Every once in a while, when I’m flicking channels, I come across some documentary that catches my eye.

I’ve always been an extremely curious person. I learn all kinds of stuff, just because it catches my fancy.

A few days ago I clicked on a BBC story about scientists using pressure pads to determine how rhinos feet could support their heavy bulk–not because I’ll ever have a use for it in a story–although you never can tell–but just because I found it curious.

Anyway, I caught this documentary on Scott and Amundsen on some educational channel and since I’ve always been fascinated by the Arctic and the Antarctic, I decided to watch it.

Isn’t it funny? Today happens to be the 100th anniversary of the day Scott arrived at the South Pole. Just found that out while I checked his wikipedia page.

Honest, I didn’t plan that.

Anyway, the story goes that Scott wanted some fame and glory and decided to launch this expedition to the South Pole, but he found the idea of using dogs kind of old-fashioned or something. He wanted to use ponies to pull sledges to the South Pole and he also wanted to get machinery so they could ride their in comfort–with the dogs.

When he got to Antarctica, while they were unloading the machines, one of them fell through the ice–a  bad omen.

Then the extreme cold caused them to malfunction.

The ponies weren’t used to the cold and for a number of reasons the preparations for the ‘Discovery expedition’ were not going according to plan. The main deficiency was where they located a crucial supply point, called ‘one ton depot’ was planted 35 miles north of where it was supposed to be. It was supposed to be at 80 degrees south. But for that single failure, you’ll see that Scott and his men probably would have survived the return journey. 

So Scott gets to the South Pole only to discover that Amundsen, using a team of dogs, very efficiently, and without fuss, got to the South Pole before him and returned safe and sound.

Then Scott and his fellows turn around and start the long 800 mile slog back. Starving and ill equipt, they nevertheless make it to within eleven miles of one ton depot when they’re forced to wait out a raging blizzard for nine days during which they perished. If they’d put one ton depot where it was supposed to be, they would have reached it 24 miles ago.

Scott and the others are buried in the tent in which he died which in turn has become encased in the Ross ice shelf and with the nature of glacial ice being fluid, it’s slowly inching its way towards the antarctic ocean and one day the whole thing will break off and plunge into the sea.

The British, on the other hand, kind of sneered at Amundsen’s victory. They thought it was ‘unsporting’ and one lord Curzon even raised a glass and saluted the dogs that carried him.

But who is the famous one? Who’s the one they made a movie of? Not Amundsen, the winner, but Scott the silly loser.

The Brits turned Scott into this amazing hero. They showered money on the widows of the five men who perished. He was knighted and all that.

I find it simply fascinating.

And it was interesting, a while ago, when I was in Denmark and I got a chance to get to know Barbara Reid better, we had a bit of a discussion about this very topic.

Barbara Reid is an amazing talent! She does the most beautiful children’s book illustration with plasticene!

Her latest book at the time was called Perfect Snow and she said how she’d been so touched by the story of Scott that she’d named her protagonist none other than Scott.

I laughed but she pointed out to the death of Oates, one of Scott’s companions who knew he was dying and knew he was slowing the others down, he said to the others, “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

“Oh brother!” I told Barbara, although deep down I had to admit it was rather stoic and even a bit romantic and I found that irritating.

But still! Why would Amundsen be penalized for being efficient?

Why did the Brits, and it seems the world, cling to Scott’s story as being more intriguing?

I really don’t get it.

I’m thinking that it has to do with the prestige of the British at the time of this event. This was Victorian England and the Brits boasted that the sun did not set on the British empire.

But there’s something to be learned from this. Even when a story has a negative outcome–or perhaps especially when a story has a negative outcome–it can be spun (and let’s not kid ourselves, there’s no better word for what the Brits did with Scott’s epic failure) into a compelling yarn.

Which reminds me of the movie Moneyball.  It’s quite a compelling story, even though it has a lot of information in it.

It’s a little like The Social Network in that regard, that movie about Mark Zuckerberg and the founding of Facebook.

What surprised me about Moneyball was how unrecognizable Brad Pitt was in it. I don’t mean you couldn’t tell it was Brad Pitt, but rather that he didn’t act like Brad Pitt, he acted like this character and he did such a thorough job, you forgot you were watching Brad Pitt and you really were emersed in the story of this character.

Without giving anything away, it’s worth looking at the ending of Moneyball and examining how they couched what really happened in such a way as to make a compelling story.

Maybe there’s a caveat that should be added to the old saying that history is written by the victors.

Maybe we should add that history is also written by those who tell the best tale.

I think having grown up in such a white bread neighborhood and really having been dominated by white culture through my formative years, it’s given me both a help and a hindrance in my quest to become an author.

The biggest help it’s given me is the fact that I can write stories that lie within the tastes of mainstream/white culture. Basically I’ve got that white bread foundation to fall back on, and it gives readers a kind of sense of familiarity even while they’re getting a taste of the exotic.

