Calm is a dream to write for—which is fitting since their whole deal is helping people get to sleep.

 

As a writer, you get to throw all your so-called "best practices" out the window. Want to use too many adjectives? Great. Want to go on a meandering tangent that doesn’t really go anywhere? Go for it. Want to explain the musical genre of ska in painstaking detail to children under the age of 10? Perfect, that’s sure to get them to go to sleep.

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I’m currently the caretaker of the hit Cap’n Dreambeard series for Calm Kids (which is just like Calm for adults, only instead of Cillian Murphy talking about lavender for 45 straight minutes, the stories are actually fun). I was tasked with creating a unified universe for two of their leading characters: the young pirate adventurer Mari and her sea-snoring father, the infamous Cap'n Dreambeard. My most recent installment, “Cap’n Dreambeard & The Drowsy Dunes,” debuted in February 2023.