And Then…: An Assortment of Delectable Tea-time Stories on Amazon now.

Dear Readers,

I spent a good part of the last two years stitching myself together. A couple of days ago, I published a collection of stories that I had written during this time, on Amazon. Do check it out and if it interests you, please download, read, and review.

In this collection of 12 quick-to-read and delightful-to-savor stories:

1. Allow the Siren and the Banshee to help you discover the depths of human emotions.
2. Experience a pang of hunger the kind you’ve never felt before.
3. Join a man on his devastating quest to find the perfect costume.
4. Meet Devil to discover what has been irking him recently.
5. Feel the effort that a man must put in to retain his sanity.
6. Realize what it means to be a child-prodigy in a dystopian world.
7. Enter the heart of a woman who wants to make up with her man.
8. Recoil in horror when you meet the real KAL-UR.
9. Swing between joy and sorrow as you unravel the meaning of late-stays.
10. Learn to bite your tongue when you make your next wish.
11. Follow the Grim Reaper on a visit that leaves her content.
12. Ensconce yourself into the infiniteness of a mother’s love.

Thank you. I hope to delight you with some more works this year. Until then, stay in, stay safe, download and read books you like and leave your ratings and reviews for the authors.

Hunger (Story)

Raindrops, heavy and thick, clattered upon the rooftops and the windowsills. The surface of the road shimmered as the drops fell upon it and broke into infinite little pieces, each a microscopic sphere that smashed against the asphalt and sent out ripples – transforming the road into a mesmerizing snake dancing to the music made by the rain. It was past midnight. Those even moderately respectable were inside, and others were herded in whatever pub or tavern was open at the hour. The road was deserted.

Brad walked quickly. Not because he wanted to avoid the rain, but because he was hungry. It was odd that he should feel hungry in the middle of the night and that he shouldn’t want to anything out of his refrigerator – and he didn’t understand the urgency, but he felt that if he didn’t eat immediately, something terrible would happen. So he had grabbed his raincoat, pulled up his galoshes and rushed out. His favorite haunt from the past, the Red Tipper pub stayed open all night, and it was but a mile from his house. The rain was a minor inconvenience and being wet didn’t matter as much as being hungry did.

At the crossing he turned the corner and stared into the dark alley ahead. The smell of rotting food and churned gutters mixed with the stench of dead rats, stale urine and feces, attacked his acute senses, making him gag.

The Morality of Sibling Marriages in Ancient Egypt

Immoral is…”conflicting with generally or traditionally held moral principles.”

– Merriam-webster.

As the “generally/traditionally held moral principles” are dependent upon time and place, we might say that what may actually be considered immoral in one place at a given time, may have been or could be moral in another place or at a different time.

Automatically then, we begin to understand and appreciate a lot of ancient mores that flummox us. For instance, the Ancient Egyptian practice of marriages within the family. We call these marriages incestuous today, but two thousand years ago, in Ancient Egypt, this word didn’t exist. They used the terms brother and husband, and sister and wife, interchangeably.

While laws, moral standards, and traditions are temporary and change with time and place, human nature has by and far remained unchanged, which is why it helps us understand the practices of other cultures. Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs tells us that humans are motivated by need, desire, even greed.

Morality is Temporal.

Imagine the Ancient Egyptian Royalty trying to keep the crown in the family. Imagine a pharaoh reflecting upon keeping it all.

The Thaw (Story)

Marianne awoke groaning. This is how she’s been waking up this whole month – her body a tense bundle of aching muscles. He didn’t beat her, he didn’t scold her…and there were times when she hoped he would – a blow that would leave a cut on her brow or lip, or an angry avalanche of curses would be infinitely more welcome than his cold indifference.
He had stonewalled her.
Nothing reached him anymore.
When he looked in her direction, it was as if he was looking through her, like she was made of glass.
No. glass was classy.
Plastic would be a more appropriate metaphor to describe her.
Plastic, brittle with age;
plastic with stains and scratches;
plastic that would keep rotting endlessly.
He looked at her like she were made of plastic. When she tried to talk to him, he heard nothing. He wouldn’t even bother to up the volume of his headphones. When she poured her heartache on paper and left it on his table, he tore it away, and then told her that he didn’t give a damn.
Marianne was stonewalled.
And yet, she couldn’t give him up. Helplessness swirled around her, pulling her down by her ankles into the dark abyss that promised a vast emptiness. Marianne would be glad to lose herself into that deep well if only the nothingness wasn’t temporary. She had been there, and she knew well that this tempting nothingness would soon leave her in the company of despair laced with self-pity – and that it would make her cry and squirm. Her aching shoulders and stiff neck would twist and turn to the terrible music of her anguish and leave her more broken than ever. She knew that Inside that deep abyss of helplessness, she would be tossed about by self-pity, self-righteousness, self-doubt, self-castigation…
Once or twice…just once or twice, she had even considered suicide.

The Perfect Costume (Story)

Mark tipped the valet and got behind the wheel of his Mercedes. As his car shot out of the porch and glided down the incline, he glanced at the digital clock. It was 6 AM. It would take him an hour to reach his destination, and then another hour to prepare himself for his day’s work. If he missed the peak rush hour of 8 to 9, his entire day would be wasted.

—()—

The dilapidated cottage was a portal into his parallel universe. He would pass through it every morning on his way to work, and return through it every evening – six days a week. He parked his Mercedes in the garage, and went up the steps that led into the living room. The living room connected to a small bedroom upstairs, one in which he had never once spent the night – a few afternoons may be, when business had been good in the mornings.

There he changed into his costume. He had about a dozen of these, each tailored to a particular locality and designed to appeal to a specific gentry, and each improved and enhanced over the years. He loved to

Toggled – A Dark Psychological Thriller

TOGGLED is a dark psychological thriller that makes you ask, “who lives in my neighborhood?”

A young girl’s one-sided infatuation for her mysterious neighbor, grows stronger than it should.
A handsome young inventor’s feelings for his mother turn into a passion that burns whiter than it should.
A young single mother battles the ghosts of her past as her love for her son runs deeper than it should.

Leah’s dangerous infatuation with her mysterious neighbor, Brice’s acute possessiveness for his mother, and Rachel’s career in forensic psychology, come together to weave a story that

Saturated eBook Markets and Desaturated Writers

I happened to read a post that made me feel terrible, both as a reader and as a writer.

The gist of the post made by a writer is that her books aren’t selling because there is a glut of writers in the eBook space as every one who can write, is writing and publishing.

According to this writer,

the only writers selling their books are those who can afford the time and money to promote and advertise their books

OR

those who turn lucky and succeed for an unknown reason (and definitely not for any talent they might have.)

We are more Immoral than we can imagine.

 

The human brain is an enigma – a mystery still to be solved, its potential yet to be measured.

The mind can make us do things, consciously and sub-consciously, and the things that it makes us do, can lie anywhere upon the continuum of morality.

The two ends of this continuum lie beyond the spectrum of our consciousness.