I can’t remember where I heard that a person’s taste in music is formed by the music they grew up with. This leaves its impact on a person’s tastes for the rest of their lives and is probably why the older generation really can’t get into the rhythms of rap and other more experimental forms of music.

Despite the way I dress, I am quite westernized in my taste for story.

And yet, I’m finding that this same westernization is starting to chafe a bit.

It started when I tried to watch Moby Dick.

Well, I should say, I tried to read it first. How many times did I read that first line, “Call me Ishmael…”. I even got up to the point where his interesting bunk mate is introduced. The exotic fellow with all the tattoos and darn it, I just couldn’t get any further.

The ponderous language, the ‘atmosphere’ that just reeked of whale blubber, nope. Just couldn’t make myself forge through it.

And yet I felt, as an author, I should read it! I do try to read all the classics. Even when they’re difficult. Goodness, I got through Macbeth, why couldn’t I get through Moby Dick!

And especially when I heard someone whom I respect say that it was a quintessential classic.

So I decided to cheat a bit and watch the movie. The one with Gregory Peck. I made the mistake of watching it while my daughters and their husbands were over. My Afghan son in law stood in the doorway, leaning up against the wall, and asked me what I was watching.

I told him, “Moby Dick.”

“What’s it about?”

I told him it’s about a guy who gets obsessed with a whale that’s chewed off part of his leg.

He actually started to laugh. “What? He’s going after an animal?”

I told him that he didn’t understand. The whale was symbolic of bigger obsessions, yada, yada, yada.

But he kept laughing. He said, “Doesn’t he understand it’s an ANIMAL?! It didn’t do it on purpose! How can you blame it???”

And by that time I started laughing too.

He ended by saying, “How can you watch that white crap?!”

And yes, I gave up on Moby Dick.

And I started to look at many of the things I was in to, with a more ‘immigrant’ eye.

Maybe if I’d seen Stonehenge before I’d been so influenced by my son in law, I wouldn’t have seen it with such a jaded eye.

When I was talking to one of the ladies in Britain, I think it was my home girl Marjorie, she’d mentioned how she’d been writing these fantastic reviews of all these books coming out about South Asian culture and stuff, and she’d gotten a chance to go to San Francisco I believe and she went into a bookstore hoping to find some of the excellent titles she’d been feasting on, only to discover that the shelves were dominated by series like Gossip Girl and Princess Diaries. Only in an obscure corner did she find one or two of the titles she had so admired.

I’m not surprised.

Bookstores have been catering to the lowest common denominator for quite some time. And there are plenty of parents who are just so darn grateful their kid is reading anything that they don’t care what the books actually contain.

Lots and lots of negative stuff out there.

And even with all that, it seems as though the number of books that kids are reading is still diminishing.

I think publishers need to reach out to bigger markets.

There are demographics that are booming. Asian demographics really come to mind.

We have to get less Eurocentric. Less ‘white’.

The stories coming out of America and Britain are getting a bit…hmmm, predictable.

Can’t recall when last I read an American book that really blew me away! And in terms of British books, haven’t read too many of those that were really mind blowing either.

Oh, yes. Now I’ve got it. It was Monster by Walter Dean Myers.  But that was African American, so not white.

Tried reading Going Bovine. It won the Printz for goodness sakes and although I got much farther than I did with Moby Dick, no way could I finish it.

More and more I seem to be gravitating towards ethnic books.

Maybe because more and more they’re becoming better written–and they’re interesting.

They provide a different experience.

I think all of this was influencing my views when I saw Stonehenge. I liked it, but it was quite ‘white’, if you know what I mean.

I don’t mean to sound racist, or offend anyone, but there it is.

I have seen people who are so afraid of being hoodwinked, try to out maneuver other people, and in the process they draw to them the very people they’re afraid of.

I’ve talked to my son about this so many times. He’s quite disgusted by the way the kids at school bad mouth each other behind their backs. And quite understandably he wonders who he can trust.

I like what Dr. Phil says about betrayal and trust. You need to trust yourself that you’ll be okay and be able to deal with it if someone betrays you.

Oh, when I was younger! I found the daily negotiation of all the social mine traps exhausting!

I was constantly questioning and second-guessing every encounter!

Not any more.

As for worrying about what other people are saying behind my back, I have good reason not to be concerned.

In Islam, anyone who gossips about someone else will have to compensate their victim on the Day of Judgement. It’s a day when all scores will be settled and that means a portion of their good deeds will be given to those they slandered behind their backs.

And if the gossiper runs out of good deeds before all their debts are paid, they’re not off the hook! They’ll take on their some of their victims’ bad deeds till the debts are paid.

So let them talk about me! They’re just giving me some of their good deeds!

When you’re content within yourself, all these little slings and arrows just glance right off, as if you’re wearing a shield or something.

But one thing I have noticed after seeing that program was that I have been attracting a certain type of person to me. Blunt and frank people!

Hubby’s blunt and frank! Tells me like it is whether I want him to or not! My agent is blunt and frank! And many of my publishers are blunt and frank too!

