Paradigm Shift

Hello, and how are you this fine day? Did you wash your face this morning? Have breakfast? Self-care is important. You can't take care of anything else if you don't take care of yourself.
I'm okay. Working hard on my ghostwriting. I have two books I'm writing right now; both historical romances; one English, one Scottish. Have you ever done too much research on a subject? Both clients have asked me to cool it with the period specific language.
One editor said to me 'you're doing too much brown' on your cant.

And if you don't know what that means, that was exactly the editor's point. My language was too specific to that time and readers might not understand what I'm saying.
Which is fine.
The thing that sticks in my craw is that the job posts they put out specifically asked for someone who was proficient in writing about the period in the proper language.
I wasn't.
But I learned...
And now it's too much.
Well, I've adjusted, grudgingly. It's easier for me to write in modern English, but I also feel like 'damn girl, what a waste of effort.'
Adaptability.
It's been occurring to me lately how different expectations versus reality is. Society is a different place than it was when I was growing up, but we still have the same expectations. We still expect to live the same way our parents did.
But we just won't.
That life is gone.

I read this fanfic where Alec Lightwood was just realizing that just because he was an adult now, does not mean that he has all the answers. And he said to one of his siblings: "I thought I'd have this shit figured out by now."
And I stood up and clapped because seriously, I need that emblazoned on my gravestone.
Well...
Not my gravestone because please don't bury me; I'm claustrophobic. Burn my body and scatter me to the four winds. It's probably the only way I'll really get to travel. But you get what I'm saying right? It's my life philosophy.
"I thought I'd have this shit figured out by now."
I haven't and I probably never will. Acknowledging that is surprisingly both freeing and comforting. I can stop expecting myself to reach some level of nirvana when it probably won't happen. I'm not Jada Pinkett Smith. I can get on with the business of living - the struggle, the joy in little things, the love of my family, my writing. Joy and sorrow, laughter and tears, problem solving and tiny achievements. Living in the moment.
That's all.
Speaking of tiny achievements, guess what's coming your way next...

Macro and Micro Marketing as a Self-Published Author

So proud of myself, look, I have a serious post title. It's like I'm a real blogger or something.
Hi.

Did you already read Cinderella By Any Other Name? If not, it's the featured book right there on my right so just click preview or buy and go ahead and read it. I had someone get back to me right on launch day to say she'd bought it and was about to start reading. First time that has happened. I mean people have gotten back to me but not with such immediacy.
It was nice.
Anyway, if I tell you that she loved the story you're going to think I'm just book marketing, so I won't. I will say we had exactly one of those discussions I talk about wanting to have on here. This one was about the Role of Women in Society and Why We Carry The Burden of Our Family's Wellbeing.
It was very satisfying.
More please!

I have enjoyed marketing this book in a I-don't-know-what-I'm-doing kind of way. It was fun and it connected with an audience I think. I also felt quite a bit of ownership of the subject matter in terms of being able to relate just as a woman and an older child - though not the firstborn. Also, the story was set in Nairobi. My first story set completely in my home town. It does make a difference when you set a story in a place you know through personal experience rather than reading about it or watching movies about it.
And even as it's a very local story, I felt like it told a really universal story. I'll have to wait and see how many of you agree with that sentiment.
This post is turning out very self-congratulatory and it wasn't meant to be that.
I am here to tell you about book marketing because I've been trying various things to try to see what works, what works better, and what doesn't work at all.
Now when it comes to just entertaining my regular followers, I think I am killing it at Instagram. I decided when I opened an author account to just be myself in the most genuine way possible while still trying to be professional. Feedback says people enjoy my posts but my audience grows slowly. Please do follow the link in the top bar and hit the follow. I promise you don't have bought one of my books to enjoy my posts. They are designed to entertain.
I think Instagram helps me move my free books the most. People enjoy the posts and the captions, maybe they see that 'oh, this one's free' and they like the cover, so they go download it. So that's step one done. Hopefully if they like the story, they look at 'other books by' and maybe they buy another book.

