Tend the Flame

Thank you for tuning in and sharing this Tiny Takeaway on Tend the Flame with your community.

This episode is a Tiny Takeaway to infuse your week.

This episode invites us to look to the magic in the little spaces, under neath our feet & in the moment before the day rolls away from our grasp.

Here are the great book quotes inside:

* “You only need sit still long enough in some attractive spot in the woods that all its inhabitants may exhibit themselves to you by turns.” - Henry David Thoreau, Walden

* “The answer must be, I think, that beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there.”― Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Writer’s Things:

* Claudine Wolk and I are teaching again with PennWriters. If you are writing this summer and want to make sure people find your book, this is the class for you — register here for our June Session.

* If you have an idea and you want to work it out before the summer season, scheduled an Ignite Your Intention Creativity Call here.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Creative Family - -

Quick podcast for you, to keep the flame of clarity bright as the end of year expedites itself and the internal realms quietly wait for you attention.

Make some space for silence this month; it will serve you tremendously.

This episode has 2 questions you can ask yourself to help come to clear action, no matter is being asked of you.

Here are the 2 posts I referenced in the podcast and 🔗 booklists if you are looking for stocking stuffers suggestions:

* 🔗 Writing Coaching

* 🔗 Ignite Your Intention Mentorship

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

This time of year can push a faster pace, while you want to slow down and savor. This podcast is for you — especially for you.

Instead of attempting to move the needle on the trends, choose to tend to your own circle, your own vision for your year, and your day.

Choice is your creative power.

Thank you so much for being here & choosing to listen to what you love.

It matters more than ever.

More soon,

Kate

Tend the Flame is a reader-supported publication, subscribe and keep the fire burning.

In this episode I mention:

Below you will find my reference to writing the year inside Tend the Flame as well as Analog Social. I forgot to mention I have been spending a lot of time 🔗 here, learning a lot of neat ways to better use my 🧠.

If you have a book idea or a wisdom piece you are working on, let’s ignite your intention and create it this year.

✔️Write with Kate, small business sale is on!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome Creative One —

Thank you to all the new followers and all those that have been siting here by the fire with me for quite sometime.

This place is a wall-less, international, learning space to nourish and speak to your inner spark. The more you share this podcast the more we can offer that warmth to others. Thank you for sharing, liking, subscribing and the support of your presence.🔥

Join us by the 🔥 Tend the Flame is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for becoming a free or paid subscriber.

🎧 This week’s podcast talks about:

* Looking to Nature for Answers

* What to do after you Look Up for inspiration

* What are you standing on?

* How bird talk is a metaphor and if it isn’t yours — how to listen for your own

* Why we need a stronger relationship with ourselves (inscape) now more than ever

🐦‍⬛ If you are new, welcome. There are a weaving of stories here and previous episodes are referenced to help you light your own way. Episodes such as: Press the Button + Antidote for Exhaustion.

🌿 If you are ready to have a conversation where you invest in hearing yourself, and moving out of overwhelm into intention and inspired action, there are a few mentorship spaces open, 🔗 schedule a connection call here.

What others have said: “You help me see the thing I have been tripping over. I get it.” - Deidre, massage therapist

“I needed someone to give be back my words so I can write them. You have a gift.” Pamela, author

One more announcement… Claudine Wolk and I are at it again. We can’t help it. When we get together, books bet written. We are being hosted in the Pennwriters Author series beginning this Tuesday at 7pm EST. It is a 4 part series. Come and join with other writers (birds of a feather) and take your idea from someday to the page!

🔗 📕 Join Us! Register today

Who is this course for?

Writers who are ready to start writing a book (fiction or non-fiction) that they intend to publish. As well as writers who want to learn the basics of book marketing to begin a successful career as a published author.

What makes the course unique?

Two instructors, who are both published authors and speakers, focus writers on both the writing process and book promotion to launch a successful writing career. Each session focuses on sparking creativity, building confidence, and providing the skills and knowledge needed to go from aspiring wordsmith to accomplished author.

