Becoming a GoodReads Author

About thirty minutes ago, I joined the GoodReads Author Program. My Author Profile is available at: https://www.goodreads.com/SRAnand, and I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with my GoodReads account 😦

So far, I’ve been following their instructions to the letter.

They got me started by making me rate some books. I did that. They kept pushing me toward the beautifully rounded and rather luscious figure of twenty by telling me that they’d be providing personal recommendations if I rated twenty books. I did that. Then they asked me to claim my books. I did that too.

Why did I do all this?

I happened to chance upon this short and sweet review of Mysterious Kemet Book I, and I suddenly felt all warm and fuzzy toward GoodReads. Thank you, dear reviewer. You made me smile.

So I climbed the bandwagon – with absolutely no inkling of the direction in which it might take me.

If you’ve been there and done that, I’d be happy for some guidance 🙂

My books, including “Mysterious Kemet: Book – I”, can be downloaded from Amazon.

 

Hatshepsut – in Life and in Death

Hatshepsut is one of the first symbols of feminism that we see buried deep in the sands of time. Three thousand and five hundred years ago, she ruled Egypt more successfully than many other Pharaohs, and yet her monuments were defaced, and attempts were made to obliterate her from history.

Who was this woman Pharaoh who defied tradition and strapped a false beard to her chin? 

Imagine a young girl, about fourteen or fifteen, married to an aging Pharaoh, who finds herself widowed at the age of thirty and finds herself at the helm of the affairs of state – co-ruling Egypt with her two-year-old stepson. The infant pharaoh, still in his swaddling clothes would contribute little more than ear-splitting shrieks to the administration of Egypt. We see here, a capable woman, possibly ruling in the stead of a child, who is not her son.

She obviously was in a position to control the destiny of Egypt and also steer the career of the young Pharaoh, who, upon attaining majority, was promptly sent off to the Egypt-Syrian border to defend it.

Djeser Djeseru, the mortuary temple of Hatshepsut tells us a lot about this woman Pharaoh, and also introduces us to a possible paramour. Senenmut.

Unparalleled. (Story)

The girl picked up the soiled and torn piece of newspaper that had streaks of gray, black, and brown – some of its text hidden under the streaks and some wiped away by the hoary finger of time, it still had quite a bit of it left. She handled it gingerly for the paper had turned brittle with age and when she had picked it up it had started to flake. A piece of newspaper, this big, with so much of the text still legible, could buy her family two full dinners, and the thought of mishandling it horrified her.

Inside, however, she struggled with another dilemma. She coveted the newspaper piece, she wanted to keep it in that little hole where she kept those other things she found – things that could each buy the family a meal or two or even five. Three mouths all waiting to be fed, all waiting for her to bring home something that could be bartered – three, and hers was fourth. She never questioned why she must be the one to worry about feeding them. This was how it had been for the last three years. It had begun when she had started accompanying Pa and Ma on their scavenges, and then, somehow, for no apparent reason, Pa and Ma stopped accompanying her on these trips.

They told her that her ability to detect things of value was unparalleled…that she was gifted, and all they did was slow her down, and so they had started staying home – first a little less, then more and more. In the beginning she liked it. She enjoyed being called unique – she loved all that adulation and praise that they heaped upon her when she returned to the fourth floor crumbling room of the dilapidated building they called home. But then after the first year, there was the baby. Ma had started to chide her gently for not doing enough for her baby brother, and Pa would only talk to her for a few minutes as he opened her tattered bag and evaluated the goodies. When the haul was good, he grunted; when it wasn’t so good, he criticized.

Finding Time…The Eternal Quest.

Time is such a charmer, you see. A casanova of sorts. First, it binds your heart with invisible silk and encloses it in a soft embrace, lulling it into believing that it would be there for you forever – and then, one day, you wake up with your heart cold and shivering, and realize that the sweet, calming comfort is gone. And then you see time fleeing away. The pile of tasks to be completed,  you learn, had been growing undetected, and transformed into a time-guzzling monster.

I can’t seem to find time these days. I need it to write blogposts, to edit “The Price of Nofret’s Nose”, to

Cracked Mirrors and The Grim Reaper (Story)

The soft breeze of the night transformed itself into a gale and rushed ahead to open the windows of the house for her. Mirrors cracked, curtains bellowed, hitting a vase somewhere in the house and crashing it to the floor.

It’s odd that my calm and serene presence should be announced with such violence, she thought.

Inside the house, in his bedroom, he slept on his side of the bed, undisturbed by the violent storm that raged outside. The other side of the bed was empty. A wave of guilt washed over her. She had been here before and she was the reason why he slept alone.

He lay supine, alone and in peace. She stood next to his bed,

Why Akhenaten became a Heretic?

I love the once-upon-a-time beginnings. They make dystopias appear utopian, so…

Once upon a time, there was a young prince, who co-ruled Egypt with his father. The young prince then became Pharaoh. However, this Pharaoh was unlike any other previous pharaoh. While his predecessors had accepted the supremacy of the priesthood of Amun, he decided to defy them.

His defiance was unique. He did something that had probably never crossed the mind of anyone until then.

Tutankhamun, Ay, and the Spinner of Dreams.

The heretic king Akhenaten and his beautiful wife Nefertiti had many daughters but no son, and while a daughter was the vessel that carried the royal blood, she couldn’t be the ruler of Egypt. Though, in past, some walls were etched with the stories of Queen Hatshepsut, the woman-king who wore a false beard and ruled, everyone knew that by strapping that false beard to her chin, she had committed a crime against the gods, and Akhenaten was sure that his new and only god Aten wouldn’t be happy if one of his daughters had to wear the double crown upon her brow.

So when one of the lesser wives of Akhenaten finally gave birth to a son, everyone rejoiced, but their joy was pathetically short-lived, as they soon realized that the young prince was born with deformities that wouldn’t let him live a full life, let alone a long one.

Yonder Worlds?

Yonder worlds are worlds that are far away – apparently beyond our reach. Buried beneath the sands of time, hidden behind the veil of mystery, these worlds reveal themselves to us through our imagination.

Yonder Worlds are worlds that call me. They torture my imagination and demand that I etch them on paper. These are worlds that are ancient, future, or imaginary.

Through this blog, I hope to share my glimpses of these worlds. I cannot say which worlds would beckon me in future, but for now Ancient Egypt has me in its thralls.

Who am I? 

I am just a storyteller on a journey of imagination.

Image Credits:
Nefertiti’s Bust in Berlin Museum.
By Rüdiger Stehn from Kiel, Deutschland [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)