It’s been a long journey getting here! I first wrote this book in the spring of 2016, when I was a senior in high school. I was going through a lot of the aches and pains my main character, Zahra, was going through and dealing with a lot of the same confusions and discomforts that accompany growing up. Everything seemed like a question mark. Everything hurt. 

I didn’t know how to navigate this world as a teenage girl, as a Muslim, as a Pakistani-American...as anything. I felt so pressured -- as teens on the precipice of adulthood often do -- to know everything. Thus the not-knowing, wretched enough, was made twice so by everyone’s expectations and my inability to fulfill them.

When I started writing this book, I truly had no idea how it would end. I didn’t know what answers to give my main character because I didn’t have the answers myself. But somehow, writing this book, the answers came to me, and I was able to grow alongside my characters. 

This book is a love letter. It’s the type of book I wish I could have read when I was growing up, and it’s the type of book I hope brings healing and clarity to whoever reads it. Boiled down, the theme of the book is simple: choose kindness. 

Now to the process: In a lot of ways, this was my first real book. I finished it in the spring of 2016, just a few months after I began drafting, and immediately started querying agents. This was the book that got me my first request from an agent! Which was beyond exciting. I went on to get a lot of requests, for partials and fulls, but no offers of representation. However, I did get a lot of good feedback, so I decided to go in and do a major revision in the summer of 2017. 

That fall, as I started my second year of university, I queried another round of agents. Again, I got a lot of positive feedback, but no offers. It was during this time that I also submitted to some indie publishers that had open submission policies. (For my non-writer friends, usually you can’t submit to publishers, you have to get an agent to do that. But some publishers, usually smaller presses, have open submission policies, which means authors can contact that directly, without an agent.) 

One of those indie publishers was Tu Books, the YA imprint of Lee & Low. Looking back, you can catch the foreshadowing, but as I was living it, I had no idea what the future would bring. Publishing is a slow, brutal business. But I had faith. I am a writer, in truth, in essence, and I refused to give up.

As time passed, I continued working on other things, like The Lady or the Lion, and other works. The waiting is difficult, which is why it’s best to focus on other things in the meanwhile. Then, in summer of 2018, I got an email from an editor at Tu Books. I got on a call with the editor, who was so sweet and understood just what I was trying to get across with my writing. But while the team loved the book, they thought it needed some work before it could be acquisition ready. 

I did two developmental edits and a scene edit before the book would eventually be ready for acquisition at the end of February 2020. Unfortunately, that was also right when COVID hit, and things were justifiably crazy for a while. I had to wait a little longer before my book could go to acquisitions -- where the publishing house decides if they want to buy the rights to the book or not -- but all the waiting paid off! I got an offer, and since I had an agent now, my agent negotiated, and then we signed! Alhamdulillah. 

I’m so excited for you all to read this book. I know Spring 2023 seems a long time away, but the fruits of patience are sweet! Trust me.