Tag Archives: Islam

The Reason I Don’t Watch the News

by

Granada, de Cine This morn­ing as I was headed to the kitchen to pre­pare a late break­fast for my fam­ily I stopped for a moment to catch a par­tic­u­larly com­pelling bit of news on an inter­na­tional news chan­nel. There was this loop­ing reel of footage that kept show­ing the body of a tiny girl wrapped in a white sheet. She was dead after hav­ing been bru­tally raped by two men who had kid­napped her. This footage also showed the poor girl’s shell shocked par­ents. Their grief was palpable.

This is why I don’t watch the news.

Accord­ing to the news report, the kid­nap­ping and rape of young women is nearly epi­demic in India which is sec­ond only to the United States. The reporter inter­viewed young women on the streets of India regard­ing the recent pas­sage of laws that would mete out severe pun­ish­ments to any man con­victed of rape. This was all com­pli­cated by the fact that the num­bers of women who are actu­ally will­ing to report the crime are min­i­mal due to the shame of hav­ing been the vic­tim of such a crime. Yes, the vic­tim is shamed and blamed.  The per­pe­tra­tor? Not so much. This is misog­yny at its worse, when it is woven into the very fab­ric of the cul­ture. It is sad, unjust, and plain horrific.

This is why I don’t watch the news.

But, just so we don’t point blam­ing fin­gers at India, or some coun­try in the Mid­dle East, or any other so-called third world coun­try we’d like to pre­tend is so much less pro­gres­sive than we are in the West, misog­y­nis­tic ideals and a whole host of other cross-cultural cross-societal ills is as broad and diverse as the peo­ple who uphold and abide by them.

It doesn’t mat­ter the coun­try or cul­ture because peo­ple are peo­ple, and not all of us are good. And of those of us who are good, not all of us are com­pletely good.  Sim­ply, we live in a world of mostly good inten­tioned peo­ple, but amongst those good peo­ple is another more insid­i­ous ele­ment that we should all be afraid of.  They are there.  We don’t know who they are but, we work with them and go to school with them and we talk to them while wait­ing in line at the register.

Why don’t I watch the news?

Because it makes me angry, and because it scares and sad­dens me. Watch­ing the news makes me lose faith in the world and the peo­ple in it. And, I’ll sound a lit­tle Sybil-ish here, it also gives me a tiny bit of weird hope. In our ever shrink­ing global com­mu­nity we are learn­ing more and more about each other and as such we are slowly elim­i­nat­ing mis­con­cep­tions about peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent from us. We are shar­ing the best of our­selves and hope­fully doing away with the worst. As long as there is an Earth with peo­ple liv­ing on her face, we will see ugli­ness and injus­tice and error, but things can be bet­ter, right? This is my hope.

This also brings me to the topic of my writ­ing. My major WIP, Bilqis, which will be book one of the Hin­ter­land Chron­i­cles, echoes much of my woes about the state of the world we live in, per­sonal and global.

I am for­tu­nate to have had extremely few openly racist or anti-Muslim expe­ri­ences in my life. I’ve had peo­ple say some incred­i­bly asi­nine things to me, but I’m not hyper­sen­si­tive and I can gen­er­ally deter­mine the dif­fer­ence between mal­ice and igno­rance. With that said, we all know that racism still exists and anti-Muslim sen­ti­ment is per­va­sive and in many instances heartily accepted. This is what the Hin­ter­land Chron­i­cles addresses.

What I’ve attempted to cre­ate is a world/society that is scarred by reli­gious tur­moil and racism, much like our own. Imag­ine that the gov­ern­ment, with the best of inten­tions, has tried to solve the issue of reli­gious and racial divi­sive­ness by out­law­ing the prac­tice of any faith. Imag­ine that those peo­ple who per­sist in reli­gious obser­vances are pun­ished, ostra­cized, and ejected from the major cities. Imag­ine that they are forced to make their lives scav­eng­ing off the land which is a vast wasteland.

What do you think would happen?

I’m still work­ing on the first draft, but it is dif­fi­cult to write about issues of faith/religion with­out sound­ing as if I am preach­ing and pros­e­ly­tiz­ing, which I am not. I pray that I am successful.

We should absolutely mine infor­ma­tion from our expe­ri­ences and the world for our writ­ing.  This includes the news.  I sup­pose I’m sim­ply not strong enough to tol­er­ate it… or to say it in a more for­giv­ing way, I’m too sen­si­tive. On sec­ond thought, it isn’t an alto­gether bad thing is it? Aren’t most writ­ers and artists intu­itive deep think­ing individuals?

