March 24, 2025 • 57 mins
Welcome, writers and book lovers. The Bleeders is a podcast about book writing and publishing. Make sure you subscribe to the companion Substack: https://thebleeders.substack.com/welcome
Today's guest is Omar Mouallem, author of the historical travel memoir Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas. In writing the book, Omar couldn’t explore its subject matter without also reexamining his own relationship with the religion he had grown up with—and grown apart from. In this interview, he takes us through the entire book-writing process, from his early days as a ghostwriter to landing his book deal, securing extra funding for his global research trips, and working through the editing process with Simon & Schuster. Follow Omar on Instagram @omar_aok.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
Today's guest is Omar Mouallem, author of the historical travel memoir Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas. In writing the book, Omar couldn’t explore its subject matter without also reexamining his own relationship with the religion he had grown up with—and grown apart from. In this interview, he takes us through the entire book-writing process, from his early days as a ghostwriter to landing his book deal, securing extra funding for his global research trips, and working through the editing process with Simon & Schuster. Follow Omar on Instagram @omar_aok.
The Bleeders is hosted by Courtney Kocak. Follow her on Instagram @courtneykocak and Bluesky @courtneykocak.bsky.social. For more, check out her website courtneykocak.com.
Courtney is teaching some upcoming workshops you might be interested in:
- Land Big Bylines by Writing for Columns: https://writeordiemag.com/workshops/p/land-big-bylines
- Start a Newsletter to Supercharge Your Platform, Network and Business: https://writingworkshops.com/products/start-a-newsletter-to-supercharge-your-platform-network-business-zoom-seminar
- The Multi-Passionate Writer's Life: https://writingworkshops.com/products/the-multi-passionate-writers-life-zoom-seminar-with-courtney-kocak
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
I got a pretty good advance, you know, but like
a pretty good advance for a book, but not a
lot of money for travel.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
The travel ended up costing about twenty thousand dollars on
its own, I think maybe more actually, so I supplemented
that with.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Grant's Today's Guest wrote a travel memoir, and he was
scrappy and fortunate enough to find extra funding to cover
the many trips he had to take around the world.
Omar Malalam wrote Praying to the West, how Muslims shaped
the Americas, but he found it was hard to tackle
that subject matter as a casual observer. He had to
(00:44):
find a new relationship with the religion he grew up
with and had grown apart.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
From now when I really started to become a I
guess that character in my own book with more of
an with kind of an arc that I was setting
up out to, I guess explore. It was one of
my earlier trips. I went to Trinidad, and I kept
being greeted and treated like a Muslim brother and kind
(01:13):
of expected to pray with people. And I found that
people were opening up to me because they thought I
was a pious Muslim person and not necessarily as like
a journalist, more like just like a curious brother. And
I felt very conflicted about that, so I felt like
(01:34):
I needed to be more After that, I felt like
I really need to be a lot more transparent with
my subjects, but I specially needed to be more transparent
with my readers.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Omar dives into the whole process, from getting it started
as a ghost writer, to how he landed his book,
deal casting his mosques, the editing process with Simon and Schuster,
some really insightful tips for writers, and more.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In today's episode, There's nothing to writing. All you do
is sit down at a typewriter.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
And bleed.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Welcome to the Leaders, a podcast and support group about
book writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Cosak,
and each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors,
agents and publishers about how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Hi, my name is Omar Moalam. I am a journalist,
documentary filmmaker, and the author of Praying to the West
How Muslims Shape the Americas.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I actually know Omar because I taught a few
workshops for his pandemic university, so he's watched me teach podcasting.