I'm not so sure about my Facebook page. I think it's a good place for news and perhaps the very occasional book buyer. It's a more obligatory online presence place where you can find out everything I'm up to as pertains to my books. My twitter is great for connecting with authors, marketers and for creating awareness. Just last week, I saw that someone was looking for book recs, so I tweeted her the link to Child of Destiny. Got a lot of retweets and a book sale out of that. Of course there is no direct correlation between the twitter link and the book sale except that the timing fits.
That's micro marketing.
One on one.
I think I get more sales that way than the macro, go big or go home way.
I'm an Indie Author, I do not have name recognition, but if I ask you personally to check out this link - when you have asked for a rec in my genre - and leave it up to you to decide to buy or not, I find that in one out of twenty interactions, I might make a sale.
It's not even that time-consuming if you spend as much time as I do, procrastinating on social media. It's more a matter of recognizing an opportunity when it slaps you in the face.
I mean I loved my two week launch but I think I look at it as more of an opportunity to create awareness rather than generate massive sales.
I did generate some sales which is always awesome.

So now it's back to my regularly scheduled programming.
Wow, what do you think of this mess with Jussie Smollett? I'm witholding judgement until someone explains the why of it to me. Make it make sense somebody. Sometimes I think the world is going mad and the apocalypse is already here.
That's why you should escape into my books. *whispers* (that's macro marketing).

Welcome to Book Launch Day!

Cinderella By Any Other Name goes live today. Happy Launch Day!

I'm dedicating this launch day to Rep. Ilhan Omar who is a former Somali refugee and now a US congresswoman who is receiving a lot of flack this week for calling out Israel. I guess this is how South Africa was viewed in the eighties by the world huh? Where the oppressed were the terrorists and the oppressors were the good guys. And to say otherwise is apparently - in this case - antisemitic.
I don't care, call me antisemitic if you like. Israel is absolutely, completely, no two sides about it, in the wrong.
Palestine is experiencing apartheid. And Rep. Omar is being bullied into resigning over simply pointing it out. Its racism is what it is. It's racism and prejudice because she's an African and a Muslim. Why do people allow this bullshit to continue?
Anyway, back to the book launch.

Do you fancy a Muslim, Arranged Marriage, Coming of Age story that is not a romance. I mean sure there is some sex - married people sex - but its not really meant to titillate you. I'd like to know how many of you can relate but I know you won't say so if you do. Married people keep their secrets right? Well, maybe you can discuss it among yourselves in your married people book clubs.

I love to spark conversation, especially controversial conversation but one thing I've realized over the years is that very few people are willing to have sincere and honest discussions about the hard truths right? So we're all living in our little pods and thinking, "this is only happening to me." and its such a huge revelation to realize that other people go through the same things too.
Last month when I was ovulating, I had the most horrible back pain. I couldn't even straighten up. And I googled ovulation back pain on the internet to see what could be done about it. At the end of one of the articles I read was the phrase: "Another reason to look forward to menopause."
I almost collapsed and died right there because all this time I've been thinking I'm the only weirdo on the planet looking forward to menopause. Yep I can't wait for the day I stop menstruating. And I thought I was the most progressive thinker in the universe who didn't think that somehow menopause was the end of womanhood.
That article opened my eyes. Probably every single being who menstruates looks forward to menopause but MEN assume that it's a horrible thing because many of them see us as life support systems for vaginas. So we must be heartbroken not to be able to have these 'womanly functions' that indicate we can have their babies. It all makes sense now.

So anyway, shout out to you all if you can relate to any part of this book. If anything rings authentically true to your life. I'd love to talk to you about it. I'm all about that life. So click on the link, cop your copy and let's get this party started.
The price goes up after today.

Publishing A New Book When You're Not a Well Known Author Can Be Suckage Major

I missed a day, I know. I figured I need to give you guys a break so you can catch up with all the other blog posts. It's a lot, I know.
So today we're talking publishing. I launched a book late 2017, from Pronoun - god I miss that site - In Search of Paradise...and I gotta say, the experience doing a book launch this year, from Draft to Digital is totally different.

For one thing, you practically have to sign in blood, and perform a human sacrifice in order to get a book listed on Amazon now. And apparently, they no longer even list a pre-order book - or at least, not according to my lovely publisher. That means you can't get Cinderella By Any Other Name on Amazon until Valentine's Day.

