It was Yesterday!

Yesterday was the one year book anniversary of my novel "Under The Full and Crescent Moon" and I'm going to try and celebrate it by actually speaking about it for a change.

Because...

That's what I'm supposed to be doing, the last part of a book's launch is marketing it and that never really ends. So let's talk about that for a bit.

First off, it's available everywhere books are sold so if you're interested in a speculative historical story of a young woman growing up in an imagined Muslim matriarchy. Please do please pick it up or request it from a library.

There was a really great talk at this year's Muslim Literary Festival in Toronto by Sarah Mughal Rana, who is an incredible writer and also very successful in getting the word out of her work and I was sitting, listening to everything that she's doing and my one takeaway, unfortunately, was that I cannot do even a little of what she's doing.

Because it made clear that not only does it take a lot of strategy and intention to successfully market a novel, which she has in spades, but it also takes time and energy.

And if there's two things I don't have much of. It's time and energy.

And honestly that's okay. I'm blessed to have a family that I love spending time with. I'm fortunate to have a full time job that routinely becomes pretty demanding. My mother who has dementia lives with us and that takes energy as well. I have a full life.

And in terms of social media what little energy I do have, is routinely spent making content for current world events like what's happening in West Asia. Like for example raising funds for the ElHayek family in the Strip. My conscience just doesn't allow me to not use whatever skill I have in making social media to break the silence that lets atrocities continue. Especially when my society here in Canada has been and continues to be deeply complicit with horrific war crimes in Palestine and Sudan.

For my novel's sake it probably would have been better if I had spent less energy on those topics, maybe? Especially because it requires criticizing our overwhelmingly popular Prime Minister Mark Carney who has made terrible moves in this regard. As a Canadian who can make at least passable videos, I can't justify not using my skill for this purpose even though it's very possible I've turned off some potential readers because of it.

Seriously though, donate what you can, especially monthly to the Elhayek family they could really use your help.

As for me, I'm going to try and get up videos about my novel over the course of the next week. I'm so proud of it and it deserves the attention.

Mark Carney, and all the other problems of the world, will still be here after that.