Bloghops Archives - MohaDoha Productions

End of December is a Time to Remember

December is a great time to reflect and remember on the ups and downs of a year. 2016 may go down as one of the worst in recent history for world events, loss of artistic greats, and political upheavals.

What has it been like for you?

For me, I would sum it up in one word: RELENTLESS. Whether I was writing more books, or reading to young children in elementary schools, the year has been non-stop, from month to month, week to week. So much so that I find it difficult to step off the track during the holidays. I’m going to make a conscious effort this weekend to go offline – head full force into real life.

Have you been naughty or nice? This is the question a group of bloggers and authors are answering via the Mistletoe Hop.

I would say I’ve been mostly nice. :).

You can check out the rest of the steps via the link below.

The Mohadoha Stop on the #RRBC Back to School Book & Blog Block Party

The writers from the Rave Reviews Book Club have gotten together to organize an exciting blog hop – you can visit stops to enter prizes every day in September. Leave a comment below for your chance to win a copy of any books (check out the options in the sidebar).

Welcome to new visitors to this blog. I’d like to tell new and familiar readers about the back story behind my new series, Crimes in Arabia.

I’m writing from Doha, Qatar. There will be five winners, randomly chosen from comments below. I’ll be in touch to see which reading format you prefer.

I didn’t control my Muse. Not in a specific way to generate particular ideas. Sure, I sit down several times a week and force myself to produce as much as I can in the few hours I have between kids’ birthday parties and swim lessons. I go away once a year, for a week, (or longer, if I can find a place to stash the kids) to write, mingle with other writerly types, and figure out how I can get better at storytelling. The ideas for my previous books often began with a central question. One that rolls around and around on deck, waiting for her turn at the keyboard. How a modern person with traditional values finds love is at the center of my first paperback Love Comes Later. The answer is the story.

In The Dohmestics, I explore how well we know those closest to us or ourselves. The ensemble cast in the novel is a composite of people I’ve known while living in the Middle East country of Qatar. Their tangled lives represent the ways in which expats and their domestic help support and infuriate each other. Perhaps because my books ponder issues, rather than focus on a sequence of events, I resist categorization as a genre writer. My novels can’t really find a home like others, where stories cluster, based on common devices or types. Yet, for the last year or so, I have been trying to get a handle on myself as a writer and channel ideas instead of letting them lead me into genre-defying projects.

Not as easy as it sounds.

Crime is what I hoped to get into one year ago: July 2014. Not in real life, as it were, but for my writing. If you can get a believable, likeable, empathetic detective type, you are golden. The books seem to write themselves. Scandinavian writers like Steig Larrson and Henning Mankel had inspired me for years. They took the genre as a venue for social critique and pointed out the failure of Nordic utopia. I’ve seen other places struggle with the burden of wealth and a small citizenry.

I set down a nascent story during National Novel Writing Month in 2015. The premise was simple: a main character living in a labor camp in the Arabian Gulf, one of the kind present in monthly sports news about the 2022 World Cup. The Migrant Report was my first attempt to research, outline, plan, write, and revise a novel from start to finish. The first manuscript was 50,000 word. The published version, now available at online retailers, is almost double the original word count.I’m nervous, I’m elated. One second I worry I’ve gotten it all wrong; the next I’m telling everyone this is the best material I’ve ever written. If you’d like to review The Migrant Report and tell me your thoughts, drop me a comment below.

What type of stories do you like to read or write?

My Writing Process Blog Tour: The Mohadoha Stop

2013-12-12 Reflections on writing process (Photo credit: sachac)

Thanks to Kate Lord Browne for asking me to participate in this blog hop. KLB is the author of ‘The Beauty Chorus’ and ‘The Perfume Garden’, which was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year. She also writes the Ahlan! magazine Book Club column, the first of its kind in the Middle East, and lives in the only true desert country in the world with her family.

Courtesy of this blog hop, you’ll get a window into world of writing via me and three other writers as we answer the same 4 questions.

1) What am I working on?

My mind, or shall I say computer, is a bit of a muddle right now because I’ve got 2 books that need heavy revisions and not enough hours in the day. One is a novel that’s set in the Arabian Gulf and explores the relationships between maids and their employers called The Dohmestics. This is my second title due out in paperback this summer. The other is a novel set in Laos in 1975, about war in Southeast Asia and immigrating to America, The Opposite of Hate. This is my next eBook. Looming deadlines are good motivators to get going as is controversy; the sequel for my banned novel, as yet unnamed, is lingering at 15000 words. Needless to say, it will be a busy summer of writing.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work is a blend of history, culture, and place. The books stand out because they explore places that many readers may not know about: Laos or Qatar – examining spaces within these countries that wouldn’t be accessible to outsiders.
3) Why do I write what I do?

I write to take the reader places s/he couldn’t go on their own.
4) How does my writing process work?

Dear oh dear it’s not streamlined. I am usually writing a draft of one project, revising another one, and marketing all the published ones (8 to date). Generally I’m working triage, on whatever title is getting a facelift or scheduled for next for publication or promotion.

I’m tagging Scott Bury and Rob Chazz Chute as the writers next in line for the blog hop. Head over to their sites to see how and why they tell their stories.