"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms."
—Muriel Rukeyser
____________________________

Awakening Magazine Shines A Light on YGB Mission of Empowerment and Unity in Action!

 





 

"Do your work. If everyone follows their calling and dedicates themselves to it, the world will be a better place.” 

 

This insightful interview explores what began as Kayoko Mitsumatsu’s exploration of yoga philosophy and social entrepreneurship, which has grown into a global movement. As the founder of Yoga Gives Back, Kayoko transformed a simple idea—redirecting the cost of one yoga class—into a powerful nonprofit initiative that funds microloans, education, and empowerment programs for underserved women and children in India.

Each year, after visiting all of the Yoga Gives Back organization’s programs throughout India, Kayoko makes a meaningful visit to Mother Teresa’s Home in Kolkata. From a young age, she hoped to volunteer at the Home for the Dying. On one occasion, she spoke with a sister who had worked closely with Mother Teresa. When she expressed her desire to serve there, the sister responded, reflecting Mother Teresa’s own wisdom: “Don’t come here! You’ve already found your mission.“ Kayoko strives to stay focused on the mission itself rather than the outcomes.

With time, Kayoko came to see YGB’s work as truly divine.  Yoga Gives Back continues to attract extraordinary individuals who arrive when needed most, helping move YGB mission forward. Our global family of supporters, Ambassadors, partners, and donors make our mission possible—embodying this year’s Global Gathering for India's mantra, Unity in Action. Every step we take together helps transform gratitude into action every day.

 

A Circle of Impact—Thanks to You

Since 2007, Yoga Gives Back has supported underserved women and children in India—the birthplace of yoga—by providing:

  • Microloans for 550 mothers through our Sister Aid program
  • Primary education for 600+ young girls to prevent child marriage and labor
  • Five-year college scholarships (SHE Program) for over 400 disadvantaged youths
  • Digital literacy training and internet access for rural women and girls
  • Safe housing and education for children with no families to care for them

 

GET INVOLVED!


Story Merchant E-Book Deal Ken Atchity's Sell Your Story to Hollywood $.99!

Available on Amazon



The #1 Writer's Pocket Guide to the Business of Show Business by Kenneth Atchity.
Through the expanding influence of the Internet and the corporatization of both publishing and entertainment, the process of getting your book to the big screen has gotten more complicated, more eccentric, and more exciting.⁠
This little book aims to help you figure out how to get your story told on big screens or small. ⁠
Maren R, Reviewer

Full of information but still easy to read! If you want to start screen writing -even if it snot the rather lofty goal of becoming a Hollywood writer- this book will tell you how you could actually manage it!


Cristie U, Reviewer

This is a helpful and honest guide as to how to get your book made into a movie or tv show. It seems like it would be easier now because of the internet, but the author points out how difficult it still is and how to ensure your book gets into the right hands.


Terri D, Reviewer

Sell Your Story to Hollywood is a quick guide to getting your story into the hands of those who make things happen in Hollywood. The author Kenneth Atchity speaks from experience with decades working in Hollywood to get stories from the page to the screen. Although every guide about breaking into Hollywood should be viewed through the lens of how small the odds really are, this book starts out a bit discouraging for those who are truly interested in learning what they can do to move from a novel to a produced screenplay. The first step in getting this done, according to this book? Have an international bestseller. Okay. Not everyone can do that. Step 2: get reviewed by the NYT or other prestigious publication. Um... if a writer had that, they probably wouldn't need this book. While some of these initial steps are not quite what you would consider actionable advice for getting your screenplay produced, the book does move toward more actionable steps that you can take, though the guide does assume that you have a great story to tell with either an impeccably written novel or screenplay. As a writer with scripts but no connections to the industry, the parts of this book that I found most helpful were actual Appendix B and Appendix C. Writers at any stage can probably find something useful to take away from this guide to use in pursuing their own Hollywood career.

Reviewer 428382

Informative and well written, this is a guide that ever writer should read. I really enjoyed it and learned a lot. 


pamula f, Reviewer

Hollywood buys stories all of the time. Sometimes they buy a story that started out as a small article in a hometown newspaper. This book will show you how to get your writing out there for the world to see.