So working backwards that means I must be putting bluntness and frankness out in to the world, and that makes a lot of sense because my daughters often laugh at how blunt and frank I am.

When I first started in the field I worried a lot about being swindled by publishers.

Hasn’t happened.

But there was one time, when I perceived that someone I was working with was trying to take my rights away on a piece I’d written. I came down on him like a ton of bricks!

I think I really over compensated. I even felt a little bad at the time. But except for that one instance, nobody has ever tried to swindle me. Nor have I tried to swindle them.

But even with that guy I came down too harsh on, we’ve mended our professional relationship. I think he was really surprised when I sent him some tips and helped him out professionally.

I’m 49 years old now, and so many things I obsessed about when I was younger, just don’t matter any more.

I was looking at my daughters and my niece and the way they interacted and the things they said and they have so many things they need to learn…or not.

They worry about negative people who come into their lives, and they worry a lot about saving face–although they don’t call it that.

Reminds me of this old song in the movie Gigi. (The movie is charming but scandalous! I don’t recommend it to devout Muslims.) But this song has a good point, and the older I get the more I agree with the stuff about forever not lasting so long. The song’s about this guy laughing at his young nephew Gaston for getting so upset about the women in his life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIMqmu86Ar4

…the rivals that don’t exist at all, the feeling you’re only two feet tall

…and even if love comes through the door, the kind that goes on forever more, forever more is shorter than before…

…the tiny remark that tortures you, the fear that your friends won’t like her too…

…the longing to end a stale affair, until you find out she doesn’t care…

By the way that last line reminds me of something I’ve realized over time, and that is if you’re reluctant to see someone you really don’t care for, and is just plain difficult, hemming and hawing over whether or not to accept an invitation, most likely, the other person feels exactly the same way about you.

Ambivalence is often mutual!

So don’t let your ego tell you it’s only one way, and have the courage to go ahead and decline the invitation.  They’ll probably be just as relieved that you’re not coming. You’ll be doing both of you a favour!

Life’s too short to spend with people you don’t care about so avoid doing that as much as possible.

You really get that lesson when you’re older!

Took a moment away from organizing this British trip (my Mom’s decided to come along as well as my sister!) and watched Oprah’s show on visionaries.

Here it’s on every Sunday night at 8 pm on OWN.

Tonight was James Cameron, the guy who did Terminator, Titanic and Avatar.

In the promos for the show they quoted him as saying every once in a while a door will open a crack, and you have to push it open, that’s your opportunity!

Something about the way he said that really resonated within me, and I’ve been waiting for this show for a long time!

It did not disappoint.

I wanted to know how a kid from a small town in Canada (he never did say which town!) got to be one of the biggest directors in the biz!

Apparently he’s done all kinds of jobs, including truck driving and being a school janitor, scraping gum off the bottoms of school desks. He made an observation that had already struck me. He said that every job he’d ever held, even the menial ones, had been necessary!

They had built him up to who he is today.

Boy can I relate!

I’ve been a dishwasher, a salad preparer, a cleaning lady, a biological-chemical technician doing quality control in a pharmaceutical lab and I’ve been a daycare provider.

All of those jobs have been absolutely necessary to building me into who I am today.

He believes in cultivating curiosity!

He talked about those astronauts who’d landed on the moon. Neil Armstrong never said a thing about it for years afterwards. The other guy even wrote books about it!

He said that there’s something in people that they want to go and be in that special place they’ve dreamed or heard about. And boy can I relate to that too!

When I was in Singapore, seeing the Raffles hotel, thinking that Rudyard Kipling and Somerset Maughm had actually stayed there… And just walking around Singapore, I kept thinking that I’m actually in Singapore!

Same when I was in Rome!

And everywhere else I’ve been, to me is amazing!

James Cameron said that people who’ve experienced that have a duty to those left behind to share what it felt like!

Cameron’s first break came when he was a set painter for some b-list director. He had created these elaborate sci-fi sets and noticed the cameramen weren’t exploiting them as well as they could be, so he went to the director suggested a different angle, the director liked it and put him in charge of some sub set camera crew or something like that.

Gradually he worked his way up from there, but that was the door opening just a crack.

I think my door opening a crack was that acceptance speech at the Golden Kite award. I do believe that I arched a few eyebrows. But we’ll see.

All in all, it was well worth seeing that James Cameron interview. He’s a real artist who works on his craft, in ever sense of the word.

Later in the evening I watched District 9 that movie by Peter Jackson. Wow! What a contrast!

I asked my son how the movie had done on Rotten Tomatoes and he said it had received mixed reviews.

It’s clear that Jackson’s intention is to parallel the treatment of these aliens with the treatment of illegal aliens and the discrimination they face, but the problem was it was very hard to follow the first bit.

It felt *too documentary-ish*.

Lots of faux interviews and such, loved when the guy defended calling the aliens the ‘racist term’ ‘prawns’. He just sounded so reasonable.

I think it was a mistake for Jackson to make his aliens so ‘prawnlike’.

You need to know fairly quickly in any story, who you’re supposed to be rooting for.

