September 2023
In this month’s newsletter, scroll down to find:
- Exciting News: Podcasts and September Ebook sale
- Guest Post by Aamna Qureshi: Choose the Light
- Travel Log: Gaining Altitude
- Book club kits and queenly sips
- Review Corner
Exciting News: Podcasts and September Ebook sale
Podcast
You heard it here first, folks. I’ve now turned my author interviews into a podcast. So far they only exist on Youtube, but soon I’ll be uploading them to Spotify and beyond! In the meantime, here’s the graphic for my podcast: Book Nook – author talks with Jordan H. Bartlett.
Ebook Sale
CONTEST OF QUEENS ebook is on sale for the month of September for $1.99! Pick up your copy wherever you buy your ebooks, or click the image below.
Guest Post: Choose the Light
Aamna Qureshi is a New York based, Pakistani Muslim American author who has just released her third novel: When a Brown Girl Flees. I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with Aamna a few times over the years about her books, if you missed any of those newsletters and interviews, don’t fret! Here they are:
- Fairytale Retellings — interview about The Lady or the Lion
- Series Conclusions — interview about The Man or the Monster
- Who Run the World Panel — with Brandie June, Dana Claire, and me
In honor of her new release When a Brown Girl Flees, Qureshi has written a segment for my newsletter:
Choose the Light
WHEN A BROWN GIRL FLEES is about a lot of things, but if I had to boil it down to three it would be: hope, kindness, and forgiveness. Three qualities which we know are good and vital, but which we often forget about in our daily lives. And in this forgetting, we lose a little bit of the light each and every day.
It takes immense strength to hold onto hope. We need constant reminders that as long as there is life, there is hope: for things to change for the better, for us to change for the better. In the beginning of the book, Zahra has pretty much given up; she runs away because she feels she has nothing to lose, that things can’t possibly get worse. She is hopeless; she is in the dark. She has given herself up to despair. But slowly, she learns to fight for herself, to fight for a life she can be happy in. She finds a sliver of hope and holds on, and it carries her from the deepest depths of the dark ocean up toward the light.
It takes immense strength to be kind, not only to others but to yourself. Zahra internalizes a lot of the hatred and meanness that she hears and weaponizes others’ words against herself, until they become her internal monologue. It takes her a lot of time and conscious effort to undo her unkind behavior to herself, and a lot of that is in part due to the kindness of her newfound friends. Never underestimate the impact you can have on someone else. Zahra’s friends save her life just by being kind and by teaching her to be kind to herself.
Never underestimate the impact you can have on someone else.
Aamna Qureshi
And lastly, it takes immense strength to forgive, not only others, but yourself. Zahra has done something she regrets, and the guilt eats away at her. It requires herculean effort to accept what she has done and forgive herself to allow herself to move forward rather than be stuck in the past. She also learns the power of forgiving others, of letting go of all that hurt so that it can no longer harm her.
I know all of this is hard; Zahra does, too. But everyday we make choices, and in this book, I tried to show that if we choose to have hope, if we choose to be kind, if we choose to forgive, life can become not only simply bearable, but beautiful, too. It can go from a bleak horizon of gray to a glorious technicolor. It doesn’t mean that things will be perfect, that everything will always be okay, that things won’t hurt. Life will always be hard—but if we find the strength to be brave, to hold onto hope, to be kind and forgive ourselves and others, then we will always find the light in the darkness.
-Aamna Qureshi
Website: www.aamnaqureshi.com
Instagram: @aamna_qureshi
Twitter: @aamnaqureshi_
When A Brown Girl Flees
In this powerful novel from new voice Aamna Qureshi, a Muslim teen goes on a breathtaking journey to find her home and–more importantly–herself.
After Zahra Paracha makes a decision at odds with her beliefs, her mother forces Zahra to make an impossible choice about her future. So Zahra runs away. A train and a plane ride later, she finds herself in New York, where she relinquishes her past in favor of a new future. There, she must learn who she is without the marionette strings of control in her mother’s hands. There, she must learn who she wishes to become.
On Long Island, Zahra stays at a bed & breakfast, unsure of her place in the world. Anxious, depressed, and grappling with guilt, she wanders aimlessly. She eventually visits the local masjid, where she is befriended by two sisters and drawn into the welcoming Muslim community there.
