My first taste of stand up was a gentle one! Alhamdu lillah. I went down to Kitchener on Sunday to do an hour of storytelling for the Lattitudes Festival. When I finished I was just chatting with the organizers and they were saying how their children’s tent is doing so much better–in terms of attendance–than […]

Now that jury deliberations are over, I think it’s safe to say that I was on my first award jury. It was for an international award called the NSK Neustadt award given by the University of Oklahoma! The prize is $25000.00 for a living writer who’s contributed to the quality of children’s literature. What a […]

So I actually took the plunge and went to Yuk Yuk’s tonight to scope out the joint, so to speak. From 7:30 till about 11:30 pm, my ears were assaulted with a barrage of, ahem, very colourful language. There were some genuinely funny jokes in there. Three to be exact. Three jokes in the whole […]

I just finished the third revision of the Hajj novel. I think it’s pretty much done–or I should say I HOPE it’s pretty much done. Won’t know till I polish it up and send it off to my agent and I hear back. But one good sign, the book made me cry when I got […]

The end is in sight. These last weeks have been insanely busy. But of all the days I was dreading, today topped the list. I had to shoot my storytelling DVD’s today. My anxiety levels have gone through the roof! It was SO outside my comfort zone–it aint funny! But alhamdu lillah, it’s done. Two storytelling […]

was an event I presented at today. Sometimes I wonder if it was wise agreeing to presentations so soon after a long trip, but I think there’s always something in the back of my mind that’s afraid I’ll never get another paid gig–that perhaps all this is too good to be true, or something, so […]