The problem I think with District 9 is that the beginning was so disorienting, you really had no idea who the good guys were.

And for the first time I actually understood why my American publishers have asked me at times to just set my immigrant stories in America.

They said basically that it’s already a culture once-removed from American sensibilities, setting it in familiar American suburbia just makes sense.

And as a result, I do think that Jackson setting the District 9 in South Africa was a bit too removed from familiarity.

One thing I realized quite early in my career is not to get too experimental in terms of format with my writing.

The thing is the cultural context in my work is already alien and unfamiliar. Playing with form would be way over the top!

Having a basic story structure basically gives the reader something to hold on to so they don’t feel too disoriented.

I know Jackson must have been drawing parallels with apartheid, they come through loud and clear! But still, the unfamiliarity of the South African setting and the South African accents was very disorienting, even to me, who’s been to South Africa!

In fact that’s one thing I did kind of enjoy about the movie, thinking, “Hey I was there!”

Once the story got to a certain point, it really picked up! Then I thought it was quite compelling and really enjoyed the whole thing.

But that said I wondered if most people wouldn’t have given up on it by then.

All in all, I highly recommend it!

I should be working on a picture book, and I feel kind of guilty not doing so, but hey, this story was calling.

It might have something to do with the fact that it’s almost Hajj time.

My agent had asked me to write a novel about a kid going for Hajj. I started off with a boy character but that one kind of fizzled.

This one’s exciting though. At least for now.

Wrote the first chapter this morning. Only two and a bit pages, but how I love the last line!

I gave the sequel of Wanting Mor to my sister in law to read.

She’s from Kabul and has a very different perspective from my son in law’s sisters, who were so instrumental in vetting Wanting Mor.

The funny thing is that when I was writing Wanting Mor I was wondering if the party scene was accurate.

My sister in law was the one who told me it was dead on!

I’ve never been in a party like that before.

In fact in writing that scene I relied on something a lady had told me a long time ago. She’d been to a debauched gathering and she told me that it was disgusting the way the people were stuffing food in their mouths and too drunk to even chew it properly without it falling out of their mouths.

I can’t imagine.

A while back I had dinner with a lady who drank a whole bottle of wine before my eyes. I witnessed her getting steadily inebriated, her eyes getting really glassy and her voice slurring, but even she wasn’t that bad.

My son thinks I’m weird because I’ll watch scenes of a movie, and whole movies over and over again.

I watched a movie called Rounders last Saturday night with my hubby and son.

It was about a poker whiz, played by Matt Damon and his pathetic friend, played by Edward Norton.

Matt Damon is a fine actor! His performance reminds me a bit of Good Will Hunting. He really carries the show!

I always think of Edward Norton in his role in Red Dragon. But I must say, he plays this fool very well!

John Malkovich played the Russian mobster. I always remember him from  Dangerous Liasions. He’s older and balder in this flick, and he has a very cheesy Russian accent, and yet after a while it wasn’t too grating.

Excellent movie, though not for the faint hearted! (It kind of reminded me of The Grifters, with John Cusack and Angelica Huston. Also not for the faint-hearted!)

Rounders has got a LOT of swearing in it, and yet it didn’t bother me too much because it was totally within character.

The climax is wonderful, and I kept playing and replaying the scenes leading up to it.

It was at lunch time and my son sounded very frustrated when he asked me why.

Sometimes when I’m watching a really good movie, it’s like I can see the dialogue as it would look on the page.

I really want to get back to my screenplay.

It would make a wonderful movie! I think.

Oh, so many projects so little time!

If I sound a bit scatter-brained it’s because I’m weighing my options.

A writer once told me that beginning a new project meant making a huge investment in time and wasn’t to be taken lightly.

I know what he means.

It’s like falling in love. There’s that first flush of infatuation, before the bills show up and the daily grind of getting the story down, sets in.

But what the heck, I’m floating right now!

Time enough to come down later.

I think a lot of authors, when they’re just starting out, dream of making it big, being discovered through a sort of grass roots movement kind of thing.

I know I did.

There are people who make it fairly big that way, but the odds are heavily stacked against you.

What I’ve learned in the thirteen years that I’ve been published now, is that the American marketing machine pushes for its own interests and the books that it pushes for are the ones that tend to appeal to the lowest common denominator. And you can’t really compete with that.

This might seem self-evident, but it bears stating.

I had thought if you write a good enough story, it shouldn’t matter if the publisher is big or small, American or Canadian, people will *find* you.

Um, not so much.

Of my first three books, two of them were, I consider, outstanding: The Roses in My Carpets and Dahling if You Luv Me Would You Please Please Smile.

They were both initially acquired by a small Canadian publisher that has since gone belly up.

The Roses in My Carpets though, was co-published by Holiday House, and I suspect that’s why it got reviewed in many American journals.

Thing is, the way to publicize children’s books is pretty standard in the biz. There are the major review journals (in no particular order and off the top of my head (forgive me if I miss any obvious contenders)): Kirkus, School Library Journal, VOYA, Publishers Weekly, Horn Book.