How does this help the aspiring author? Is this a write-my-book course?

This course gives you, the new author, the lay of the land, to travel from concept to completion. This class guides your inspiration into action, creating: a writing intention, a story arc, and destination. We also remove the guesswork of entering the world of publishing, laying down the fundamental groundwork for you to be an inspired, educated, and informed writer. You get to decide where and how to take this forward on your writing journey. But now, you have a map.

Session One: Getting Started: Share Book Ideas and Publishing Goals

Published authors, Kate Brenton and Claudine Wolk, briefly share how they help writers publish and sell their books. In this interactive session, Kate moderates a segment for participants to share their book ideas and ways to refine their focus. In the second segment, Claudine introduces crucial beginner publishing terminology including publishing choices, book distribution, and publishing timeline.

Session Two: Focus: Your Book Idea Takes Shape & How Book Promotion Works

Kate runs an interactive session leveraging inspiration and intention to guide participants through uncovering and deciding on a primary focus as well as the accompanying arc for their book. Participants will come away from this session with a decision of what they want to write and an outline for future writing goals. Claudine educates participants on book marketing and promotion, spotlighting the essential questions: what it is; how it works to sell books in today’s world; why authors resist selling themselves; and how authors can overcome that resistance. Together, Kate and Claudine show aspiring writers that their intention and marketing message are intertwined, and that is a good thing.

We end the session with a Q&A period.

Session Three: Create Writing Plan – “The Author Agenda” and Book Marketing Fundamentals

Kate runs a creative session on developing an Author’s Agenda — an action plan to complete a book. Participants build upon session one and two to start story mapping and choosing coherent themes to advance their book. Claudine runs an interactive session with handouts to help participants to identify the book marketing fundamentals for their book: message, audience and hook, plus an elevator pitch.

We end the session with a Q&A period.

Session Four: Fun, Interactive Evaluation and Sharing: Share the Elevator Pitch for Your Book, Resources and Next Steps

In Session Four, Kate and Claudine summarize the three sessions and give participants an opportunity to share where they are in their writing process. We also give participants the opportunity to share the “elevator pitch” for their book, within the boundaries of positive and constructive communal support. Next steps and crucial book marketing and and publishing resources for additional learning are shared.

We end the session with a Q&A period.

Thanks for reading Tend the Flame! This post is public so feel free to share it.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Creative Friend,

While you listen to this episode we are gathering for Women & Birds and I wanted to give you a branch to land on in this short Wednesday podchat.

This week’s longer podcast was released on Sunday and you can listen here.

Look up & Listen,

Kate

Tend the Flame is a reader-supported publication. To keep the 🔥 burning bright, become a free or paid subscriber.

If you are in discernment or looking to on-ramp a new project, consider a connection call to see if Root to Rise Mentorship is right for you.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Friend —

Here we speak to the inner spark.

I have an invitation for you to commune with creativity — starting this Wednesday in Women & Birds, register below.:

* A place to create

* Reset your rhythm, from frenzied to fortified

* Nourish your mind through beauty, creativity and commune, over the isolation of a scroll/

* Set the tone for end of year as hopeful

We are releasing this weeks podcast on Sunday to help with your draft wind this week.

It’s a good one.

Thanks for being here, more soon,

Kate 🔥

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Creative Friends —

Have you ever heard the word inscape? It was coined by Gerard Manley Hopkins in referring to the: “‘Inscaping the heart’ a recurring theme in the poetry of Hopkins. The heart concerns itself with beauty, directs the reader heavenward.” [Source]

It’s the land inside of you that colors your world.

It’s the space of your spark, the place where you sent the flame.

🎧 We talk about this inscape and nature’s landscape on this week’s podcast and how one is intimately connected to the other.

There is also an invitation for you inside today’s pod chat 🐦‍⬛⬇️

A page has turned and it is those who move in faith of purpose on the whispers that this week’s podcast is for.

🔥 Have you felt that things are changing - -but you aren’t exactly sure of the next step?