Steven M, Reviewer

I’ve recently completed a screen writing course and was delighted to have been approved for this ARC. The author clearly knows his stuff and offers an insight into the world of scriptwriting for movies. A perfect introduction to a world that some of us can only dream of.


Librarian 121315

Have you ever watched a movie and thought to yourself that you can come up with a better story? Or have you ever been inspired by a movie to tell a story of you own? For either of those cases, this is one of the books that you must read. I said one of the books because there are other books that can also stir you in the right direction; nevertheless, this book will certainly give you a good start. I loved that the author offers real life examples of movies that we have heard or watched before making the book’s contents more relatable to the readers. This is a great introduction to the business of movie making and readers should feel more comfortable with this subject after studying this book.



The Goethe Book Awards recognize Leo Daughtry's Talmadge Farm!

First Place Category Winner 

in Late Historical Fiction



AVAILABLE ON AMAZON


 Praise for “Talmadge Farm”


“Set in North Carolina in the 1950s and 60s, Leo Daughtry’s story gives readers a cast of flawed characters that elicit sympathy, anger, love and hate. 

The Talmadges, landed gentry, and their two sharecropper families try to adjust to the changing political, economic and social landscape of the decade. 

Gordon Talmadge commits one mistake after another, ultimately destroying the legacy handed to him, as his loyal wife Claire stands by his side while the sharecropper families – one black, one white – are ultimately driven off the farm for better and for worse. A page turner.” 

— George Kolber, author of Thrown Upon the World, and writer/producer of Miranda’s Victim


“In this stirring novel, Leo Daughtry creates a big, complicated portrait of family, place, race, class, and greed. Set in North Carolina, Talmadge Farm tells the story of three intertwined families. Daughtry delves deep into the heart of his characters. You’ll almost forget that you don’t know them personally; this story feels that real.” 


 Judy Goldman, author of Child: A Memoir and Together: A Memoir of a Marriage and a Medical Mishap


“Talmadge Farm is a classic. Through the lives of a farm owner’s family and their sharecropping tenants, Leo Daughtry weaves a story about the emerging South. This is a story of triumph and tragedy, of good and evil, and finally reconciliation. A true morality play.” 

— Gene Hoots, former tobacco executive and author of Going Down Tobacco Road

Narrator Justin Price tells AudioFile listeners about narrating Leo Daughtry's novel, TALMADGE FARM.

 







 

"Talmadge Farm has often been described as a love letter to the South. Daughtry says, “Despite what the South has done and is doing, everybody loves the South. The South has a charm about it, and this book talks about the good parts of the South, how good the people are, and what the South has meant to so many of us… It’s a love story in many respects.”


It’s 1957, and tobacco is king. Wealthy landowner Gordon Talmadge enjoys the lavish lifestyle he inherited but doesn’t like getting his hands dirty; he leaves that to the two sharecroppers – one white, one Black – who farm his tobacco but have bigger dreams for their own children. While Gordon takes no interest in the lives of his tenant farmers, a brutal attack between his son and the sharecropper children sets off a chain of events that leaves no one unscathed. Over the span of a decade, Gordon struggles to hold on to his family’s legacy as the old order makes way for a New South.


 


Former screen writer and current psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo talks about procrastination, the dangerous myth of inspiration, and why writer's block is good news.  

 Listen at Apple Dennis Palumbo – Writer's Block is Good News and Other Surprises









New From Story Merchant Books Rick S. Mordecon's Offworld Origins Preorder Now!





PREORDER LIVE NOW FOR OFFWORLD Origins

TIME: 2325

SETTING: Earth, its Solar system, and beyond.

Earth unveils the most incredible engineering marvel in its history, the Space Ring known as “Shenu,” an off-world colony. From this moment on, humanity discovers more about itself, its solar system, and its unique alien origins. But there’s danger in every corner as a dimensional rift outside of Jupiter threatens to cause chaos in the Solar System, an alien presence is detected on Earth, battle lines are drawn, and a comet is sent on a collision course to strike Mars. 

Against this backdrop, a new AI intelligence is born, and a new advanced humanoid life form emerges. Witness humanity’s last stand as a group of future pioneers sets out to tame the next wild frontier, its own Solar System, and the worlds beyond, taking humanity to the most exciting, amazing, and dangerous places it has ever been.