That means there is a limited amount of space in the review journals and tons and tons of books to review!

It’s not surprising that my books, being published by a small Canadian publisher, had a hard time elbowing their way in to the journals.

In Canada the review space is getting even smaller. Newspapers like the Globe & Mail, who once heavily reviewed books, no longer do so because of fewer readers.

Frankly getting a book reviewed in Canada does not ensure good sales. And it’s all for reasons of demographics. Canada is 1/10th the size of America in terms of population spread out over a land mass that is second or first (I forget) in the world. Even homegrown hits like Tim Horton’s donut franchise and Cold FX (a fabulous cold remedy that nips a cold in the bud–I highly recommend it!) get short shrift in the States.

Add to that the fact that Canadians have a notorious inferiority complex and don’t take artists seriously until they’ve made a splash south of the 49th parallel, then you’ll understand the kind of difficulties that are involved in terms of drumming up any kind of grass roots support for your books–Robert Munsch excepted.

I realized pretty early that in order to get noticed I had to get the American publishers to push FOR me instead of AGAINST me.

Uh huh. Easier said than done!

In order to even get an American publisher to look at my work I needed an agent. (The contracts with American publishers can be cuthroat so you really do want an advocate who knows the loopholes, in your corner.)

So I shopped around and eventually landed Charlotte Sheedy, a high power New York agent who represents Lemony Snicket, Christopher Paul Curtis and other illuminaries.

You’d think I would have been set.

Again, not so much.

Then you have to write to please the agent and a peculiar thing happened right after I submitted the novel she’d asked me to write about immigration and racism. (That’s what she told me. “You should write a novel about immigration and racism)

I mailed it on Sept. 10th, ten years ago. The next day was Sept. 11th.

Thing is, when you’re writing the light breezy popular fiction, um, you can’t be scared for your life. You can’t go back, emotionally, to a time when you were frightened to go to the corner store in case you were going to be attacked.

Naively, I had thought the racism that I grew up with was actually gone.

But racism doesn’t die.

It goes underground in good times, and pops back up in bad.

Looking back, I realize that it changed my whole trajectory.

I spent many years revising that novel to death. I still haven’t abandoned it. In fact the trip I took to South Dakota a few years ago was research for what it will eventually become insha Allah.

I kind of look at this period of time as a second apprenticeship.

Where I both succeeded and I failed at writing for pop culture. (The success: Big Red Lollipop and Wanting Mor, the failure: Many Windows.  (Many Windows is too *nuanced* for pop culture. It’s less straight forward and I think it takes more thought to understand.))

And what I realized is that this whole high level of pop culture, where people constantly check their listings on Amazon and the New York Times bestseller lists, comes with an incredible amount of pressure!

When publishers give you a huge amount of money and your book doesn’t take off with a huge amount of sales, you’re basically done.

They will look at your new project in light of how your old project sold. That’s what it comes down to.

Gone are the days that a publisher would nurture and groom an author.

If you want an analogy, think of the American Idol winners. They work their butts off to make it, and then with the exception of Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson, most of the other idol winners fizzle.

I suspect they’re all burnt out, having given their best work–for free–during the course of the competition.

Basically it comes down to with great money, comes great expectations.

Most authors think they’re ready for it. They yearn for it.

But if such fame comes about unexpectedly, many find it quite traumatic.

Basically at that level, you have a whole industry behind you, pushing for you, and they’ll only push for so long before they stop.

And what anybody in that position has to realize is that the publishers are not standing still while they’re pushing you. They’re trying to find the next ‘big’ thing–your replacement–when you inevitably grow cold.

It’s not personal. They’re just hedging their bets.

It’s a business.

But when you’re lower on the totem pole, but still in a large publisher (like I was with Viking), they’ll put a book out of print, but because they spent less on you, they might, just might, keep you around a bit longer. And then, when your book makes it big, like Big Red Lollipop winning several large awards, then you’ll start seeing the marketing dollars.

Kenneth Oppel once told me that his publishers only started publicizing his books when he no longer needed them to. (they had won so many readers’ choice awards and were taking off on their own)

Some authors decide they’re going to put their own money where their mouth is.

I heard of one author funding her own author tour to the midwest and west coast. She convinced her husband to sink I don’t know how many thousands of dollars into a scheme where they drove to the major centres all across America, introduced themselves to the bookstores and tried to peddle their books.

When she told me about that it reminded me of the scene in Coal Miner’s Daughter where Loretta Lynn’s husband drove around to the radio stations and gave them demo records.

And it reminds me of those pageant moms who spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on pursuing their child’s fame.

That only works in the movies.

Save your money! Be practical! Be pragmatic! I’m not the first person to say don’t quit your day job!

Many years ago I met a person in a writers chat room who claimed to be a household name but wouldn’t divulge his identity. He told me that if I was lucky, in twenty years I might have a modest following in Canada.

It devastated me when he told me that! I don’t WANT a modest following in Canada! I want some real success!