If they’re not… shhh. Don’t ruin the illu­sion. I kind of like it.

Little Annoyances

by
Tapping a Pencil

Ren­nett Stowe via Compfight

 At the end of last month I received an email from Ama­zon in which I was informed that my KDP Select title, An Unpro­duc­tive Woman, was in dan­ger of being nixed from the pro­gram.  Appar­ently, against KDP guide­lines, my novel is still avail­able on iTunes.  Ama­zon fur­nished a link and they were, of course, correct.

I imme­di­ately con­tacted Smash­words, as I’d pre­vi­ously pub­lished with them, to report this.  To my shock, as I’d totally for­got­ten, I was informed that Smash­words had removed their copy of my book from iTunes.  The cul­prit was Xlib­ris. It is their copy of my ebook that remains avail­able on iTunes.

When I first pub­lished An Unpro­duc­tive Woman in 2008, I did so through Xlib­ris, believ­ing their pack­age offered so much for so lit­tle, believ­ing they would pro­vide the great entrance I needed into the “writ­ing life”.  (I know.)  I try not to live my life with regrets. I make deci­sions that I am will­ing to live with.  Even if things go awry in the end, I will­ingly, if not hap­pily, chock it up to a les­son learned and am able to move on.  That is how I feel about my time with Xlib­ris.  In fact, Xlib­ris, as costly as it was for me, taught me what the “self” in self-publishing is all about and what it is def­i­nitely not all about… if that makes any sense.

In 2008, I was work­ing full time and back in school so once An Unpro­duc­tive Woman was offi­cially pub­lished, I did absolutely noth­ing to pro­mote it, until about a year ago when I remem­bered that I had a book some­where out there lan­guor­ing in the land of noth­ing­ness. I started net­work­ing and learn­ing about self-publishing and real­ized that I never needed Xlib­ris and also that they have done lit­tle else for me other than make my book avail­able via dis­tri­b­u­tion to the pub­lic at large, and ask me for more money.

In May of this year, when I decided to enter Amazon’s KDP Select pro­gram for a three month “let’s see if this will make any dif­fer­ence in sales” trial, I con­tacted Xlib­ris and asked that they remove my ebook from all other dis­tri­b­u­tion chan­nels.  I did the same with Smash­words.  Once all looked clear, I signed on and… tada!  I’m sell­ing thou­sands of copies a month.

Just kid­ding.

Actu­ally, I’ve gone from sell­ing a copy every cou­ple of months to a very mod­est few each month.  Very mod­est.  Extremely mod­est.  Painfully mod­est.  But, nonethe­less this is an improve­ment.  I never expected my efforts, the few that time allows me, to bring about overnight suc­cess or over decade suc­cess, to be com­pletely hon­est.  I like writ­ing and I’d do it even if I wasn’t get­ting paid.  Which is not to say that I don’t want to be paid, only that I write because I must.

In any case, between May and Octo­ber my novel appar­ently was never removed from iTunes.  And, when I con­tacted Xlib­ris a cou­ple of weeks ago, I was assured they’d clear up the sit­u­a­tion.  In the interim, I’ve con­tacted iTunes directly.  Did you know they have NO call cen­ter and even send­ing an email is a pain?  And when you do send emails it is almost always to the wrong depart­ment and you almost always get a form email back that lists a half a dozen other links to help you solve your prob­lem.  Of course none of those links will address your issue either.

My book is still on iTunes.

I called Xlib­ris back again today.  Do you know how aggra­vat­ing it is to speak to a dif­fer­ent per­son each time and have to repeat your prob­lem each time?  Have you any idea? Yeah.

So, as I write this post I sim­mer… but only a lit­tle.  My point here, other than a tiny bit of vent­ing is this:

  1. If you ever decide to self-publish, know that you can do it on your own at lit­tle to no cost to yourself.
  2. The online com­mu­nity of indie authors is enor­mous and enor­mously gen­er­ous.  If you get stuck, they will help you, coach you, befriend you, con­grat­u­late you, sup­port you, encour­age you, walk you through processes, and com­mis­er­ate with you and none of it will cost you a penny.
  3. When you have a day where some lit­tle annoy­ance makes you feel like you may tip over the edge, stop and reflect.  I guar­an­tee that you have so much to be grate­ful for.  It could always be worse.

There.  I feel bet­ter.  How about you?

