Life Events and Lack of Focus

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.

Life Events

I turned a year older, so did my oldest whose birthday comes soon after mine. My younger one hurt his fingers and so had to go to the emergency room. My elderly aunt passed away. The last has been especially devastating.

This is all regular life stuff and it has kept me pretty busy of course. What makes all of them incredibly depressing is the realization that Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are going through the same life events but in unimaginable circumstances. All the joys and challenges of my life are happening as they should, with the support of state services and modern medicine and a prosperous society. For more than 500 days though I have seen Palestinians experiencing these things while also going through a genocidal assault and stifling blockade by the state of Israel. It honestly makes it hard to function sometimes.

Political Events

I've also been distracted by the Canadian Federal Election that's happening. I've been canvassing for Vote Palestine though not as much as I would like. I also volunteered for a local Liberal candidate Adam Van Koverden who has been absolutely excellent on the topic of Palestine while his leader, Mark Carney, has not been nearly as terrible as his primary opponent, a Conservative whose name I won't type here because that's how sick he makes me.

I wish I had the luxury of doing the bare minimum this election cycle of just voting and instead focusing on book marketing, but that seemed like an incredibly irresponsible choice to make.

Boycott Events

I was so inspired by the brave act of Microsoft employees Ibithal Aboussad and Vaniya Agrawal that I had ideas for canva image posts and had to get them out to the world, especially since Microsoft is now a priority target of the BDS campaign. It's horrifying that the lessons of IBM providing computing services for Nazi Germany are being repeated right before our eyes with Microsoft providing AI and other services to the American backed Israeli genocide of the Palestinian people.

Advocacy Events

I've started supporting Jamal Abu Hashem with what I can as his campaign is close to successful completion. It seems like a legitimate campaign but there's no way I can tell. It just feels like something I can do so I'm doing it to the best of my limited means.

Writing Events

I've been wanting to review and read If I Must Die by Refaat Alareer and so I did. It's my second review and I posted a version of it on multiple book sites as well as here on this site. I'm going to make some social media videos about it as well if I can.

Podcasting Event

The other big thing is that I appeared on the Rejected Central Podcast which was incredibly exciting. Looking for and engaging in publicity events remains the weirdest part of being an author to me but Brent and Dave are excellent hosts and it was amazing to talk about some of the life rejections that have made me who I am and how it impacted my novel.

I added a page to the site to track this as well as the interview I did a few months ago. I named it 'Happenings' because I thought 'News' was a little impersonal. Let me know if anyone has any better suggestions!

Next month?

Maybe I'll talk about my novel I dunno.

Flippancy aside, looking back at the month, I did do more than I thought I did. But time is running out and I hope that I will be able to give my novel the push it deserves despite everything else that is happening in the world.

We shall see.