By the way he’s also the guy who told me that I might actually have potential because I’d been kicked out of a writers’ workshop, one of those college courses. (He had no use for writers who were products of writing courses!)

So many years later, I can actually understand what he was saying.

I still think he’s wrong, that I’ll make a much bigger splash than that insha Allah, and yet I live my life, and prepare my life, for the lesser option.

And having been quite poor I am quite stingy when it comes to spending money on promoting my career. And yet I do spend money where I feel it’s wise to do so.

My day job is being a storyteller. And luckily I’ve arranged it so that my storytelling promotes the books.

What I spend money on in terms of promotion is mailouts to all the schools in the greater Toronto area.

This is a corridor that contains between 1/6th of Canada’s population and it’s very multicultural!

Because of my mailouts and the efforts of my booking agency, I visit about eighty schools a year.

And the income this generates helps support research into the new books I want to write.

But as a day job, the advantage is that the presentations also promote the books! So there’s a double whammy effect.

Remember that movie Selena, the one that made Jennifer Lopez’s career when she played that doomed Hispanic singer?

I always remember something the father character said in there.

His tactic was not to try to get his daughter Selena into the mainstream music industry. He went back to his roots and promoted his daughter’s career within the huge Hispanic community across the Southern States and northern Mexico.

He basically built an audience before he put her into mainstream.

It was shortly after Selena recorded that song “I Could Fall In Love With You…”, when she was finally wooed by the American music execs because they saw that she had appeal, that she was murdered and the whole thing came to naught.

Same thing kind of happened to Bruce Lee. After being so bitterly disappointed in his dealings with Hollywood (where he was Cato/Kato (not sure how it’s spelled) the sidekick and second fiddle to the boring guy who played Green Lantern) Bruce went back to his roots and became a big star in Hong Kong martial arts movies. That proved he had appeal.

Of course that tactic won’t work for me because Muslim audiences and Pakistani audiences tend to have even bigger inferiority complexes that Canadian audiences!

You really have to make it in New York for them to take you seriously!

So I have no choice but to make it in New York.

And yet something in me says, despite the overwhelming odds, it’s possible.

It’s because I look at the big writers out there and I can’t help thinking to myself, what do they have that I don’t?

I have an imagination just like them, and I have a curious bent that leads me to research and learn about the world. If they can do it, so can I.

But I’m definitely not willing to pauper myself in the process!

And the ironic thing is that in the process of all this, I’ve really learned that it’s the story that matters.

Not the fame. Not the glory, but the story!

That’s what’s really important.

And even if I never get any bigger than I am right now…that’s okay. Because I don’t have the pressure!

It’s about a girl who walks into a pharmacy with track marks all up her arms, then collapses in a pool of blood on the floor. The girl ends up dying in childbirth, but a neonatal hospital nurse Anna (her father was Russian), helps deliver her daughter. 

The fate of the baby is explored through a fascinating plot.

Just a good story!

Warning: it’s quite gruesome in places and the nudity is quite bothersome–and yet somehow apropros given that it’s a mob movie.

On another note, I was asked to be guest blogger at Kathy Temean’s blog. Kathy is an SCBWI rep from New Jersey whom I met in L.A. at the SCBWI convention.

You can read my guest blog post here: http://kathytemean.wordpress.com/2011/09/22/writing-muslim/

Sorry for the typos in advance! (I realized afterwards that my italics didn’t come through in titles!) I wrote it late last night.

The premise is about an evil genius who becomes good and voiced by Steve Carell, it’s really worth watching!

The funny thing was that when the movie Megamind came out, I almost resisted watching it because it operated on basically the same premise. An evil genius who becomes good.

And the fact that it came out after Despicable Me, further prejudiced me against it.

It was my son who convinced me, after reading positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, to give it a chance, and boy was I glad I did!

I’m surprised that Megamind hasn’t received more buzz. It’s a brilliant little gem, and yes, I do think it’s better than Despicable Me. It reaches a depth that DM just doesn’t plumb.

In fact it was so good, I actually thought it might have done better as a live action flick. It was almost too deep to be a children’s movie.

My point is that stories with incredibly similar premises can bear very little resemblance to each other.

A little while ago, a good friend informed me that there was a book out there about an Afghan girl with a cleft palate, who yearns to read.

Sound familiar?

Well it just happens to be the premise of my own book Wanting Mor.

When I found out that this book called Words in the Dust was written by an American soldier named Trent Reedy and had a preface by Katherine Paterson herself, I felt my knees go weak.

I immediately checked out Trent Reedy’s blog and website, and the worst part was that just reading his thoughts made him sound so incredibly nice and reasonable! 

And I thought who’d ever read my book, when his was around?

I also thought I had to read his book! For the sake of my Muslim booklist, I had to read it.

Plus I was curious.

So I contacted him and asked him to have his publisher send me a copy to review for my blog and booklist.

What surprised me the most was that he recognized my name and immediately told me that he’d felt exactly the same way when he’d found out that I’d written a book like his, and I’d written it first.