But this was our first time sharing the mic.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
It's nice to get a chance to experience it's the
Courtney Cossack podcast experience. I'm excited about this. I took
our daughter out to a movie yesterday, a new movie,
and she asked the most profound question. She asked, why
do they keep making movies when there are so many
movies I haven't seen? And it's like, yeah, why did
(03:20):
we keep writing books when there are so many books
we already haven't read?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Okay, well, people have more things to say.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So funny that Omar's daughter is making grown adults question
their career path with our philosophical question. We're fragile. Please
don't come for our life decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Anyway, Omar wrote.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
A very interesting and worthy book that we're going to
get into.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
But first the five questions. When did you first identify
as a writer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I think I might have been as young as like
seven or eight. I have a very distinct memory of
folding up pieces of paper, big pieces of paper into
these like six page folded comic books that I would write,
and they were mostly words because I was never a
good drawer, so there was just a good couple of
(04:17):
pictures on there and then trying to sell those to
my friends and neighbor friends, and one of them, this
was probably the first reality dose as a writer. One
of them told me that their father advised them, because
I think I was trying to sell them for two bucks,
that their father advised them that they should not pay
(04:38):
more than a quarter.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Bo.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
That's how valuable your art is.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So you know what, they were right? They were right.
That was good fatherly advice.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Oh that's hilarious. Okay, so you started young. What is
your all time favorite book?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's funny. I don't feel I have a very strong
connection to a single book, not the way that I
do with movies and music. And really, yeah, no, I
get asked this question and I never have a proper answer,
and I was just asked it last week. I was
teaching at a youth writing camp and we wrapped up
(05:19):
on the fifth day and I was like, okay, ama time.
I thought they wanted to talk about craft and stuff,
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Were like, what's your favorite book?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What books do you love? I was like, oh god,
this again. I think if I were to pick one,
probably nineteen eighty four of George Orwell's nineteen eighty four
and only because I think that was the first book
that I read where I felt like I was having
a profound reading experience and where I understood the I
(05:48):
guess commentary in a book, how can you can tell
a story while also making commentary on the world and
on life? And that one resonates with me. So I
think that's probably and it's also maybe the one book
I've read more than once.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Interesting. Okay, I like that answer. What's your dream writing routine?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Money is no object, time is no object. What's the fantasy?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So first of all, I'm not living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
No, you're the son of Alberta.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I know, I know, I'm probably living like I don't know.
I'm probably living in Mexico somewhere like doesn't need to
be coastal, maybe Mexico City, maybe somewhere in the Middle East,
somewhere warm and where I can be outside to work.
(06:47):
That's the important thing. I want to be comfortably outside
to work. And then I think it would it would
involve me waking up early as I as I always do,
but actually getting to work within like the first hour
hour and a half of waking up, and then not
(07:07):
having to read a single email until maybe the end
of the day, you know, and just writing and reading
and writing and reading, because reading is writing and jotting
down notes and scribbling out you know, different structures of
different sections, experimenting with that. Picking up the phone to
(07:28):
call someone to clarify something or to get some quick research,
and they pick up, they pick up on the first ring.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
This is a good fantasy.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh my god, it's amazing. And they always have time
for me. That's the crazy thing. They always have time
for me. And they're never evasive. There's no question that
is off the record or that they you know, don't
want to be asked. And then I think that, you know,
probably around one o'clock, go for a jog, come back hour, eat,
(08:01):
get back to work at about three, and I work
till about six and days over, no more emails. Even
when I check the for emails, there's no.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
New ones, emails, illegal email, just like we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, that's that's probably my dream routine.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah, what is your real writing routine?
Speaker 5 (08:23):
And I've been talking to some parents lately, so I'm
curious how much your kids factor into this.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A fair bit.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I think, you know, my real writing routine honestly is
other than the tropical part of it and the email
part of it, It's not that far off. Maybe it's
actually maybe it is far off. I mean, my real
writing routine is I do wake up early, but I
don't usually start working until about nine. And unfortunately, the
(08:51):
first thing I do is, you know, check emails and
messages and get caught up on all that stuff, and
that could take that. I mean, that could take me
till one o'clock sometimes, and then I go for a
jog and I think about what I want to write,
and I do a lot of planning. And sometimes if
(09:12):
I need to revisit interviews, I'll listen to my interviews
on my job, or if I'm picking up where I
left off, I might take everything that I've written up
to that point, all the text, copy it, paste it
into like a text to MP three file, and I'll
listen to it, which is a weird thing to be
(09:33):
listening to while you're jogging, you know, working up a sweat,
but it works, and then you know, get cleaned up
and try to work until six or seven. You know,
I used to be able to go pretty hard. I
used to be able to just go go and go
have dinner and keep going, stay up really late. But
(09:54):
you know that, I just I have kids now, and
it's totally different. I have a great off.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Like I are you in your office right now?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I am. Yeah. I work with two monitors, two big monitors.