Yes! So many of us are feeling the same way; the seeds that were planted so very long ago have finally rooted. Maybe like me, you had to get very quiet and still to hear what needed to fall away and what needed to be watered, congratulations. We have arrived at our next adventure.

I am still in the process of untangling knots, yet I can feel a larger space and capacity. It’s a learn as you go process for me. How about you?

To expedite the inquiry, I recently cleared out a closet, my phone, and removed the second best options everywhere I looked to make room for that which is waiting for me.

🎧 Story of found gold here (if you ever read, Women Who Run with Wolves, you have to watch this: https://www.instagram.com/insights/media/3728308714572164058/

* If this is you:You can hear the whisper and you know, but aren’t sure.

* Join Women & Birds.

* 3 Wednesdays together together— “though it is the smallest of seeds, when it grows it is the largest plant that becomes a tree, so that birds can perch in its branches” (Matthew).

It will be the time spent to pull weeds, plant (the right) seeds, and gather fruit.

See you there & until then until this week’s chat on the the preciousness of the inscape,Kate

Tend the Flame is a reader-supported publication. 🔥Add kindling to another’s flame & become a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

There are some of us that have tremendous belief, but we also have questions.

And I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. - Tend the Flame

In this episode, we drawer nearer to the flame. Set down your tasks, and slow into an invitation of the heart. What do you believe in friend?

We are living in chaotic times that want to draw us out and away from ourselves, deplete our spiritual, emotional and financial resources to leave us too exhausted to do much else.

In this wandering episodes, we walk into the territory of faith and why it is so important and to think about what YOU believe in and what YOU are here to do.

🌿This episodes was unplanned and chartered her own course. We will follow-up more on this concept and the ideas of guarding your gates and untangling your obstacles. We are here to create and love; that is a courageous choice in times of great darkness and chaos. Don’t let the flame go out friend. 🔥

This online creative class is Monday at 1pm EST. It is a place to walk through a story, in the way the Alchemists used to. Place the story on the table, let it be melted to its parts, sift through to find what can be repurposed, to build again. You will find gold in the creation. Click the button to join us.

Until then, may your confusion melt into clarity and may your purpose be easily recognizable,

Kate

“Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened. For everyone who asks, receives; whoever seeks, finds; and the door will be opened to him who knocks.” Matthew 7:7-8

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Creative Flame Tenders —

This week’s episode talks about:

* How journaling helps leave breadcrumbs back to your own advice.

* Standing for something now is more necessary than ever

* A shortened discussion on the steps of Alchemy (the actual process) and how it relates to you and story-telling

* An invitation to alchemize our stories together on September 22, 2025 — which is also the 3 year anniversary of Rebirth.

Our creative online class will be recorded in case life throws you a wobble, so sign up here and bring 📝💖 & 🪄

When: Monday September, 22, 2025 1-2pm EST

🔗 https://buy.stripe.com/fZuaEXdECdY13DrgQi9EI0D

🔗📚Rebirth the book.

It is important to note that we all take turns forgetting who we truly are, what we are capable of, and that we are connected to something larger. It’s a part of our growth process. I believe the more we share our stories and our tools, the easier it becomes to remember who we are, what we are capable of, and why we are here.

- Kate Brenton, Rebirth (*yes it is weird to cite yourself)

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe

Hello Creative Family —

Our last episode on embodiment, in the Substack itself I mentioned a new word that has been added to the dictionary. And I thought it best for us to carry that seed a little further.

Take heart this week, it is a powerful place to reside.

Love,

Kate

To Learn From Animal Being

by John O'Donohue

Nearer to the earth's heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens: Their seamless presence Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth Breathing with us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind And the light and the rain.

~ John O'Donohue From: To Bless the Space Between Us

Tend the Flame is a reader-supported publication. A place to gather warmth, and rekindle your soul, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Hebrews 4:12: "For the word of God is alive and in action. It is sharper than any double-edged sword... and can discern the secret thoughts and motives of a human heart".

* This episode was recorded on September 9th, 2025

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit katebrenton.substack.com/subscribe