I don't know why this is. I figure it's because Amazon is a wholesaler as well as a retailer and therefore tend to favor their own products before the rest of us. It's the only explanation I can think of for why they keep making it harder and harder for books to be listed, or found on their sites, why they keep removing people's reviews...just generally making life difficult for authors.

Anyway, forget Amazon. Here is a list of retailers from whom you can preorder Cinderella By Any Other Name.
iTunes
Barnes and Noble
Kobo
Indigo
Angus and Roberson
Mondadori

Book Marketing for Dummies

So tell me, how is my book launch going? How many of you have hit the pre-order link for Cinderella By Any Other Name? Come on, hit me up in the comments, so I can gauge how well this marketing plan is going.

Well...marketing plan might be overstating things.
More like shooting my shot and hoping it hits something. See my plan for this story was quite different. I had submitted it to an African magazine for publication and that was it, I had moved on. But then after about a month or more, they get back to me and say, "Your story is not consistent with the theme of our magazine (speculative fiction) and so if you have another one yada yada."
Which kind of had me going like "Dammit!"
I didn't want to do another book launch for a while. I was saving it for Marcus Devereux.
So I thought okay, what do I do? Submit it to another magazine or publish?
I decided to do both; submit and publish and see which one yielded fruit first.
Hence, my lack of an actual book launch plan. However, I think I've been doing okay so far, yeah? Blogging daily, having a countdown, mentioning the book in any context I find myself in...
Hoping it all works...

I mean don't get me wrong. I have read up on everything, I have consulted all relevant facebook groups...I've done my research people. And what all the 'wisdom' out there amounts to is, "copy what the bestsellers are doing."
But...yesterday I went on to the kindle store just to see if I could find a book to download. The way I shop for book is that I wait for something to catch my eye. To stand out from the rest. This time I said to myself after scrolling through page one and seeing nothing but white people on the cover of what was essentially the same book, over and over and over.
So I said to myself, "First book with black people, I'm buying."
The first book with black people on it was essentially same as the white people except the black people were church people. I loathe church people - such a hypocritical bunch of self-righteous sheeple. Like I cannot stand them. They do not speak in real sentences. Sorry.

So I scrolled on by and five pages in, I admitted defeat. When you try to find something interesting to read on Kindle it really helps you to understand why it's such a challenge making a sale. They show you the bestsellers, the books like Becoming which are already selling millions. And then they use whatever algorithms it is and whoever has the biggest advertising budget to essentially show you the same book a million times over. Unless you've heard of the author or the book before you get on amazon, you're not likely to find it.
That's why it boggles my mind when I see fellow authors complaining about having to have social media while simultaneously complaining that their books are not selling. People really think, in 2019, that you can just put your book out there, sit on your hands and expect it to sell. It's super dumb.
People are so super dumb these days.

I wish that there was a way to wade through the detritus and find interesting reads like you can do in a brick and mortar shop. There is so much regulation online even on just what you are enabled to see, and the censorship gets worse and worse every day, that it's almost impossible to exist outside this tiny sphere of puritanism and policing that we are continuously sucked into.
That's how you know the apocalypse is here.
However, here we still in the out lands, in the free lands, in the badlands.
Here you can still think for yourself.
Now do as I say and buy my book.

The State of the Book Launch

I did not watch Trump's speech because well, it's not like he's my president. But Van Jones posted a few clips of his reaction on my timeline, so I at least know that it was poop and cookies. He said Trump was happy about freeing Alice Walker with one hand and yet blase about taking immigrant children from their parents and human trafficking them, as well as the fact that federal workers have not been paid for months because THE WALL - with the other.

You know I knew people like Trump when I was in kindergarten. I told you I was the only black kid in my class right? And I had my own personal group of bullies? These two, three or five Indian girls. I don't know, I never counted. They'd surround me at break time and lunchtime, taunting me, teasing me. I dealt with them by ignoring them. They did not like that.
But then I had a birthday party and I think my mother invited the whole class. I think two people came. One white girl who basically dropped off a present and jetted and one of the Indian girls. I was sooo...flabbergasted because I didn't even know she was invited.
She further proceeded to discombobulate me by being so nice to me, my brain almost exploded. My mother was being her usual effervescent self, so happy that I 'had a friend' in school; and my little Indian torturer was so mesmerized she told me 'your mother is so beautiful."
Well she was, really.

