For anyone who might have been waiting for a new blog post, sorry for taking so long to deliver.

Life has been way more than frenetic. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends in that during the day I’ve been writing the adult novel and at about midnight to 3 am I’ve been working on the graphic novel.

It’s funny how things work. Opportunities don’t always pan out and we have to live with that.

It’s weird how I’m looking at all the stuff happening in the world with a feeling of horror and dismay.

Just makes me want to retreat into the shell of my being and focus on what I can do: write!

Recently I caught part of a documentary on Billy Wilder. He that produced/directed Sunset Boulevard. Apparently he went through his own heyday with the peak of his career: Some Like it Hot.

The documentary was mostly narrated by German people so there were subtitles and one of them said an interesting thing, that Billy Wilder understood Americana because he was looking at it from the outside.

So fascinating.

But towards the end it seems Hollywood changed and he lost his touch and he became his own version of Norma Desmond, trying to recapture that je ne sais quoi that made his work so appealing.

It was a depressing documentary, and yet I couldn’t stop watching.

And also recently had a family member go for umrah and I asked her to pray for fame and fortune for me, and then another family member said that people who want fame and fortune shouldn’t get it because it will change them.

And over the months I’ve dealt with that very phenomenon, very painfully I might add, where a person I thought I knew well has changed for those very reasons.

It made me rethink the whole fame and fortune thing.

And surprisingly it’s been a relief.

I don’t want it any more. If it comes…well I’ll manage but I will no longer seek it.

I’ve always been very grateful that despite all odds I’ve been able to make a comfortable living at my craft.

I’ve done very well masha Allah. No complaints.

What I can do now is go back to what really matters…the story! I’m wrestling with two of them right now, hence the burning the candle at both ends.

I LOVE them both! Don’t know if they’ll see the light of day. Don’t know if they’ll even be published, but they call me. And that’s all that matters right now.

I’m in the midst of taking care of the family, (just finished watching the granddaughters for about nine days!) and now I’ve got a stretch with not too many public commitments, where I can double down on the works in progress.

Last decade was amazing. Let’s see what comes.