And the reason that I do that is because I
like to have like word processor transcripts, you know, all,
like one monitor is just research and one is just
my word processor. And I love that, and so I
do like to work for my office. But I also
(10:23):
have like ADHD and need to change my environments quite frequently.
So I work out of libraries a lot. I probably
change environments at least once a day. And I want
to say it's, you know, because of the kids, but honestly,
it's not because of the kids. It's just like before
the kids existed, I was doing this too.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Is it just pandemic you and your creative work?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Like, is that all you have to juggle?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
No? No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Is there a whole other job?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, kind of like I teach an m a mentor
to creative nonfiction writers at the Universally of King's College
in Halifax. I just accepted another teaching job, so I'll
be teaching another course. In the fall. I have Pandemic
University obviously that I run, have a good team there,
but I also teach there as well. I am always
(11:16):
probably working on one article and then one big project.
So that was the book before and right now it's
a documentary.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, okay, I relate to that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, I mean I'm a screelancer. Yeah, but like I
love it. Like it's a hustle, but that's not just
the life I chose, but it's the life that I want.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I love having lots of stuff on the go until
it overwhelms me and it becomes a burden, and I
you know, I'm just kind of a distractable, burnt out mess.
But when the balance is there, it's it's great. I mean,
and I think, you know, coming back to having ADHD,
I think I thrive in this kind of Yeah. I
(12:01):
thrive with this kind of situation because I'm I always
seek out novelty and luckily I always have it.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay, what is one piece of writing that makes you
jealous you didn't write it?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
There is a great book called Boys, What it Means
to Be a Man Today, a great nonfiction book about
sort of the the idea of manhood and how we
shape good men from the time that they are boys.
It's a wonderful book, and it's something that I think
about a lot, especially more so now that I have
(12:38):
a son as well. But it was something that I
thought about a lot for years, just dealing with my
own own stresses. And I made a documentary about men's
mental health a few years ago as well, so something
that it's a topic that I've been very interested in
for a long time. It's a wonderful book and the author,
Rachel Giza, who's a friend of mine and is just
(13:01):
the perfect writer for it. And I say that because
this book was based on Okay, So this book was
based on an article that she wrote for the Walrus
magazine cover story and the idea and the program for
boys that was sort of at the center of it.
It was an idea that I had as well, and
(13:21):
I was planning to pitch it to the Walrus and
I sat on it, and I sat on it and
I sat on it, and then like almostly, maybe two
years later, never doing anything about it, saw that.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Someone else, somebody wrote someone else wrote it exactly right,
and for the same magazine that I wanted to write
it for and I didn't know Rachel at the time,
and so I was like.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I was legitimately jealous. Legitimately I love that. And then
I read the piece, and then I read the book,
and this is coming back to, like why she's the
perfect person to write it. I wasn't even a parent
at the time. She was a parent of an adopted boy.
She was She's a woman, she's lesbian, married to another
(14:07):
woman who they adopted this boy, and they were trying
to raise him, you know, with their values, and we're
kind of navigating this world in a very very unique way,
and it just gave her such a unique perspective. And
she really was the perfect person to write that book.
