Wuing You with Words ...

This is the kind of thing I imagine Kai to doodle in his sketchbook.

One of my writer friends said this: "It is less important to please people who don't like your book than to please people who do, because it is better to have something people love than something they merely don't hate."

Some of things I've learned learned while writing my first novel: Write fast; edit slow. For my earlier drafts, I tried to craft each sentence one by one. Dumb mistake. So much of the earlier stuff got cut.  Writing is a solo endeavor. You gotta love writing and you gotta love the story you're writing, otherwise you won't have the motivation to finish. You should read a lot and broadly. You can learn from everything. Even books you don't like will teach you what not to do. I've liked books in genres that I never thought I would like.  My favorite time to write is the middle of the night, when the world and my brain are quiet.

Tagine is Morocco's signature cookware. It is a pot with a conical lid, used to slow cook vegetables and meats. The stew itself is also called tagine, usually eaten with couscous. Delicious. If you don't find it tasty then you must be sniffing too much glue. Vegetable Tagine in Fez

A major theme in my novel is how mining threatens to destroy archaeological ruins in Afghanistan. My story is fiction but inspired by real-life events in Mes Aynak, Afghanistan. A Chinese company plans to mine for copper at the same site where an ancient Buddhist city is buried. Not cool. Here's a stupa, a structure containing Buddhist relics. Image Credit:   Pre-Islamic Afghan shrine  by  Jerome Starkey , licensed under CC-BY-SA-2.0 Check out the following for more information: The Guardian article: Mes Aynak: Afghanistan's Buddhist buried treasure faces destruction "The Buddhas of Aynak" Facebook page.