To my Ananda friends

Kiran Blackwell
May 31, 2024
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I didn’t want to overload emails and other posts with too much information, so this page provides further details.

The core inspiration from Swami Kriyananda

First, What are my motivations and inspirations for this newsletter? answers a few core questions about what I’m doing. The most relevant part is the comment Swami Kriyananda made in the intro to Love Perfected, Life Divine. He asked whether there were any modern writers of—or an audience for—"stories attuned to modern times that yet contain a simple, devotional story, inspiring people to seek God." In a sense, he asked whether there were any literary equivalents of Ananda Music.

After several years of actively looking for such stories, I can agree that what's out there occurs only in bits and pieces. And why should there be more? Such mystical realism, as I call it, isn't a well-defined genre or even something that writers without an inner life would even know to think about.

Yet I do think there is an audience for it, and not just within Ananda. I believe many people would thrill to experience that realism in fiction the same way that they experience emotions through fiction and fictional characters. (In fact, the term has been used to describe the work of Jon Fosse, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2023.)

Accordingly, I've been exploring what such stories might actually look like in practice with an eye to writing some of my own and, more importantly, to stimulate conversation around the subject with interested authors and readers. That’s what this Deus in Fabula newsletter is about.

And for more on the name of the newsletter, see What's in the name, Deus in Fabula?

How to find an audience?

Working on the assumption that there is an audience for “stories attuned to modern times that yet contain a simple, devotional story, inspiring people to seek God,” how does one go about finding it (attracting readers and interested authors)?

In a nutshell, it begins by just publishing writings on your areas of interest, like I’m doing with this newsletter. The second step is to bootstrap an email list of subscribers through existing social networks, which is what I’m doing now. This bootstrapping is what creates the initial magnetism.

The next step is growing the subscriber base by reaching outside your own social networks. You do that by going to places on social media where your potential audience already hangs out. Most important are activities like guest blogging and appearing on podcasts because they’re a win-win for building a subscriber base. That is, they connect your audience to your host and connect your host’s audience to you.

But, of course, if I don’t have many subscribers then there’s not much to offer to others who do! And that’s why I’m reaching out with direct invitations.

Using a pen name

Why am I writing under the pen name, Kiran Blackwell? The short of it is that my given name, Kraig Brockschmidt, doesn’t roll off the tongue very well and my spiritual name, Satyaki, is easy to mispronounce and is, I think, harder for audiences outside of Ananda to relate to.

Paid subscriptions and discounts (to 100%)

So, why isn’t everything just free? There’s a fuller post on this matter, Mystical realism: Joining the conversation, which explains what paid subscriptions support and accomplish. The short of it being that restricting certain content to paid subscribers encourages more serious participation and keeps out trolls. Many writers on Substack have observed that this approach enables high-quality conversation.

That said, I don't want to exclude any of you for monetary reasons. Paid subscriptions are really for people to whom I don’t have an existing connection.

To that end, feel free to use any of the following perpetual (permanent) discounts:

If you have trouble with any of these, let me know via email kiranblackwell (at) substack.com, and I’ll adjust from my end. And if you’re allergic to using a credit card even for the 100% discount, let me know and I can just comp you in. .

A closing note on dharma

I’ll close by saying that for me, Deus in Fabula represents a core step in my next phase of life and dharma. I retired from Microsoft (the second time) in late 2021 to focus with my wife on homeschooling our son through high school. That's also when I started this exploration as an extension of my non-fiction writings (e.g. the Harmonium Handbook and Solving Stress published by Crystal Clarity) and everything I've done with Ananda Music over the years. But now that our son is only a year from graduation, it’s time to start the foundational work for this next phrase!

Let me know if you have any questions. Email kiranblackwell (at) substack.com.

Blessings

.Satyaki