A while back I was in Dakar, Senegal, and went on a group trip to Goree Island, the westernmost point of the African continent. It is infamous for the "Door of No Return," through which slaves passed to board ships for the Americas. Now the island is a tourist spot, and tourists are assaulted by souvenir hawkers both before boarding the ferry and after arriving. The island has several nice, beach-side restaurants and some elegant boutique hotels. I found this to be very odd, considering it is hallowed ground, believing that the island should be preserved as a memorial, not turned into a means of profit. Those tour guides who condemn the slave trade are now profiting from it.
I am starting this blog to connect with others who might find what I write to be of interest when it comes to their writing and publishing and to write about experiences my wife and I have living in this or that country. We're now in Amman, Jordan, where I am a Fellow in the U.S. State Department's English Language Fellow Program, assigned to the Jordan Media Institute , which is a master's degree program for journalists. More on living in Amman and other countries on other posts. Patricia and James First, about writing. My first novel, The Opium Addict , is out now for preorder on Amason. The novel will be released on June 19, 2023. I just finished correcting the proofs, which was a very tedious process but necessary. Before that, my editor, Tasha Shiedel (The Undead Reader), copy-edited the MS, which took more than a month, mostly because I kept making changes. I wrote The Opium Addict back in 2018, put it away, then revised it during the pandemic, when I was in Zimba
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