That was a bit reassuring.

But when I did receive his book, it was so beautiful and I read the first few pages and was thoroughly depressed. It didn’t help that I received it during one of the busiest segments of my presentation schedule. I really didn’t have time to read it, so I lay it aside with every intention of getting to it as soon as I could.

Finally got to it, and what was absolutely amazing was how little his story resembled mine.

I should have had more faith in the idea that you could give the same premise to two different people and get two different stories! I knew that intrinsically, and yet still I feared.

After reading Words in the Dust I have nothing but admiration for Mr. Reedy and for what he has accomplished.

His book really adds to the field of literature about Afghanistan, and helps to dispel the whole idea of ‘one story’ for that culture.

I’ll definitely be adding it to the booklist when I get a chance!

But in the mean time I highly recommend his book!

The girls of course are married and gone, but my seventeen year old son’s always been around till this weekend, but he was away, camping, so hubby and I packed up our stuff and headed east towards the historic city of Kingston.

Kingston lies at the narrows of Lake Ontario as it empties into the mighty St. Lawrence river, and contains a myriad of very scenic islands called the thousand islands, some of which belong to Canada and some of which belong to America.

It was a major fortification in the war of 1812 when America tried invading us, and failed.

It’s also the birthplace of wacky old Sir John A Macdonald, our first prime minister who consulted the dead in seances I believe.

There are some very nice cruises through the thousand islands that we’ve already been on (having basically explored most nooks and corners within driving distance in southern Ontario) but we decided to go again.

We drove through Northumberland county, a very picturesque little spot just sound of the 401 corridor that juts out into Lake Ontario, almost forming a little peninsula.

A very famous Canadian author named Janet Lunn lives in the vicinity.

And everytime we go by there, I always think of her book Shadow in Hawthorne Bay. It was all the rage when I was first getting started writing and it’s still a good read, but I wouldn’t read it because I believe now that it actually deals with jinns (demons) and I avoid all literature that deals with that stuff.

We got to Kingston the roundabout way by about 4:30 on Saturday evening with enough time to relax and chill, spend the night in a hotel and catch the thousand island cruise in the morning.

It was so nice!

Hubby told me not to pack any sandwiches, so there was absolutely no cooking to do, and just the two of us, going to dinner, or lunch or whatever and later on we decided to watch a movie in the hotel room.

I always dread trying to find a movie that both of us can enjoy.

While it is NEVER a good idea to diss your spouse’s taste in anything (after all he picked you didn’t he?) I have to say that generally speaking I like different movies than hubby does.

He tends to like a lot of mindless melodramas (as far as I’m concerned) whereas *ahem* I tend to like witty flicks with good characterization and animated dialogue.

But I was flicking channels and came across a movie I’d already seen at least four times, but liked well enough to watch again. Shaun of the Dead.

The only reason I’d ever seen it was because my son had bugged me and bugged me till I agreed to watch it.

He said I’d like it, even though it was a zombie movie, and he was right!

It’s made by Simon Pegg and it is the funniest zombie movie I’ve ever seen, not that I’ve seen any others. Okay, let me rephrase that: It’s one of the funniest movies I’ve ever seen, period.

And clever!!!

A movie’s clever when you get something new each time you watch it.

If you do decide to watch it on my recommendation–and I highly recommend it! Watch it very carefully! Don’t go to the kitchen to get a drink of water thinking that there’s nothing happening in this scene, because you’re bound to miss something!

It’s tightly constructed and gets funnier with each time you watch it!

And wonders of wonders, hubby liked it too!

When I asked if he wanted me to change the channel he said, “Nah, leave it. It’s brainless.”

I didn’t bother telling him that it was anything but brainless, I was just happy to have found a movie we could agree on.

And even though I’d seen it so many times, there was one scene in particular that had me laughing out loud where I’d never realized what had happened.

It won’t spoil the movie to tell you this so don’t worry about reading this bit, but do watch for it.

At one point, the actress in their midst is trying to teach Simon Pegg and his mother and the ex-girlfriend and others how to act like zombies. She asks them all to give it a shot, and the mother character is daydreaming for a moment. The actress says, “Perfect!” The expression on the mother’s face is priceless. And the mom says, “Huh? I was miles away.”

Oh, my description doesn’t do it any justice whatsoever! You just have to watch it!

But I should say, it’s not ‘literary’. It’s just a fun romp!

There is a point to it, but basically it’s just the kind of movie that makes you want to watch it and I’m finding more and more that’s precisely what I’m into.

The weather was less than perfect for the cruise, it started to rain, and the mistiness made me sleepy and I nodded off for bits during the three hour–cruise (and yes, Gilligan’s island occurrs to me everytime I hear the phrase three-hour cruise!) feeling kind of guilty spending so much money and then wasting it sleeping, but then I thought, what the heck! Why shouldn’t I nod off if that’s what I felt like doing?

This was a mini-vacation after all.

All in all the whole time was wonderfully relaxing, precisely what I needed after so many hectic mind-boggling days.

