Like, don’t lose control of your temper! Even when a student does something silly! It was a grade three class, and I was entertaining questions. It was stifling hot in the library! And I was tired and I was frazzled, many of the teachers had been totally rude, conducting animated conversations during my presentation but […]

It’s a really good idea to keep yourself open to all opportunities to promote  your work. When I met Dennis Abrams at the Sharjah Reading Festival and he asked me to write a guest post in his online magazine and I agreed, I had no idea he had thousands of followers. It just seemed like […]

Quebec was lovely! Montreal is a beautiful city! I had never seen it in this light before! Stayed at the Marriott in Westmount and it’s such a quaint little place! Loved the architecture. Normally I don’t care for a lot of statues and stuff sticking out of the brickwork, but they do make it work! […]

Subhanallah! I survived. I feel like a wrung out dish cloth, but I survived. Having two major trips so close together was NOT a good idea! It might seem really cool and fun, and it is, if they’re spaced way apart! But having basically two days in between to recuperate…uh uh, not good. Sharjah was […]

Went to an interesting workshop today. Met a bunch of people and did some networking in the arts. It’s so weird. I didn’t notice I was the only brown person in the room till much later when I was relating some interesting anecdotes to my husband. And I thought, “Oh yeah. I think I was […]

It’s a testament to how strange this world has become that not only do I need to get police checks and clearances in order to step into a school and talk to kids, I have to get insurance in case I inadvertently do something to them. Like what? Fall on them or something? I’ve heard of […]

I was invited to a lovely Muslim weekend school on Sunday. But I went with a lot of trepidation. The organizers asked me to do a presentation that’s designed for grades three to twelve, for very little kids, including kindergarteners. The presentation was The Roses in My Carpets. That’s tough! Because it includes the concepts […]

I did a group of kindergarteners today and they surprised me. There were some kids in the bunch that barely looked three and others that looked almost seven! What a range! I thought let me see how much of my Picture the Story presentation they can pick up on, and so I went ahead and […]

I’m going to be doing a skype visit this Friday morning insha Allah with some kids at a school in Brooklyn about career choices and I’ve been thinking about what it takes to make it as an author. Thing is you need to have a number of ‘income streams’. I know that sounds kind of […]

Came across an interesting Ted Talk. I ended up reading the transcript instead of watching it. I find I often get more from reading something than listening to it. It was actually about marketability and it said what a lot of people are saying these days, that in order to get noticed in this day […]