About Silver Rain

Silver Rain is here exclusively to promote good writing. Writing which heals, makes well, fortifies, and engenders new, inspiring thought, perception, and attitude. Whether this be through a new take on archaeology, the issues associated with world migration, or a human interest story, in the importance of the small and (often) overlooked, Silver Rain will cover it all with care, tact, and dignity—extending these same qualities and attitudes to its subjects..

Within years, the stories flowed, both fiction and nonfiction. Human interest stories, from South Africa to Japan to China and beyond, and Puerto Rico, the hidden caves on Mono Island (Monkey Island), where a possible chance for a new type of New World was documented, and almost found expression. Earlier visits to Uzbekistan, to Samarkand and Bukhara, and the beauty of worlds encompassed and given dynamism by the Silk Road, from China and Mongolia to Europe, shattered by the advent of colonialism, these too entered our writing.

An artist, translator, and journalist in South Africa, in the Karoo, working away diligently at his translations, surrounded by languages other than English, yet holding the spark of the language there, in the loft of a barn, his home office, between his walkabouts in the desert.

What Silver Rain will not do: dazzle, shock, try to impress, overexplain, latch on to the most recent trends or all-too-often ephemeral, and ultimately insignificant (in the larger picture), in the daily and weekly news cycles.

What Silver Rain will do: write, or try to write (the work in this is ongoing), with sensitivity and a special attention to language, in whatever form it may take. If the piece is descriptive, we’ll go all out, with detail and specificity, and whenever possible, three dimensionality. Caricatures and undercutting the value of a story by watering it down to meet a deadline are out; full features, and character portraits (for both fiction and narrative nonfiction) are in. Overall, Silver Rain will do justice to its subjects, its themes (self-chosen or self-arising), and the many players, seen and unseen, who go to make up a good story, and not only that—one written well.

Silver Rain (noun)

sil·ver rain [ˈsil-vər ˈrān]

1 | The time just as day turns to night, or night to day, as the surface of the Earth, rotating around the planet’s axis, moves from one state to another: TWILIGHT. (See: DAWN, DUSK.)

2 | The atmosphere which gathers at said (dusk or dawn) time, often accompanied by birdsong, or—in the proper latitudes, seasons, and climes—frog- or cicada-song, and whole symphonies of fireflies flashing on and off, their lightshow often timed precisely, in unison. An organic change in the planet’s electromagnetic activity, palpable and, for the initiated, visible as a light shower of electrics, droplike, sparklike, for up to half an hour during the change of state.

3 | The resultant electromagnetic, atmospheric change of state at these times, wholly conducive to implementing new intentions, developing new ideas, and, on the whole, fostering creativity. (See: CONDUCTIVITY.)

4 | A similar state of activity and balance in the human brain and mind, known to writers and poets throughout the ages, and more recently confirmed by scientists: MUSE. INSPIRATION.

5 | The third state or vector required for positive, bright, constructive change, whatever the ecology or environment, landscape or (human) topography. The weather of the between-state, the edge of inspiration and heightened sensitivity (to word, sound, rhythm). (See: AWE, WONDER, PASSION.)

Our Story

It was a day in 2015, like most any other—or so it seemed. The founder of Silver Rain, which had yet to come into being, looked out his window in Western Europe and saw a new light: it was 4:30 am, in the summer, near his birthday, and a curious form of illumination had overtaken the landscape. The landscape—grasses, trees—a mulberry and acacia and sophora japonica—and walls of stone, granite and a sparkling mixed quartz from Norway, all seemed aglow, brought to life, by some new force of nature, outside of nature. (This was in the city, and despite the wall of bamboo, the towering acacia beside the house, the sounds of traffic already entered the garden at this early hour.) The birds, the gulls and especially the bluebirds (which are black), and the newly arrived green parakeets, had begun to sing up a storm. Within minutes, the whole sky was alight with song and the sounds of wings, high and low.

Fast forward, to 2017. This one event, taken note of earlier, then sparked a whole new understanding: Silver Rain, as the line between two worlds, dawn and dusk, sunrise and sunset, and the ever shifting line in between—this is what makes for good art, good writing, good anything. Being on the edge like this, supported by two worlds simultaneously, one thing with three, two obvious things, contrasted, buttressing a third—this is the writer’s edge, and the source of her potency, however it finds expression.

Discovery

The sound rises, morning accolades, followed by evening associations, with what has been, during daylight, the reminiscing, while, silently, looking forward to the next day’s journey.
It sounds lyrical, yes. It is also the stuff of daily life, and our raison d’être; it keeps us going, and the more we learn, through writing, the more we know we have yet to learn, and know, and perceive, and record and celebrate through our narrative art.
Journeys

A young man, another translator, moving between Mexico City and Portugal and Japan, possibly—unbeknownst to him—tracing the pathways of earlier explorers and conquerors, and captives (so unfortunate is our planet’s history), only by jet, with the luxury and modern-day necessity of the interconnectedness of the internet; he, too, is another part of this story.
Exploration

An interview, with Pico Iyer, the celebrated author of The Global Soul, caught between travel between Scotland and Singapore, who sent answers to an interviewer’s questions during a layover, on his way back home to Japan. This, too, is part of the Silver Rain journey.

Signature Services

Writing Services

Whatever you prefer, give us three core words or lines which sum up the nature of your request: human, 19th-century expansion, national parks. Or Japan, Dejima, Sakoku (the period of Japanese isolationism). Or the coquí (the frog native to Puerto Rico, introduced to Hawai’i, among other places), El Yunque National Forest, the Taíno. Or (going more speculative): the 23rd century, corporate malfeasance, environmental remedy.
Proofreading

The foundation of any good, readable text. Errors—as the English language is currently commodified and standardized, for ease of understanding across classes, regions, and countries—in spelling, syntax, and grammar, or higher up, metaphor, will impede the reading process and leave your readers scratching their heads, rereading not to read, but to try to figure out what you were trying to say, or get across, or evoke, in the first instance.
Editing Services

The next level up in the review and revision process. (We’ll refrain from calling it ‘Gold’ or ‘Platinum’ or anything like that, although it certainly, in terms of quality, is exactly this.) This includes proofreading, and a search—in some cases, light soul-searching—for the exact idiom, the correct phrase or verb or time- or age-appropriate expression, for your work, whether fiction, narrative nonfiction or poetry.
Translation

This facet of Silver Rain may, in fact, set us apart from most other groups as well as individual writers. We know languages. This means, in addition to English, which has become a sort of lingua franca for our spinning globe in the middle of the universe, at the edge of the Milky Way, for a billion and half of the eight billion and counting human inhabitants of this planet, we know other languages, often also linguae francae in their regions: Russian, Spanish, and Portuguese, and the voluminous Chinese language and its worldwide linguistic diaspora, are our daily fare, alongside English.
Bespoke Services

This is your space. We leave it open, for you, for your project and your vision. You take the first step, write the first word, or rhyme or title (or, in some cases, the final line!), the storytelling or poetic proposal, and we’ll follow.