(14:28):
And so yeah, I'm happy she did.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I love that story. That's maybe the best one yet.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And we became friends after that book came out and
I had a chance to meet her.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
So so before we really dig into the book, we're
going to take a brief detour to talk about Omar's
rap career.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But just trust me, it's worth it.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
So very early in the book, you apologize, yes, are
sort of for your sins as a rapper.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
When did you first identify as a rapper.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
I was like, oh my god, I love this cure
the rap questions.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, I mean I started rapping probably when I was
like twelve thirteen, recording on cassettes, and then you know,
I had a little rhyme book with some really really
like obscene things in it. I remember my mom finding
it once and just being horrified and kind of destroyed,
(15:37):
and oh man, I just yeah, I forgot about that
memory for maybe twenty twenty years until write this very moment.
I think I was so scared that I started crying anywhere.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We're like, this is not who I am, and this
is a different version.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It was, yes, like you don't understand performance art. Yeah,
I was undeterred. In high school, I figured out how
to like record audio and download instrumentals. First of all,
I learned that instrumental beats like existed, Like beats of
like my favorite rap songs existed, and you can download
(16:15):
them on Napster. Wow. What an invention. And so I
just like went out and started recording songs, and I
think like by the ninth grade, I had like an
LP recorded. I would burn these CDs and figured out
how to like print little CD labels and did like
(16:38):
cover in the back and I must have sold like
thirty to fifty of those in junior hid. Well, here's
the thing. It also means that there's like thirty to
fifty of those out there in existence, and that is
the scariest that keeps me up at night courtnaying.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
That is so funny. What were you rapping about?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh my, oh my god, I was rapping about what
rappers rapped about. I was using the N word like
it was. It's bad. Yes, no, it's bad. It's bad.
Look I was. I was like a weird I know,
I was a fourteen year old kid. I know, yes, exactly, No,
they exist. They exist. There's at thirty to fifty ways
(17:22):
to cancel me right now if they want.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
You know what, that's beautiful though, You're like, this is
out there. I sort of have to own it.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I have to own it, you know what. On my
first like actual album album that I like had printed
and was semi studio recorded, I think I had the
foresight to address that in a song. So anyway, yeah,
(17:51):
you know, fourteen year old weird kid one of the
only like immigrant families in a small bird of town
with like three thousand people who you know, just didn't
fit in in any way. Also, like would watch and
rewatch Spike Lee's Malcolm X all the time and would
do like Malcolm X impressions. And I just really thought
(18:12):
that I was the blackest kid in town, really really did,
and you know, maybe to an extent I was.
Speaker 7 (18:21):
I know there is something in that though, but oh
my god, all of this is so fucking funny.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
When did you grow out of it? And we're like,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I grew out of it probably like the very next year.
I don't know, I mean grew like grew out of
the like you know, the the hard know, the wanna
be black kid.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, but I continue to rap, and you know, I
continue to record, you know, music, and it's been ten
years since my last album, ten years since I was
a rapper. Last week I did come out of rap
retirement to perform in the Youth Camps talent show. I
(19:04):
was teaching at a youth writing camp and there was
a contractually obligated instructor talent show that I initially tried
to get out of, but again it was contractually obligated,
and I didn't know what else to do, so I
just I quickly, you know, found one of my old
(19:26):
beats and did a song and the kids didn't hate it.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Give me just a couple lyrics, oh.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
God, okay. So it's like it's like my attempt at
like a club song for girls, like a body positive
club song for girls. And the hook is my wife wrote.
The hook is when life gives you mascara, make masquerade. Okay, yeah,
(19:53):
look you gotta you.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Know, with the right beat, I can imagine it.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It works. It's like it starts with like, ooh she okay,
you know the makeup store Mac Yeah, okay, so it's
called macface and it starts with like, ooh, she's got
her macface on. Can't take off the mask until the
mass scare is gone. Bucks and blonde with bucks to
blow swaovs be crusted on her bra to the bar
(20:21):
she goes. She's knee deep in books, sleeps with texts
because degrees won't earn themselves. So East sashimi with her
number two pencil. It's her number one. Then shoed for
krem de nude. I'm not gonna keep going.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Okay, Well that officially concludes a wrap portion.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
That was lovely.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I think God doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Okay? So Praying to the West, what's the premise?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So Praying to the West is a travel memoir about
the lost and ignored, and sometimes it erased a history
of Muslims in the Americas. So I grew up Muslim,
don't practice it Islam, haven't for a long time, but
have always had sort of a cultural connection to it.