I’m ready to start cracking on revisions for the sequel, with a tongue in cheek attitude that will probably be very helpful.

And while cruising hubby lent me a book he was reading called the Rules of Life. A very interesting read.

There are tons of really good advice in it, but one rule really stuck out at me because it’s something I do often but I hadn’t been doing it for the last week or so and now I’m wondering if that wasn’t why I was feeling so frazzled.

It’s the rule to do absolutely nothing for a little while every day. He likened it to catching your breath.

Just sit idle for half an hour, ideally, but even ten minutes.

Don’t drink coffee or read the paper–it’ll turn the break into something else. Just do nothing. He said it really rejuvenates you and ironically it increases your actual productivity.

So many mornings–if I’m not rushing off to school presentations, I do just that. I wake up, sit up, with my back to the headboard, and do absolutely nothing for about fifteen to twenty minutes, sometimes half an hour.

I think, and that’s all, and I get ready for my day.

And when I do manage to fit that in, my days tend to be incredibly productive. The days I don’t get to do that, I’m running around breathless.

So try it.

Oh, and watch Shaun of the Dead! I betcha you’ll love it!

I don’t mean ‘adult’ in terms of risque, but rather adult in terms of that which is written for adults as opposed to children.

Honestly the line is getting blurrier and blurrier between the two.

There are certainly advantages to adult writing and I’m wondering at this juncture of my career, whether or not some of the topics I’m stretching my way into aren’t actually meant for adult audiences.

But I’m definitely not a fan of what seems to be the latest style of adult writing, where an author meanders in their own cleverness up one tangent and down another, and what? The reader’s supposed to go along for the ride? Thinking that yes, Virginia, there is a point to all of  this.

Problem is, more often than not, I’ve done just that, gone along for the journey and got to the end, and there is no point.

I felt like that when I read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Mind you I learned an awful lot about Indira Gandhi’s rule in India in the process of reading it, and it was good enough that I remember some of the characters, but really, the ending was so dreary!

Cynical.

Off putting.

And don’t get me started on adult poetry!

If you can read a poem three times and still not know what the heck it’s talking about, I think the writer is being deliberately obtuse.

Reminds me of the Oracle of Delphi, who’d couch his answers to questions in such a manner that it could mean anything and nothing at the same time, leaving the questioner to try and make sense of it, and no matter what meaning they came up with, the Oracle was right, because yes, THAT’S precisely what he meant!

Oh give me a break!

I’m of the old school. Writing should be clear and succinct. I’ll always remember this line in The Elements of Style: Never use a ten dollar word when a dimer will do. (I’m paraphrasing). Basically it’s saying to always use precisely the right word to get the meaning across.

And of course there’s the K.I.S.S. rule to writing. (Keep it Simple Stupid).

Adult writers seem to have abandoned these principles in favour of obfuscation techniques.

If you make your reader or in the case of movies, viewer, work too hard, they’ll get frustrated and go do something else.

By all means infuse depth. By all means play with words, but make sure you don’t get lost while you’re telling the story.

The past few days I’ve been obsessed with a movie called Gosford Park it’s got to be the strangest movie I’ve ever seen, and even though at first glance it might seem pretentious, it isn’t at all.

I’ve watched it now about five times and am finally certain of what happens.

I know it must sound like I’m contradicting myself, but I’m actually not. It’s the complexity of the story lines that makes it so difficult to take in on the first go round.

And all those British actors sound alike, dontcha know! And boy do they mumble!!! It’s almost as bad as that movie The Town. (Another gem that was very hard to understand because of the mumbling and thick Boston accents!)

I remember watching an interview with Jack Lemmon who said something about no matter what, an actor should always enunciate!

And yet something made me go back and watch Gosford Park over so that I could really piece together what it was all about.

It was worth it!

Multi-layered, and deep, deep, deep!

No wonder it won an Oscar for best screenwriting!

The characterizations are so finely drawn and the acting…wow!

And there are so many incredibly witty quips and one-liners!

And yet would average audiences watch it?

I rather doubt it.

It’s a bit too clever for its own good, and it makes you work too hard.

And yet I don’t think it would have been that difficult to make it accessible to even the average Joe.

All you’d have to do is slow things down a bit, and get those darn actors to enunciate!

Getting back to all the adult writing I’ve been reading has led me to the conclusion that there are an awful lot of people out there who can string a pretty good sentence together. That is they’ve got good technical abilities when it comes to writing, and yet their stories fall flat.

Reminds me of the American idol auditions.

They’re both similar in that way. From the auditions you could see there are actually a lot of people who can sing a particular song well.

But that’s not enough, in and of itself, to make them ‘American idol’ material.

They have to be able to perform!

So the writer needs to be able to tell a story and the singer needs to perform, writing and singing in and of itself, isn’t enough.

Maybe I’m stating the obvious. Maybe everyone in the world has already figured this out.

But it only just occurred to me, and I’m still asking myself if I have what it takes.

If my writing isn’t just pretentious words strung together.

I’d like to think so.