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.
My life has been very busy lately and I am feeling a little overwhelmed. I am just grateful that at least a little bit of the chaos I'm navigating is caused by what I want to achieve and that I am able to direct some of my efforts towards those ends. It is a privilege that not everyone has and I try to be mindful of that.
But still, because of all the things I need to get done, I need to prioritize. And with that comes the constant sense that maybe I'm focusing on the wrong things.
It's been almost a month since my last blog entry. The main reason for that is that I am deep into editing the novel and I have a very very tight deadline for that.
And I have to get back to it so I think this will be a short entry!
I've managed to make a number of changes to the site. The most important being a land acknowledgement, and the biggest being the launch of my newsletter!
That it already has 3 subscribers makes me really proud!
Of course all three are just various email addresses that I'm using for testing but... fake wins are still wins! Right?
I'll let you all in a secret.
I have no idea what I'm doing.
But that's okay. I won't be able to improve if I don't start somewhere.
So let's start here.