And around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, when Islamophobia became quite
(21:22):
mainstream with the rise of Trump and other right wing
populists in the Western world, I wanted to address it,
but I want to address it in a reported way.
And I thought that you know, only people knew how
far back Islamic history went in the Western world, and
particularly in the Americas. It is that the Muslim presence
(21:44):
here is as old as any non indigenous faith, non
indigenous culture. People knew that maybe they wouldn't have so
many reasons to fear it if they understood just how
it has influenced society Western society already. And I thought
that the best way to do that would be to
travel to sort of important Muslim communities in America. So
(22:06):
I started in Brazil and went up to the Arctic
to very unlikely places for there to be Islamic history
and mosques, and I tell the story through existing mosques
today and why they exist and the people who built them,
the influence that they've had, and the influence too that
the regions have had on their communities as well. And
(22:27):
along the way, I sort of, you know, I deal
with my own complicated relationship with Islam and with organized
religion and self.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean I super related to that part of
the book because I mean I feel like that with Catholicism,
like and I kind.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Of have never been outside of the cultural stuff attached.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
To the religion at all, and so anyway, I found
that very relatable.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think it's relatable for a lot of people. I
mean a lot of people who leave their religions just
kind of gradually and not because of some sort of
traumatic experience will often find themselves coming back to those
traditions because they mean something to them, and they are
also a way to connect with their families. And that's
for me, that's really what it ultimately is. It's a
(23:17):
way for me to connect with my family.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
So I'm curious, what year did you start the whole process.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I want to talk about the book proposal and then
also and maybe this all ties together, but you have
an author's note at the beginning, and it kind of
lays out like the rules or the way that you're
thinking about the book. And I'm curious how much of
that was in the initial proposal. Were you, like this
(23:46):
is straight reporting, Were you.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
A piece of it initially and did you plan on
tackling your faith in that way or is that something
that happened, you know, during the process.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
This is a great question, So I would say that,
so the first trip, there's about thirteen trips that I
took for it. The first trip was in March twenty
seventeen that was in the Arctic, and the last one
was to Bahia, Brazil, and that was in December twenty nineteen.
(24:18):
So I kind of did it backwards over over two
and a half years. I mean, I did it out
of order, basically, And I mean I knew that I
was going to insert my opinions in the book. I
knew it was going to be a first person book
that I do first person journalism generally, but I did
not think that it was going to be a memoir
(24:40):
until probably the last couple drafts of the book. Proposal
and yeah, and I don't remember exactly why, but I
think I just felt like historical nonfiction can be a
difficult thing to relate to people unless you can show
(25:04):
them how it relates to you. And ultimately, I mean,
I think that using first person narratives, it just kind
of gives people like a vehicle, a vessel to sort
of live the story through. Now, when I really started
to become I guess a character in my own book
(25:25):
with more of an with kind of an arc that
I was setting out to I guess explore. It was
one of my earlier trips. I went to Trinidad, and
I kept being greeted and treated like a Muslim brother
and kind of expected to pray with people. And I
(25:46):
found that people were opening up to me because they
thought I was, you know, the highest Muslim person and
not necessarily as like a journalist, more like just like
a curious brother. And I felt very conflicted about that,
so I felt like I needed to be more After that,
I felt like I really need to be a lot
more transparent with my subjects, but I specially needed to
(26:09):
be more transparent with my readers and let them know
sort of where I'm coming from what my biases are,
why I have these biases, and that ultimately led me
to explore more of my you know, personal experiences growing
up in the faith.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
So the book proposal process, how did that evolve?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean I knew that I wanted to write a book.
