| It was three of us. Sitting at a roadside teashop on the New Year’s Eve of 2018, we laid the foundations of a digital agency. But one of us dreamed of publishing an online magazine. A few months later, we were publishing a magazine that everybody loved. The digital agency faded away in the background. What appeared in its place was a community of writers, artists, readers, travelers, performers, and all kinds of people who approached life with gusto. We called it “Dastaan World”. After “dastaan”, the Persian word for an epic story that goes on and on without an end in sight, and keeps the audience enthralled and craving for more. That’s what we have always been about: Stories. Our tribe described Dastaan World as “the modern literary equivalent of those 19th century Parisian salons, or maybe the kind of gatherings they had in Vienna in the early 1900’s. Creative people interacting, cross-fertilizing. Marvelous.” It was glorious. We announced 12 anthologies to be published in 2019. Athena would be the first. Some of the finest writers of this day and age blessed the pages of this book with their stories. We were so engrossed in the entire thing that we barely paid attention to the crumbling economy around us. Push came to shove and our editor abruptly resigned one day. And the other partner decided he’d rather do the agency thing than the publishing thing. I turned around and looked at this community that had gathered around us. And all the love they had given us. I decided I could not let it die. It would be tragic. But I was alone and could not find a way out. And that’s when the tribe rose to the occasion and made possible what I could not have done on my own. I was just an artist who was pushed into the role of a publisher. Scary! I get emotional thinking back to all the messages and emails I received, offering help with editing, distribution, agreements, and everything in between. Had it not been for these angels in disguise, I would still be standing there frozen like a deer in the headlights. And Athena would still be gathering proverbial dust in my computer’s hard drive. It took us a while. But we made it. We will publish many more books in the future. We will expand into comics, and might achieve all our dreams of making animated movies, etc. But Athena will always remain very special to me. Like a firstborn. I can’t believe I’ve just released this gem to the world. And I’m so excited to share this awesomeness with you. Grab it here if you haven’t already: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08924FK3P Love, Magic, and Madness, Shakaib. |
