So here we are less than four months away from the launch of my book and I'm five days late in making my monthly post.
It's kind of reflective of where I find myself. It's been a very busy month for me personally but my book marketing has suffered as a result.
So instead of giving an overview of how my month went as I usually do I want to talk about why I think I haven't been focusing on getting the word out about "Under the Full and Crescent Moon".
In my end of March blog post I stated that I wanted this month to be far more focused on marketing my book.
That mostly did not work as expected. But still I was able to get stuff done and it has been an eventful month.
Ramadan started a week after my last monthly post, please accept my belated congratulations for all those who celebrate the blessed month. And since Eid will be in a week from now please accept an early Eid Mubarak!
Ramadan has gone well this year, not only did all denominations start Ramadan on the same day, which is rare, but it also coincided with the month of March. This has made tracking the days of the month incredibly easy. It has also not been a particularly hard three weeks as this year the month has fallen between the long and thirsty days of summer and the shorter and far more pleasant winter fasts.
That last sentence of the paragraph is the second sentence from my novel, only slightly re-written. Think of it as a little preview six months out from launch!
A lot happened in February and a lot of it was pretty difficult. I lost a close family member, my elderly mother had an accident which required a greater amount of care, and there was an unprecedented amount of snow that was dumped onto my part of the world in the space of a week which meant that there were hours and hours spent on snow clearing. Time and energy that I would have loved to spend elsewhere.
For me it's important to put my difficulties into perspective as a lot of other people in the world are going through so much worse than I am, but also to recognize my own fatigue, pain, and frustration as well. It's an impossible balancing act to maintain with perfection, but the closer I get to that balance the more I feel I'm able to both give myself time and space to recover, as well as keep from wallowing in self-pity, saying Alhamdullilah, and persisting.
A part of maintaining that perspective is to recognize what I have accomplished over the last month. The biggest of which is moving into a different phase in the journey to publication of "Under The Full And Crescent Moon"
There are a lot of milestones that I'm looking forward to as a new author. Seeing the book in my local library or in a bookstore, holding it in my hands for the first time. I am incredibly grateful to have these events to look forward to Inshallah.
Two of those milestones have been reached this month. The first is preorders have opened for Canada and the United States, Alhamdulillah!
I would be really honoured if you could preorder it. The various options are on my link tree Here
The second is the cover reveal! Click on for more.
It's been a busy month and I've had a few accomplishments that I feel is worthy of being highlighted, and some reflection that goes along with it.
Most relevant to the site... I've actually put out more than one blog a month!
But there's more...
So in my last blog post I talked about where I think the idea of my novel came from.
While I believe I did a decent enough job of that, I think I missed something very important, and that is my guess as to why I have ideas in the first place.
So why do I have ideas?
I have ideas because I get inspired.
Which leads to the question. How does one get inspired?
All writing that comes from a human being (and what a weird world we live in that that needs to be qualified) comes from an idea.
And here I want to speak about where I think the idea of my novel came from, now only ten months away from publication. I cannot do better than that as, in the end, ideas are mysterious things.
The core idea of my novel is the setting of Medina'tul-Agham, which is a medieval city that is not only an Islamic society, but a matriarchal one as well.
As far as I can tell, that core idea came from the question. "Can the law of the faith that I am a part of... Sharia... explain the faith of the family that I grew up in?"
Here I am again, late at night, writing a blog post and trying to get a newsletter out because I want to, at the very minimum, post on the 23rd of every month until my book comes out.
So as the last hours of the 23rd of October slip by, let's hear it for achieving the bare minimum!
But that bare minimum included some major progress on a number of different fronts. Read on for more!
So it's been four months since my last blog post, which was definitely NOT what I had planned. But a lot of progress has been made and I do have a lot of updates to provide.
The biggest being that I do have an 'official' date of publication for Under The Full and Crescent Moon and that is, Inshallah, the 23rd of September 2025! Which is, Inshallah, exactly a year from when I plan to put up this blog post!
That's a lot of Inshallah's already! Read on for a few more.