UPDATE: I’ve Been Cloned

by
Wrong Way ... Way Wrong

Robert For­nal via Compfight

 You may recall a recent post wherein I dis­cussed the fact that many of my blog posts, my pic­ture, Bio, tagline, and logo had been repub­lished blog style on another web­site. I was a bit mor­ti­fied by this because I was never informed that this was being done and also because there was an open com­ment sec­tion, which itself is only prob­lem­atic if I am unaware and thus unable to respond, defend, or cen­sor in the case of vul­gar language.

I con­tacted the edi­tor of the web­site via email.  When I didn’t receive a prompt response I decided to write a post. I mean, if my site was being watched and repro­duced, surely the cul­prit would see the post about them and feel com­pelled to respond.

Within hours of said post I received an email from Publici.com. On the face of it, the let­ter was polite and apolo­getic. I was informed that my posts had been removed. The edi­tor pointed out that my Cre­ative Com­mons license allows for free use as long as said work is unchanged and attrib­uted to me.

Touché.

I responded in like fash­ion stat­ing that had I been con­sulted I may have been more open to the idea. I thanked them for their prompt response and I was quite pleased with the even­tual outcome.

Then oddly enough I received another note from the edi­tor. The edi­tor told me that she believed my voice unique, mature and gen­tle.  She stated that I had fol­low­ers among the staff of Publici.com. Then she said “… may I dare to sug­gest you’ll give us a sec­ond chance, this time by oper­at­ing your account directly? This way it will much bet­ter reflect your needs and require­ments. Also, we’ll be happy to any sug­ges­tions, opin­ions or com­ments you may have regard­ing our site and our vision.”

Well, after my head shrank back down to nor­mal size, I actu­ally con­sid­ered the offer. Briefly. Very briefly. The thing is, I work full-time and I have a fam­ily.  Free time for me is scarce. Com­mit­ting myself to another writ­ing gig, how­ever small, is hardly some­thing I can afford. But, dur­ing that brief period of con­sid­er­a­tion, I decided to check out this website.

What if they were doing some­thing ground break­ing and significant?

What if they were will­ing to com­pen­sate me?

What if this was some­thing I sim­ply could not pass up?

The first thing I noted is that the home­page is divided into sec­tions: Media Watch, Social Move­ments, Arab Spring, Civil Activism.  And on the face of it, many of the posts appear to cover top­ics about Mus­lims. I thought, Well I’m Mus­lim. Then I noted that the web­site oper­ates from Israel. Now that really intrigued me. I had these imme­di­ate delu­sions of grandeur.

What if they’re ded­i­cated to uni­fy­ing Mus­lims and Jews world­wide for peace?

What if they are ded­i­cated to dis­pelling myths and stereo­types about Mus­lims and Jews and other mis­un­der­stood groups?

What if they are ded­i­cated to out­ing offend­ers of the rights of mar­gin­al­ized groups?

Yes. Delu­sions of grandeur.

What I found instead upon closer inspec­tion is that Piblici.com actu­ally curates posts from all over the web and that said posts, based on the few I could stom­ach, were not at all as grand as I hoped. I won’t go into detail but this was my response:

Hello (editor’s name with­held),
I hope this note meets you well.
This was a kind let­ter to receive as are you praise but I must decline.
I am very par­tic­u­lar about where and how I use my writ­ing and it is impor­tant to me that I not be or appear to be aligned with any­thing or any­one whose moral out­look I can not rec­on­cile myself with.
I under­stand the Pub­lici curates con­tent from all over the web and from dif­fer­ing per­spec­tives, which in and of itself is great.  That said, I have seen mul­ti­ple posts and opin­ions that have a dis­tinctly big­oted out­look against Mus­lims (of which I am one) and peo­ple of color (of which I am one). While I cer­tainly afford peo­ple the right to feel and think what they wish, I can cer­tainly not imag­ine con­tribut­ing on the same plat­form with peo­ple whose ideas I find inflam­ma­tory and offen­sive and who use untruth as a device to defame the group of peo­ple to which I belong.
Thank you again for the invi­ta­tion.
Be well.

My last cor­re­spon­dence with the edi­tor was about four or five days ago and I haven’t heard back, which is fine.  I guess I hoped she would respond.  I hoped she would tell me that I am wrong about the site.  I wanted her to tell me that they are ded­i­cated to hon­est, bal­anced, inclu­sive writ­ing that does not pro­mote the con­tin­ued mar­gin­al­iza­tion of dis­parate groups.

I wanted to have that delu­sion of grandeur.