My First Book 'The Pod'

F Marks the Spot
I almost don't want to give you the link because it's the first thing that comes up in google *pride tear*

Either way, you did me a solid and I appreciate that.

 

Wait.. did you finish it?

 

There's another Andy Graham author out there? Should I buy some ninja gear and a gun? We Andy Graham authors our there don't take kindly to other Andy Graham authors.

 

I used to be a regular at this bar and I would always be there late. There was this guy named Andy Graham that would come in at happy hour and the bartenders always wanted me to see what would happen if we met. Finally we met and I really liked the guy. Very anti-climactic.

Also to everyone else, get 'The Pod' while you can! It's still free for about 28 more hours!

 

I got a text message surprise review during the Astros game:

"I am absolutely loving your book! I'm about halfway through."

She later texted me about the plot but it's a plot spoiler. Speaking of, please share this with the ladies of your life. It seems like women tend to like this book a lot based on feedback.

 

Last day to get a free copy of 'The Pod'. Don't hesitate! Price goes up in a few hours.

@Codman I think you'll really appreciate this book and it's free. There's some shared struggle painted throughout.

 

Last chance dudes and dudettes. Free for just a little while longer. Maybe an hour. http://a.co/1tdccg1

 

Each line is also 11 syllables. It was a lot of work.

 

Ha, I'm going to have to reply in a spoiler! Thanks for reading it. I really appreciate it.

Grey was easily one of my favorite characters to write. I found out there was a grey whale spotted in the Atlantic even though the Atlantic greys were supposed to be extinct. It was probably a Pacific grey roaming around in a different ocean though. I made him a pagan because paganism seemed like it was extinct but people still practice it all over. My old neighbor is actually pagan. I had a blast writing the "Lo there do I see" section. Reminded me of the scene in 13th Warrior. Michael Creighton did his research!

Spoiler: This contains spoilers for 'The Pod'

Ol' Blue got distracted and the distraction kept him from completing the journey with the group. The ultimate idea is that he was lost because he lost focus on the journey. To me the Trench of the Quest was ultimately about staying focused. So Ol' Blue let his stomach and desire for food overpower his desire to complete the journey.

Bottlenose couldn't accept that some knowledge couldn't be learned. So if he could only think his way out of problems, he could never accept a gift of knowledge of the unknowable. It would be like if I had a pile of invisible keys in my hand and everyone else grabbed one, unlocked the door and left and you sat there and said there is no key in my hand so you refused to grab it. It's not that he forsake The Pod, he just didn't have the tools he needed to leave the trench.

Almost all Narwhales have a tooth growing from their head like a unicorn. As a kid I learned about unicorns and then I learned they were fake just like the pegasus. The book is an adaptation of Farid Ud Din Attar's 'Conference of the Birds'. The group of birds is on a journey to find a leader and that leader is the great firebird. The Phoenix. In the Persian language the firebird is called a Simorgh. To find the Simorgh, the birds gather and a hoopoe helps guide them helps them decide to all go on a journey through 7 valleys on their way to find the Simorgh. A hoopoe looks like this:



To me this hoopoe doesn't look like other birds because of that crown of feathers on its head. So I picked a whale that didn't look like other whales and the narwhal is one weird looking whale. Narwhal is a mystic and I find the tooth that grows out of a narwhal's head to be mystifying. Sufism (the 'religion' that this book is based on) has no leader. So I never saw Narwhal as the leader. He's more of just a guide and the leader of The Pod is each individual. Narwhal is certainly 'a leader' in the group, but I wouldn't call him 'the leader'. They all led at different times.

I'll include @PhiSlammaJamma on the Beluga question. The three whales that make it to the last trench, Beluga, Narwhal & Bowhead, are all arctic whales. I assume that all three species will go extinct when the arctic melts because they all depend on the ice to live. I could definitely be wrong about their extinction or the polar caps melting, but that's why I had the three of them 'make it'. People ultimately have trouble letting go. Beluga is no different. She holds onto her body and doesn't accept the truth of what she is. She can't accept that she's nothing, that the body she possesses is not her. This book is about the sufi principals and to get to the ultimate peak of sufism you have to kill yourself without dying. You have to empty the tank, so to speak, then it can be filled by something that is not 'you'. Beluga is struggling with that concept and so she's stuck in the last trench.



A big part of me hesitates to call sufism a religion. Wikipedia says that Religion is any cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, world views, texts, sanctified place, ethics or organizations, that relate humanity to the supernatural or transcendental. Religions relate humanity to what anthropologist Clifford Geertz has referred to as a cosmic "order of existence". However, there is no scholarly consensus over what precisely constitutes a religion. There's no leader of the sufis, there's no text that guides them, there's no holy places, the only organization I've come across are the whirling dervishes, but they're like a subset of Islam. True sufism doesn't require a belief in anything. You don't have to believe in a God. You're allowed to come from any background and there's absolutely nothing that would prevent you from being a sufi. You don't have to even claim you're a sufi. Wikipedia calls Sufism as "Islamic mysticism" but Sufism predates Islam so it can't be Islamic. However, there's a history of using the practices and stories of other religions to help one understand Sufism so because of this people tend to think of it as being a religious subset. I would just call it highly flexible and its foundation unchanged regardless of how it's explained.

@PhiSlammaJamma I'm thinking I might need to write another book to explain the rest of Beluga's journey. I honestly don't know what happens to her. I was hoping that led to discussion and people inventing their own endings so they can make the story their own.

 

Thx Deck

 

Probably just the regular purchase, but I would be super happy if you left a review of the book after you read it. Nothing helps me more than passing the experience of reading 'The Pod' to others. I really appreciate that @Xerobull