The Kick Off
The cover sketch is from talented Majid Abbasi, our senior graphic designer and the photograph by Nima Chaichi.
Two years ago, on this same day, I broke my ankle skiing. It was a normal accident, but it felt different. The moment I fell, I had the sensation of being shot from the slope. I got dizzy, and the dizziness stayed — long after the surgery, long after the three months of rest. It felt as if nature had placed me somewhere on purpose, insisting I pause and listen.
That something began on January 7, 2024: a strong, almost urgent desire to write. I had written before — as a teenager, every day, in Farsi — never publishing anything. But this time was different. I could see the story clearly: the plot, the movement, the emotional architecture. I knew what it was about. I knew why I was writing it. What I didn’t know was that it would become something essential — something I would leave behind.
For the first six months, the characters were papery. I knew them, but I wasn’t inside them. Then, with my editor, we began carving away the fat, cutting deeper, until we reached the muscle. That’s when I entered them — him, her — fully.
Two years in, after hundreds of drafts, I’m ready to send it into the world. It’s not a masterpiece. How could it be? It’s my first. I believe in professionalism: that a strong idea alone is never enough, that without mastery of craft, nothing lasting is born. I’ve only just begun learning the craft of language.
This is the kickoff.
Much like my approach to business, I like to learn from every project and look at the full picture, and take the right steps — not in a rush, but with strategic, steady progress. So when I decided to self-publish, for personal reasons, I began by studying the roadmap: marketing, positioning, and the launch process as a whole.
The first step was building a writer profile. I am an architect and a business owner; no one knows me as a fiction writer. I chose Medium as my starting point and set a simple rule for myself: publish something every week. I did — and I’m loving it. The practice has given me the confidence I need to let the book meet the world.
The next step is building my online platforms, which I plan to focus on over the next 90 days.
The book itself is ready. I’m deliberately stopping myself from touching it again. After two years, I know I’ve grown as a writer, and if I revisit the manuscript now, it will no longer be the original — no longer the debut it was meant to be.
When exactly it will launch and land in your hands, I’m not yet sure. But I know this much: it will happen this year. So watch for a romance novella with this title in the coming months:
Is the Sun a He, or a She?
