New Year’s resolution – I am going to, by hook or by crook, finalise my manuscript (again) and produce the illustrations. To this end, I will need 3 willing volunteers to “read” my manuscript, i.e. in a literary-critique kind of way. I will have to (say I with my fist clenched) get this story out before the end of 2012.
I wrote the story in 2010, but I’m actually not sure how or why. I was mulling over writing a short story about something completely different – for grown-ups – when this one came to me, whispered its opening paragraph into my head, and settled into its narrative with surprising ease. Surprising, I say, because I hadn’t written anything for … umm… a decade; and because the story is rhythmic and structured, like the verses of a song - several times I doubted I’d be able to pull it off.
I have a special affection for folk tales and fairy stories, and since I have done a fair bit of storytelling to coax my daughters to bed, the genre is familiar. The kernel of this idea was something my mother used to tell me whenever she felt I was hogging too much attention:
حفت نفر آینه به دست
سکینه خانم سرش را می بست
…which I translated as:
Seven maids did mirrors bear
For Sakina Khanum to bind her hair.
It’s a lighthearted young girl’s book, full of irony, and hopefully, good lessons in human virtues. I can’t tell you very much more about it, though, unless you want to volunteer as a reader!
Here’s the blurb:
Sakina, the only daughter of the King of Dur-Bad, is wise, witty and talented, but she must spend her days cloistered in the royal household being pampered, dressed and coiffed by her seven handmaids, so that she can sit smiling for guests. But when her curiosity leads her to run away and enter the forest, she changes her own destiny and that of the whole kingdom… a modern tale in a traditional context that will enchant young and old alike.
My first young reader (bless her heart) said it was “better than Harry Potter!” Well, if it does 1/10 as well as Harry Potter, I’ll be winning!
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