The Ring Dwellers:

🧬 Gina Prime
Humanity 2.0, the most advanced being to ever traverse the stars. As questions of her origin intertwine with alien technology, an invasion plan, and humanity’s destiny, Gina must grapple with her role -- friend or foe, savior or destroyer?

🧑 Dr. Tantalus
A Transhuman Evolutionary Architect metaforming into a Reptilian who is the most dangerous adversary humanity has ever encountered.

🌌 Betta Rajastani
A Gen Epsilon 23-year-old twin whose evolution may be humanity’s best hope -- or its undoing.

🧬 UMA
More than just a soul-infused Geneticom, UMA may secretly be an alien intelligence infiltrating humanity’s core.

🧠 Anderson Olefors
A scandal-ridden genius and Gina’s creator. He holds the key to a terrifying truth that could shift the balance of power.

⚛️ Harrison Byrnes
Commander of Athena, the first sentient dark matter starship. His love for Gina may jeopardize the very mission he leads.

🔥 Perfect for fans of:
✔ "Dune" by Frank Herbert
✔ "The Expanse" by James S. A. Corey
✔ "Red Rising" by Pierce Brown
✔ "Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
✔ "Hyperion" by Dan Simmons
✔ "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson

👁 If you love deep world-building, morally complex heroes, futuristic tech, and cinematic action with philosophical stakes, this book is for you.

👁 Step into a bold new universe where AI possesses souls, evolution blurs into extinction, science collides with myth, and the line between evolution and revolution is one secret from being crossed.

💥 OFFWORLD – ORIGINS is your gateway to a bold new universe where science, myth, and destiny collide.

📚 Ideal for readers who enjoy:
✔ Science Fiction
✔ Science Fantasy
✔ Intelligent sci-fi thrillers
✔ Romances between space-faring star-crossed lovers
✔ Space operas with ensemble casts
✔ Philosophical futurism and AI ethics
✔ Tech-noir and intergalactic warfare

🛰️ History is written by the victors. The future? By those who dare to change the rules.

🔥 "Humanity’s final frontier isn’t space -- it’s what we become to survive it."

👉 Get your copy of OFFWORLD – Origins today and prepare for an adventure beyond your wildest and most disturbing dreams. 

Stealing Time for Your Dream in 2025 -- Part 5: How to Make "the clock of life" YOUR clock

 


 How to make '"the clock of life" your clock:

 

The stopwatch

Mercury’s contemporary magic wand for taking command of your time is the stopwatch. Here’s how you use this magical wand: 

You know the clock on the wall will keep ticking away relentlessly until the day has gone by. You even know how it keeps ticking at night--why else would you awaken at 5:59 on your digital bedside clock when you’ve set the alarm to go off at 6:00? You know the telephone seems wired to that damned clock, life’s interruptions seem wired to it, the myriad distractions that flesh is heir to seem wired to it--and you recognize that, as a result, you yourself and your dreams have been wired to the Accountant’s clock for way too long. Your world has been defined by that relentless, uncreative clock. You are desperate to realize your Goal Time.

Today you stop the world. You buy a stopwatch. I suggest buying the simplest one you can find, one that allows you to stop the seconds and restart them, without the other countless modes that will drive you crazy unless you’re training race horses. Hang the stopwatch above your computer, your telephone, your work table--above whatever altar serves the god of your dream. Promise yourself that, no matter what happens on that wall clock, you will work on your dream at least one hour before you go to bed tonight. 

Or two hours. Try one first, then expand slowly and naturally in the direction of that Goal Time. Keep it as simple as you can and still make it work for you. Using the stopwatch allows me the illusion of freedom you value highly, but also ensures the constant sense of disciplined progress toward the success you’ve mapped out for yourself.

Nothing is more satisfyingly inevitable than the achievements that time creates from small, stolen increments. One hour a day is thirty hours a month. Thirty hours a month will inevitably produce results, especially if you’ve programmed the three parts of your mind effectively to make the best possible use of that one hour. Imagine how quickly planning his quest will move forward, having assigned five hours a week to the operation. 

