On Writing, Comebacks and Such

This post has been rolling around in the dark realms of my head for the past 2 years. I add a line every 2 months or so, forget in its stead another. A lot of things have changed. The entire mood of the city has sobered. Things are slowing down, mellowing up. Or is it just me? Have I grown up more than I want to? Or is this an inevitable, inescapable and pretty much disagreeable part of the maturing process?

So many questions and so little answers, that’s all I seem to offer these days. For the current time, and for a change of a pace, I am aware of where I am and what I want. What I am is a story, told in a different time and place. What I want to be more than anything in the world is an accomplished writer. Writing for me is like a drug. Once taken I lose track of time and space and any bodily needs. Hours pass by like seconds. I only stop with the break of the first light of dawn through the windows, the skies fading to a lighter blue, welcoming yet another morning. This drug scares me, terrifies me to the core. Sometimes I’m reluctant to put my thoughts on a screen, and leave my keyboard untouched for weeks on end, while several story scenarios run unstoppably through my head, longing to be released from their confinement, like a jinni bottled in a discarded lamp. And this drug needs to be shared. Other people need to be affected as well (in a good way I hope) I do not deny that I am riding a rising wave here - I never heard waves complain of carrying too many surfers, only surfers bumping into each other- of successful Dubai-based authors publishing their blogs. That’s why I decided to make my humble comeback, a Don Quixote facing the windmills with a wooden sword, Sancho (represented by this blog) by my side, coupled with the sequential release of my debut novel –Things we Left Undone - over the next weeks. (I like the word debut gives this fiasco an air of officialdom) In a utopian, merry, we-all-love-each-other-and-love-the-world-back scenario, I would like to see the audience of readers interact, share input and give direction to the novel to grow with them.

This isn’t a rock band reunion after long years of estrangement after which the group’s past grievances resurface with surging venom marinated with the wine of time, lost stature and steady deterioration. Nor is this a Marvel comic book superhero back from the dead platinum issue, where the character returns from a close encounter with death with a refurbished costume and reinvented powers.

This is, more or less, my humble comeback.