications, thanks to a Reddit post where we explained what we’re building, using a viral stand-up clip by Biswa that highlights the exact same issues with government websites that we’re solving!

A Little Game – This one’s for our UK readers: A man goes into a shop with two coins in his pocket. He makes a purchase and leaves with three coins, realizing he couldn’t have spent less and left with three coins. He makes another purchase in another store and emerges with four coins, again spending the least amount of money necessary to leave with four coins. Ditto his next stop, now leaving that store with five coins and spending a total of one-third of his money. What coins did he start with? (For non-UK readers – UK coinage is ½, 1, 2, 5, 10, and 50 pence) The first five people to get back to me with a solution get a free The Boy Who Loved Horses 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 2: Romance and Relationships (and no looking it up on the internet, folks!).

I’m Published Here – My August 2025 publication was Manly Men Thinking Manly Thoughts Manickly (and Women Putting Up With Them), a chapter from my forthcoming That Th!nk You Do Volume 2: Romance and Relationships (not quite sure I’ve mentioned it enough. what do you think?)

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

Enjoy!