If the one-hour-per-day approach doesn't work for your unpredictable schedule, or makes you feel too disciplined, make it a weekly approach. One of my workshop students was having trouble keeping to his contract that he’d put in two writing hours per day. After several give and takes, we came down to the real reason he was having problems: He was leaving his day job in order to be free, and the daily discipline we’d been discussing made him feel enslaved again. I asked him if he’d be comfortable committing to a weekly number of hours, to bringing in his stopwatch to the next session with ten hours on it.

 "And I could do them in whatever configuration I choose?" 

"Absolutely. The whole idea is to find a way of tricking your mind into allowing you to live by your own clock." 

He came in the next week with 10:06 on his stopwatch, and the weeks after with 10:04, 9:56, 10:10. He’d found a way of using the magic wand to give him that necessary illusion of freedom and control combined with the satisfaction of real progress in committing hours to his career transit. 

Don’t forget that only you can call "time out!" 

Anon: It's not over until the fat lady sings. 

Atchity: It's not over, but you can call time out. 

I used to wish I could call time out to give myself time to regroup and figure out the meaning of life. I used to fantasize about building in an extra, dateless, hour-less day each week to give us time off: no appointments, no phone calls, no deadlines. But that is daydreaming, undisciplined Visionary thinking; and we are trapped in an Accountant’s world. 

You can get time out on a regular basis by stealing it. Now that you’ve embraced your career transit and are living the entrepreneurial life, don’t forget to give yourself the benefits that your day job employer was forced to give you. Sometimes we are so excited about doing the things we love on a daily basis that we forget to give ourselves a break from them. “I don't need a vacation. My life is a vacation!” 

Everyone needs vacations. Most people need them because work is exhausting. The entrepreneur needs them because vacations bring perspective and creative insights that are unavailable under the daily pressures of the career transit. "To do great work," Samuel Butler wrote, a person "must be very idle as well as very industrious." The entrepreneur, as both employer and employed, must schedule his vacations, with alternate dates in mind in case "something comes up" that forces a change. You are accomplishing just as much if not more when you "go away for the whistle" and allow your mind to play. 

Vacations for the dreamer are excursions into Visionary time. "Getaway time," like the aboriginal "dreamtime," puts your Mind’s Eye in direct touch with the Visionary’s view of what you've been doing on a daily basis, and what you could be doing more creatively. Traveling away from "Base 1" is always good for the dreamer because it causes a "cross-pollinating" effect among your objectives, goals, and projects. Traveling anywhere away from a project is a kind of vacation, and nearly always a creative advantage; but traveling should be distinguished from true vacations. Going to New York on business, or going home to see your family for a week, are vacations that can bring fresh perspective. But in both cases there are too many things "to do" for the most constructive form of abandonment to occur. A true vacation is being on the island of Maui, where, after a couple of days of readjustment to "heavenly Hana," your "to-do" list consists of two items, and you somehow never quite get around either to doing them or to caring that you didn't. You notice suddenly that the days seem long, immense; that time has become, as Jorge Luis Borges puts it, "like a plaza." Smaller getaways can produce the same effect: mountain hiking; wandering through the museum; deep-sea fishing for a day; just "hanging out" at Grand Central Station or at the Plaza Oak Bar watching the world go by. During a true vacation Mercury can bring you an Olympian perspective, where the patterns of your life and activities become apparent among the tangle of busyness.

It is precisely at such times that "chaos theory" applies itself to the  creative process. Chaos theory posits the all-important impact of tiny random events on the long-range prediction of physical cycles. Weather patterns could be predicted accurately were it not for "the butterfly effect": Somewhere a Monarch butterfly fluttering from flower to flower (an incident too small to measure) minutely disrupts the passage of the breeze, and a thousand miles away a middle-sized storm turns into a tornado. Chaos theory is the despair of Accountants, who spend their lives trying to predict regularity as though chaos didn’t exist. But to the Visionary, chaos is the staff of Mercury. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, in Thus Spake Zarathustra, his most Visionary work, wrote: "One must still have chaos in one to give birth to a dancing star." 

The dreamer arranges his true vacations to put him in direct touch with chaos, following winding roads to heavenly dream places inaccessible to ordinary travelers. 