So I had this cognitive dissonance where the girl who bullied me every day for a week was glued to my side at my own birthday party, stopping from socializing with anyone else, and acting like we were best friends.
Trump is like that Indian girl. He's a racist when he's around his racist friends but when he's talking to Van Jones and Kim Kardashian he cares about the incarcerated. But mostly he's a sociopath with no actual emotions of his own. He's just reacting to outside stimuli like a chameleon.
The thing with these racists is that they get confused about who they are because on an individual basis, they may get along with a member of the minority they discriminate against. So they use that as proof to themselves that they cannot absolutely be racist.
"I have a black friend."
"My wife is Mexican."
"My stylist is gay."

It's a curious dichotomy of living to realize that life is not black and white.
That's why Liam Neeson could walk around for a week looking for a black man to kill and not feel even a little bit like a racist. It's the environment. Did you know that the Klan was a distorted, corrupted rendition of the Scottish clans? They used to burn crosses to summon the clansmen to war. and now the Klan burns crosses to foster fear among black folk.
That's how they made America great.
Yes I know the Irish and the Scots are two different er...countries? Isles? But the Irish were just as racist especially when they were fighting each other and poor as fuck. When you have low self-esteem, you're always looking to find somebody whose neck can be constantly under your foot. It's why black men support Trump. Because him being a racist does not trump him being a misogynist. Even if they're on a 'lower tier' than your standard 'white misogynist racist' they at least feel that they are higher than women.

Joke's on them though because they are second from the bottom. At the top of this tier, at peak humanity and awesomeness, is African women.
Yes!
Deal with it.
We carry the entire world on our shoulders, uncomplaining and that is why Nadia doesn't even fight when she's told, marry this guy, or we end up on the street. She carries the responsibility of her family on her shoulders, just like all other women on this damned continent. Next tier from us is of course, black women from elsewhere and then the rest of you can arrange yourself according to the level of trash you're at.
Not saying African women do not have a level of trash. We absolutely do. Most of it is buried under mountains of family crap. And just like Nadia, we all probably need help.
Book launches Valentine's Day.

Interlude

It's nine days to launch day for Cinderella By Any Other Name. Have you pre-ordered a copy yet? The price goes up after you know? So take advantage.
Why would you want to read this book you ask?

Well, if you notice, for the last week, I have been giving you various reasons why this book is a great addition to your bookshelf. I didn't tell you that was what I was doing, but I should hope it was obvious.
I shall continue to give you lots of behind the scenes insights, the vagaries of launching a book without a marketing plan, and just the struggle that is writing, authoring and marketing while holding down a freelance career in which you take on more work than you can handle because what even is no?

I'm proud of myself that I have managed to blog daily in this launch period and give you something to think about. When you create something that you know is good, you're always excited to share it with the world and see how it impacts other people.
At the same time, you always worry whether you got it right. Was the editing thorough? Is that the right cover? Did I make a huge faux pas writing about a culture of which I am not part?
Even though I do that every day as a ghostwriter, it's different when your name is on the book.
I mean, you'll tell me if I fucked up right?

Okay then, cool, back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Sharing is Caring

21 Savage has been arrested by ICE because he is apparently, a British national. Now if that isn't the most 2019 thing to happen in 2019 I do not know what is. 21 was allegedly existing on an expired visa, but he makes a nice segue way for us to talk about displaced persons and how we view them.
When you think displaced person, what do you visualize?

Personally, I visualize torn dirty clothes, ashy skin, thin to malnourished looking frame, big eyes, hungry child, hopeless adult.
Poverty porn in another words.
We Africans do love to write about poverty porn right? Poverty porn sells.
But that's not the real world is it? Displaced persons come in all shapes and sizes including Grammy nominated superstars, members of congress...remember Emmanuel Jal, the child soldier turned singer?
Then of course there is the everyday refugee who might not make it big but they are hustling day in, day out like the rest of us. Like Nadia and her family. I gave them a house in South C because let's face it, a lot of Somali and Sudanese refugees reside there. They contribute to the economy, they go to work and they go to school.
They're just ordinary people.

