Author Guest Post: “Exercises for Being a Professional Daydreamer” by Shveta Thakrar, Author of Divining the Leaves

“Exercises for Being a Professional Daydreamer”

I love magic. I always have. I always will.

I’ve always also loved reading, because if I can’t do magic myself, I can at least experience it through stories. When I was a kid, my favorite books ranged from Dorrie the Little Witch to Elfquest to the Forgotten Realms tie-in series to fairy tales to mythology from around the world. I ate up the comic books my parents bought me, a series called Amar Chitra Katha, which retold various Indian myths and legends in a colorful, easily digestible form.

But I’m an adult now, and I still absolutely believe in the need for wonder.

So when I started writing my own novels and short stories, of course they were going to be fantasy. Girls who eat colors out of things. Serpentine-human shape-shifters. Candles with rainbow flames. All the shimmering things I want in my life, and if I can’t have them, then you can bet I’m going to write about them! In beautifully detailed, evocative prose, no less, so I can fully immerse the reader in the jewel box of my imagination.

I type these words having just returned from a walk around a nearby pond on a winter’s afternoon. The liquid surface was frozen over, no ducks or geese in sight, with pristine, glittering white snow adorning the withered fallen leaves on the shore. The pond itself shone in the sun, rippling like frosted glass in a window. Above, the sky was a cerulean so deep, I wanted to eat it, like Nilesh does on his visit to the magical Night Market in my newest novel, Divining the Leaves. The buttery gold of the sun’s rays felt like a hug, and the day itself was evocative of the winter elixir Ridhi samples at the Night Market when she goes there to vend her natural perfumes. I could also picture the sky and the snow swept together into a winter queen’s gown, sewn trimmed with sharp icicles like appliqués.

That may sound ethereal and even whimsical, and it is. Whimsy is a lovely thing. The trick, however, is more practical; I trained myself to think like that. To find the wonder in the world around us, even when things seem utterly mundane. It’s so important to me to offer experiences of the numinous in my books, but in order to do that, I first had to learn to do it in my own life.

It’s when we push ourselves to envision the grand and impossible that we can start to devise new solutions in our own universe, both real and fictional. A handy habit to have, if you ask me. *hands around little cups of winter elixir for inspiration*

So now it’s your turn! Try these prompts to get you deep into the heart of your own wonder.

Exercises for being a professional daydreamer:

• What fantasy novel or movie would you step into, and why?
• If you were designing your own magical world, what would it look like? What kinds of plants and animals and people?
• What would be unique to that world? How? Describe it using all five (or more!) senses.
• If you could have any enchanted power or potion, what would you pick? (Sure, you can have more than one. In fact, you can have as many as you can hold in your mind! It’s magic, after all.)
• If there were one thing you want to see changed in our world, how would you do it in your imaginary one?
• If you were to go outside right now, where would you spot magic even if nobody else did?

Publishing March 4th, 2025 by HarperTeen

About the Book: From critically acclaimed author Shveta Thakrar comes a beautifully imagined contemporary fantasy about two teens, one a believer of magic who yearns to belong, the other a skeptic searching for an escape, who find themselves embroiled in a twisty world of court intrigue when they venture into a forest ruled by yakshas, mysterious woodland spirits drawn from Hindu and Buddhist folklore.

Plant-loving Ridhi Kapadia and popular Nilesh Batra were friends once.

Now, seventeen and alone, Ridhi blends natural perfumes, wears flower crowns, and wanders her local woods, listening for the leafy whispers of her beloved trees. Pleading for the yakshas to admit her into their enchanted forest kingdom, where she knows she truly belongs.

After learning his parents’ perfect marriage is a sham and getting suspended from school, a heartsick Nilesh lands at Ridhi’s doorstep—the last thing either of them wants. So when a pretty yakshini offers him the distraction of magic, the same magic he mocked Ridhi for believing in, he jumps at it.

Furious, Ridhi strikes a bargain with a noblewoman named Sulochana. In return for helping restore her reputation, Sulochana will turn Ridhi into the yakshini she yearns to be—and teach her to divine the trees’ murmurs.

But when Nilesh ends up trapped in the yakshas’ realm, Ridhi realizes the leaves might be telling a disturbing story about the forest her heart is rooted in—one that, even if the two of them band together, threatens to shred the future like so many thorns.

About the Author: Shveta Thakrar is a part-time nagini and full-time believer in magic. Her work has appeared in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Enchanted Living, Uncanny magazine, A Thousand Beginnings and Endings, and Toil & Trouble. Her debut young adult fantasy novel, Star Daughter, was a finalist for the 2021 Andre Norton Nebula Award, and her second and third novels, The Dream Runners and Divining the Leaves, take place in the same universe. Her adult fantasy novella, Into the Moon Garden, is available as an original audiobook from Audible. When not spinning stories about spider silk and shadows, magic and marauders, and courageous girls illuminated by dancing rainbow flames, Shveta crafts, devours books, daydreams, travels, bakes, and occasionally even plays her harp.

Thank you, Shveta, for promoting dreaming and magic!