 

Tips on time and work management

 

Rate everything that crosses your desk 1, 2, or 3. Then make an agenda for the 1s immediately, and immediately delegate the 2s to someone else. Put the 3s in a drawer designated the "3-drawer," setting aside a few hours once a month to go through it and see what’s still important enough to deal with. You’ll discover that most of the contents of the 3-drawer are even less important than they were. Napoleon supposedly had all his mail dumped before the bags were opened, on the premise that the important news would have reached him already and anything he neglected that should not have been neglected would make itself known. I’m sure that Josephine quickly found an alternative method of communicating with her Emperor.

Postpone procrastination! Anthony Robbins says, "The best way to deal with procrastination is to postpone it." Procrastinate with everything except your dream. To make that happen you need to--

As much as possible, solve each problem as it occurs. Postponing the solution automatically increases the total amount of time needed for it. Opening a letter, then stacking it somewhere, is counterproductive. If you know from the envelope that the letter isn’t important, toss it in the nearest wastebasket and don’t even take it into your den.

 

Selective pruning

Mencius: Men must be decided on what they will not do, and then they are able to act with vigor in what they ought to do.

 Just as the vitality of a tree can work against the tree unless an experienced arbor culturist is engaged to prune the weaker branches, dreams can be dangerous unless you understand their peculiar fertility. As work creates more work, one dream breeds another, usually grander than the one before. Success has ramifications, breeding all kinds of activities; and, unless you recognize that and infuse "regrouping" time into your success agenda, you’ll suddenly find yourself "too busy" to be successful again. 

Well-meaning Friend: You're such an enthusiast. 

Atchity: Why does that sound like an accusation? 

Enthusiasts must protect themselves from their enthusiasms. To accomplish this, I suggest the following. 

Hold a monthly "drop" meeting with yourself. The object of the meeting is to select activities that can be dropped for a month, with a promise to reevaluate their importance at your next meeting. Tabling or discarding the weaker dreams, thereby constantly improves the quality of the dreams you work on. As you become experienced in the creative life, you’ll recognize that one of its strangest characteristics is the necessity of killing the little monsters--that once were bright dreams--nipping at your heels. The smaller dreams must now be pruned away so that the bigger ones can thrive. Of course it’s even better to kill them off in the concept stage; as Albert Camus said: "It's better to resist at the beginning, than at the end."

Don’t feel bad about the discards. Celebrate them. More than sacrifices or disappointments, they are symptoms of your disciplined progress. Just because you can do something, after all, no longer means that you must or should do it. That was the old you, dominated by the Accountant, before your Mind’s Eye opened to engage you in an entrepreneurial career transit.

When evaluating new projects, keep in mind the sign that psychologist Carl Jung had framed above his desk:

 

Yes No Maybe

 

"Maybe" is crossed out as well as “No” to remind us that it’s the "Maybes" that devour our time and dream energies. If the answer to an incoming idea or request isn't definitively "Yes," it’s definitively "No." Never Maybe. Maybe kills countless ambitions and splendid plans. "We are what we pretend to be," says Kurt Vonnegut's narrator in Mother Night, "so we must be careful about what we pretend to be." 

You may also find it useful to go through the following checklist: 

Is this a good idea (or opportunity)? Yes or No.

Is this idea directly connected with my dream? Yes or No. If the answer is No, pass it along to someone else "with no strings attached.”

Does this idea fit into my present agenda? If not, is it such a good idea that I should revise my agenda to accommodate it?

Is the world ready for this idea?

Am I ready to spend years making it real? 

It’s extremely important to consider both internal and external "timing" when it comes to evaluating new ideas and opportunities. Many of us waste time on good ideas whose time has either come and gone, or won’t be coming for too long a time to make its present implementation productive. Of course, thanks to the predictably unpredictable impact of chaos on our lives, we can never be certain about timing. But we can be certain about our gut reaction to the checklist. 

So long as you live, be radiant, and do not grieve at all. Life's span is short and time exacts the final reckoning. 

--Cepitaph of Seikilos for his wife (100 B.C.) 