It is in this place of safety that Zahra’s healing truly begins–but can she create a home for herself when the foundation is built on lies she’s spun to protect her from the past? When a family friend recognizes her, will everything come crashing down? As Zahra tries to build a life for herself in this new place, the heart of the matter becomes clear: she can’t run away forever. Can she close the rift in her family and truly, fully heal?
Travel Log
Gaining Altitude
Home at last and you thought I was done?
Coming back home was bittersweet in the same way leaving Edinburgh was. It’s hard, it’s messy, it’s exciting, it’s painful and I’ve dealt with these feelings ever since the first time mum and dad moved our family across the world to try something different. Every new chapter means leaving something behind (and unfortunately for me, I have a difficult time letting go).
But home I have come and whether it was clever or not, I hit the ground running. The family took a trip to Waterton for my brother’s birthday. Waterton is a gorgeous little hamlet in southern Alberta that boasts the historic Prince of Wales hotel. We had a great view of it from the Bear’s Hump:
But the real feat of the weekend was our hike up to Crypt Lake. This hike had everything. We were transported to and from the trial head by boat, marched consistently uphill, traversed a valley, marveled at waterfalls, balanced on a cliffside goat-track, climbed a ladder, swung from chains, inched through a tunnel, and arrived in one piece to the gorgeous blue waters of Crypt lake.
Take off, Touch down
Speaking of altitude, I have also been dancing in the clouds more recently.
The Fairmont Airstrip had a Fly In event with pancakes and prizes. It was so cool to see all the different planes come in from all over Alberta to show up for pancakes! The stories these pilots shared were incredible. One of them told me how he rescued a baby grizzly bear (whose mother had been killed near the airstrip), caught it, contacted the necessary authorities and when no one else stepped forward with the funds for relocation, flew it up to a rehabilitation center in northern Alberta himself. The matter-of-fact nonchalance of his tale was what blew me away the most. When I asked, “What made you go looking for the cub?” he simply said, “Well… no one else was doing it.”
Book Club Kits
Are you hosting a Book Club for Contest of Queens? or Queen’s Catacombs?
Are you more interested in planning the snacks and feature cocktails than you are in planning the discussion questions for the books?
Fret not, I have you covered!
If you’re lucky, you might have this much fun:
Book Club Sips
I know I said I’d leave the menu to you… but then I went down a Google rabbit hole and found a few fun bevies I thought I’d share for inspiration.
Non alcoholic
- Fit for a Courtier Queen.
Add edible gold glitter to *any* mocktail and call it a day. Watch as the shimmering gold dust dances in your glass and imagine a flight with the gold-dusted griffins. - Rosemary for Memory Mocktail. Featured here is a rosemary and clementine sparkler from Fox and Briar that looks divine. Master Leschi would surely approve of this mind-boosting concoction. Click here for the recipe.
- Tea. I associate most of my characters with a herb/tree/flower, so here are some that would make a nice brew:
Lena Glowra: rose or rosehips
Anya Bishop: bergamot
Amber Everstar: cinnamon or cloves
Dyna Flent: jasmine and orange
Maria Tabart: lavender
Alcoholic
- Champagne
This is a very important beverage in the novels, mostly because it is a very important beverage to me. - In the same vein as the edible glitter mocktail above, here’s a link to an elderflower shimmery champagne cocktail that has Courtier Queen written all over it. Click here for the recipe.
- Sons of Celos Margarita
Those purple hooded brutes are good for one thing and one thing only, a tasty color-changing beverage. Here’s another recipe from Fox and Briar.
Review Corner
Reviews are so helpful in getting word of Contest of Queens and Queen’s Catacombs out there. If you have time, and if you’ve read the book, I would be eternally grateful if you could leave a star rating and/or a written review on Goodreads or Amazon.
Thank you to all the wonderful people who have left a star rating or review! Here is an incredibly lovely review from author H. J. Reynolds (her debut novel Without a Shadow comes out next year) that almost didn’t fit in the newsletter!
x live magically
feature image found here: https://www.peakpx.com/en/hd-wallpaper-desktop-kwefc
Jordan H. Bartlett 