Two weeks later

Birthday Thoughts!

So about two weeks ago

I was fortunate to be a part of a book launch event for by "The Unraveling of Ou" by Hollay Ghadery. Hollay is an amazing person and to be invited to launch my book alongside hers in Toronto was a joy.

Getting to meet Ashraf Zaghal author of "Seven Heavens Away", and spend time in Another Story Bookshop was a joy with such an amazing audience.

Missed Lucy E.M. Black, author of "A Quilting of Scars" who wasn't able to attend. They all deserve your support a hundred times over.

I also swung by a Toronto Library close to the event to see my novel in an actual library. This was something that I'd wanted to do for a while and it was just a joy to see it on the shelves! If it's not in your local library system then do please request it!

And that I wasn't able to put up a post about the event until now, and had forgotten to swing by a library to see my book is what has me introspective as I complete another cycle around the sun.

It's been half a year since my novel launched, and I feel myself transitioning from thinking, writing, editing, and marketing , to having thought, written, edited, and marketed. And while I'll never be done marketing as I am so proud of it, the change from the present tense to past is real.

I honestly don't know how long it's been since the novel has been in my head. I only have digital artifacts here and there. An email to Reza Aslan asking for help in research (That he responded to! The internet was a much nicer place back in 2010, and if any mutuals see this then please tell him about my book!), ordering D&D world setting books back in 2006 as a way to learn how to create an entire fictional world from scratch so I could get my idea of a Muslim matriarchy out of my head and onto the page.

During that entire time, I have been lucky to have boring full time jobs with excellent managers, and blessed to have been able to build a wonderful family with my lovely wife and two amazing kids without whose support this would not have happened.

To have had such a full life and still have been able to write and go through the process of publication thanks to people such as Julia Kim, and Kwame Fraser, and Dundurn Press is a level of fortune that I don't think I deserve.

And the novel has accomplished more than I could conceive! I got the opportunity to talk about it and it's theme and ideas, I have author friends now! It's got reviews from 1 to 5 and everything in between! The only real milestone I really haven't achieved is for it to earn me enough that I can retire from the boring full time job (and all the translations and audio books and movie deals that might come with that)!

And it might never get there. And I might not be able to start and finish the three other ideas that I have for novels, distracted as I am by world events.

And that's ok. If I spend my limited spare time in advocacy, so others can live in the peace and prosperity I've been afforded, rather than writing then that's just the nature of the times we live in.

All I can say is that I'd much rather look at the last 45 years, and focus on what I have been able to do rather than think about what more I could have done, or done better.

Because you know, it hasn't been bad at all.

To all my family, and friends, and those who spent their precious time to read my words.

Thank you. Jazakallah Khair.