This series was updated from How to Escape Lifetime Security and Pursue Your Impossible Dream: A Guide to Transforming Your Career (Helios Press) 

 



Publishers Weekly's Book Life Reviews Leo Daughtry's Talmadge Farm


Daughtry debuts with an expansive panorama of the 1950s and ‘60s American South, when tobacco ruled the land and desegregation was in its infancy. Gordon Talmadge, wealthy inheritor of his family’s Talmadge Farm, makes his money off the backs of others—including the two sharecroppers on his land, Will Craddock and Louis Sanders. But tobacco’s star is waning, and Gordon, reluctant to diversify in any way, is entrenched in the past, putting his fortune—and family-owned bank—at risk. When his intoxicated son, Junior, tries to rape Louis’s 15-year-old daughter Ella, it sends shockwaves that change their lives and Talmadge Farm forever.

Daughtry expertly contrasts the experiences of Gordon’s privileged family with that of his sharecroppers, particularly the grim realities that the Sanders endured as a Black family in the midcentury South. Both Will and Louis are up against impossible odds as they try to provide for their families, and when Louis’s son, Jake, is blamed for harming Junior when defending his sister, he’s forced to flee their small town for Philadelphia, desperate to make ends meet so he can study medicine. Meanwhile, Gordon’s tobacco crops can’t keep pace with his spending habits, and he rashly decides to bring on a crew of migrant workers from another state—a choice that results in disaster.

Gordon—and society’s—treatment of the sharecroppers is painful to read, but Daughtry capably evokes harsh historical truths of the era, particularly the generational abuse that wealthy landowners inflicted on the descendents of enslaved peoples. The reverberations of that shake through the Sanders’s family as the story builds to some dark consequences, though some of the most reliable women, Ella and Mary Grace, overcome obstacles as they strive toward happiness. Gordon eventually faces some justice, though he never truly makes amends for his harmful behaviors. Change, of course, comes in the end, but the cost for all involved is steep.

Story Merchant E-Book Deal - Free this Week Conversations with Dolphins

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON

One of humankind's oldest questions is, are we the only sentient beings in the Universe? Recent discoveries of exoplanets—worlds that may support life in other solar systems—have refueled the debate; but are we sure that we are the only sentient species on our home planet? If we knew for sure that dolphins have language and regularly exchange information would it not forever change our view of animals, in particular our fellow mammals? All those with an enquiring mind will enjoy reading this accessible and enjoyable account concerning recent groundbreaking research conducted by Jack Kassewitz and John Stuart Reid. As this booklet shows, humankind has taken a giant leap forward in answering this important question.

Conversations with Dolphins

Conversations with Dolphins is a unique true story that takes the reader into the fascinating world of acoustic-physics researcher John Stuart Reid, a leading authority on cymatics, the science of visible sound. Reid takes us on a stimulating journey in which we follow the very thoughts that led him to develop the CymaScope instrument and to image the sonic pictures that he and Floridian dolphin researcher, Jack Kassewitz, believe constitutes our first glimpse of the dolphin sono-visual language. Kassewitz and Reid have begun to explore the extent of the dolphin language and to answer the question, can dolphins create bio-sonar pictures from their imagination, without relying on imaging objects? Their important research could quite literally lead to humankind being able to hold conversations with dolphins.


Quotes from Conversations with Dolphins

“What if the dolphin sounds are not words to be listened to but pictures to be seen?”
--Jack Kassewitz, CEO of SpeakDolphin.com

“After many failed attempts, suddenly, there it was—the flowerpot—rather fuzzy but distinct enough to make out its shape. I could even faintly see the hand that had held the pot in the water. I rushed into the adjacent office to share my excitement with my wife.”--John Stuart Reid, Director of Sonic Age Ltd

“I find the dolphin mechanism for sonic imaging proposed by Jack Kassewitz and John Stuart Reid plausible from a scientific standpoint. I have long maintained that dolphins have a sono-visual language so I am naturally gratified that this latest research has produced a rational explanation and experimental data to verify my conjectures.--Dr Horace Dobbs, Director of International Dolphin Watch

“Kassewitz and Reid have contributed a novel model for dolphins' sonic perception, which almost certainly evolved out of the creature's need to perceive its underwater world when vision was inhibited.”--David M. Cole, Founder of the AquaThought Foundation