Belated Ramadan Mubarak and early Eid Mubarak
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!
How the month went
I am thankful that the last month went smoother than the month before, but work has been busy and fasting does take away energy so I've only made a few blog posts and videos. They also haven't been very targeted towards getting the word out about my book, so that's something that I want to improve. These videos and blogs, which have been explicitly about politics, do serve a purpose for me though. They help me get my ideas and thoughts out of my head and into the world and, hopefully, people who find those videos and throw me a follow will appreciate my thought process and might want to stick around to hear about the novel.
It took me a lot of work and effort to write my blog post about how Justin Trudeau killed Proportional Representation in Canada here and my quick note on my final thoughts on the guy here also took away time from getting on with book marketing.
The three videos about Why we ignore Palestine, How to constructively talk about the mess in Syria, fall into much the same category. The video I made about how I feel about Moving on from creating the book to marketing it, though is something that's much more on topic.
What's next?
Still I do need to focus. I'm going to give myself grace in this month of focusing on non worldly matters though and Inshallah next month I'll start to focus on book marketing as much as I can. I do want to make farewell videos about Justin Trudeau though, since I've gone through the trouble of writing text about him and I might as well give him a send off in video format as we go into another federal election season here in Canada.
In that light I do have to mention that I am working with a publicist! Hollay Ghadery of River Street Writing is an amazing poet, author, and all around creator, who came highly recommended and I've been incredibly happy to have her in my corner helping get the word out on my novel. It's an investment in getting more readers and we'll see how it goes!
But what really matters
The ceasefire in Gaza, such as it was, has been completely destroyed by the Zionist state of Israel and hundreds if not thousands have been massacred by the cowardly and genocidal IDF.
As I give thanks for breaking my fast, I cannot help but feel my heart break for the people of Palestine, and Libya, and Syria, and Yemen as horrors are visited upon them by the machinations of the rich and powerful, mainly Christian, but also Muslim, and Jewish Zionists. And there is so much other unnecessary suffering in other parts of the world as well.
As I watch with pride my own children grow up, I cannot help but feel a bare glimpse of the rage and frustration that Palestinians in the diaspora must feel, and nothing of the pain and terror that the people in Palestine itself are experiencing as their own children are denied the right to grow up in safety and security.
It seems that God has decided that those of us living through these times are strong enough to rise to the challenge of engaging in jihad and struggling to do the right thing in harsh times. May he grant us the strength to live up to his expectations of us.