Why I am self-publishing on Amazon
Late last year, while we were under lockdown, to my mild surprise I wrote a 39000-word novella. The fact that it was not my intention to produce anything near that length perhaps explains why I didn't get cold feet halfway through and abandon the project. There was no self-imposed weight of expectation pressing down on me; only the desire to build upon the foundations of an unfinished short story, penned over a decade ago. 'A couple of days work,' I thought. Having looked over the original draft, a few things were immediately apparent: The protagonist needed an overhaul. It was not enough for him to be an alienated individual. He needed to be a true outsider – an immigrant to the United Kingdom. Furthermore, he needed to originate from the same place as the antagonist - an inveterate nationalist named Yusuf Al-Makari who regards all non-Egyptians with disdain. The narrative also needed restructuring. This resulted in me dragging paragraphs between a pair of side-by-side Ope