And if they are suffering trauma thanks to their experiences, they keep it to themselves. Just like we all do.
I mean I'm not saying shout it from the rooftops, but if you are in emotional crisis, talk to somebody. A professional is good. Someone who will listen with no judgement. With whom you can vent.
The worst thing that you can do, in the wake of trauma, is to keep it to yourself.
Don't believe me? Ask Nadia.

We Teach Women to Make Themselves Small...

There's a story going around social media about gospel artists infecting random women with an STD and trying to have threesomes. Of course there are two types of reactions, both of them wrong. One hand, people are titillated and elated at having these people 'exposed' while the "christian fraternity" is all about "they're sorry, forgive them, they're just human."

One of the gospel artists apologized to his girlfriend because she's 'endured' him for so long, and he's sorry for hurting her feelings.

My question is, why are so many men content to be endured?

I mean, if I am in a relationship - of any kind, be it sexual, familial, friendship - with someone, and they are simply enduring me, I would absolutely not be able to stand it. I would remove myself from that relationship because life is too short to be suffered like a disease.

So how come men practically revel in the chance to be suffered by women? Is it a form of misogyny? Or do they just not know any better? Do we just not know how relationships are supposed to work? These are important questions.

What has this got to do with a Muslim Arranged Marriage story named Cinderella By Any Other Name, you ask?

I could tell you but then what would be the use of writing a story if you're gonna give the plot away?

That would be kinda stupid no?

Are you excited for February 14th? I kind of am. 

You Had Me At Hello...Why Though?

A long time ago when I was but a babe in the woods, the man who would eventually sire my child gave me this book about relationships.
Ever since Jerry Maguire yelled, 'Show Me the Money!' people, especially women, have been looking for the partner who's gonna say, "You Complete Me."

That book though, opened my eyes to the fact that nobody can complete you except yourself and getting into a committed relationship without being complete is dooming it to failure.
The way the book put it is, we are all circles, but most of us are broken and so our circles are incomplete. As long as we have not 'completed our circle' we have no business trying to join our lives with anyone else's.
Once the circle is complete, and we find someone whose circle is also complete, we can form fully functional relationships.
The very essence of #relationshipgoals

In real life though, that's not what happens is it? People are too busy not wanting to be alone; satisfying their parents' need to see them married; wanting a constant sex partner; looking for the social prestige of having a spouse; looking for a family to 'love them'; gold-digging...whatever it is, people get married for the wrong reasons every day.
I don't think the problem is so much that they marry for the wrong reasons as they lie to themselves about their reasons. The foundation of the relationship is therefore made of quicksand.
In Nadia and Kareem's defense, at least they went into this marriage with absolutely no illusions as to why it was happening.
I wonder if it helped.
You tell me.

Writing Depression As A Hidden Plot Device

What do you know about Depression? You, like me, might have thought it was about being a sad sac and dragging oneself everywhere with your lips permanently turned down like this :(.
But that's not depression; that's sadness.
Who knew? They're not the same.

I was like smack dab in the middle of writing Nadia before I realized that my poor heroine is super-depressed. Her depression of course stemmed from unresolved childhood traumas and feeling out of control in her life.
But if you read Nadia, it might not jump out at you like, whoa, this book is a black hole. Oh no, she's sassy, sarcastic, strong, resilient; which makes it all the more difficult to recognize that she is drowning.
I think that a lot of people are going about their lives, living with trauma, living with depression and just getting on with it, assuming that "life is a bitch and then you die" right?
The road less traveled, a novel by some psychologist whose name I forgot, literally begins with the sentence, Life is Hard. I learned it as a part of my higher diploma in counseling studies.
So when I watched The Secret and it said the exact opposite thing. That life should be easy, not hard. That things come to us because we summon them; it was a paradigm shift hard to fathom.
Both of these things are true though. Life is hard but how easily you navigate it does depend on your state of mind.

So how can you control your state of mind when you don't even know you're depressed?
It's a conundrum.
I might be making Cinderella By Any Other Name sound uncommonly deep when you could just disregard all this and read a story.
But I cannot escape from my own introspection.
The good news is, I am also open to hearing yours.
So, February 14th, let the theories abound.