I'd ghost written two books already with Simon Schuster. Yeah,
and they really liked working with me, and they were
basically like, Okay, what do you want to write now?
You know, we're interested in publishing one of your books.
And so it was it was quite a like privileged opportunity.
(26:53):
I worked with my agent on a couple of ideas
and that's how this came about. Like I you know,
I told her what I was in sit In and
what I wanted to do and what I want to
set out to do. And I had an idea of
writing about Islamic history in Canada actually, and she was
like too small, Like you have this opportunity to sell
(27:16):
an international you know, to sell a book to Simon
and Schuster and tell an international story. She was like,
why not America or North America? Rather, I was like,
well why not the Americas? So yeah, I mean that's
that's kind of how it started, and I probably spent
about two or three months doing historical research and putting
(27:41):
together maybe the first draft of the book proposal. And
it went through seven drafts before it went to the publisher,
and we only sent it to the one publisher because
they gave me a great offer and that was that nice.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
So the travel part of it, you visited like forty
to fifty mosques and then honed in on like.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Thirteen thirteen of them.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, so how did you pick? How did you cast
your mosques? And what were the travel logistics of that?
Speaker 5 (28:10):
And I guess you knew that it was going to
be set up, so there was some funding and did
you have to supplement that?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Like how did that work?
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah? I got a pretty good evance, you know, but
like a pretty good advance for a book, but not
a lot of money for travel right now. The travel
ended up costing about twenty thousand dollars on its own,
I think maybe more actually, so I supplemented that with grant's.
I don't know what the situation is like in other countries,
(28:38):
but in Canada.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Not as good. I can tell you that.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, we have a lot of grant a lot of
funding sources for the arts. I mean it comes from
our inferiority complex with America and this perpetual fear of
Canadians that we will not have any culture because American
culture is so dominant that we have to we have
to subsidize it, and we also have to restrict the
(29:05):
amount of American content that is on our airwaves and
in our I don't want to say, in our bookstores,
but maybe there are rules against certain percentages. I don't know,
but basically there is a decades long effort at like
every branch of government here to support and encourage the
(29:27):
development of Canadian arts, and that's why we have all
these grants. So I was able to secure about twenty
thousand dollars from three separate branches of government and sort
of arts councils.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
God bless Canada. That is amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, I mean I have a friend who has received
seventy thousand dollars so far to write her first novel,
like what will be her first published novel? Now, I
mean it's an amazing idea and it's an important book,
and she obviously has been writing some incredible excerpts and
outlines in order to get this funding. But yeah, I
(30:10):
mean it exists. So yeah, yeah, so that's that's how
I did that. As far as picking the mosques, it
was a mix of sort of I guess, triage and triangulation.
I knew that, you know, some mosques, believe it or not,
are kind of famous. So the First Mosque in Canada,
(30:34):
which is actually here in Edmonton, is one of those
famous ones. The Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, which
is sort of seen as like the Middle Eastern and
Muslim hub of America, also another famous one. You know.
It's one that like Washington sends diplomats to in order
to improve Muslim relations. So there are some mosques like
(30:55):
that where it's like, yes, those I want to know
their stories and tell their stories. Other times it was like,
you know, with Trinidad, I went there, I probably went
to ten different mosques, and I was looking for one
that best represented the story of that country and that
country is like Muslim population. Other Times I just kind
of like stumbled upon this in my research and I
(31:17):
was like, yes, I need to get there. So that
would be the mosque of an indigenous Mayan community in
southern Mexico that I was not expecting was like I
need to be there, and then you know, situations like
that would make me decide also what some of the
redundancies were. So there was a there's a mosque in
Argentina that I wanted to go to, but it was
(31:37):
a little redundant of the Mexican one. So that's kind
of how I how I cast them, I guess.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
So then, were you writing as you go or did
you wait until the research was done and then plow
through a draft.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
How did that work? I tried to write as I go,
because you know, each which chapter could have been its
own book, and it was a lot of information to
hold in my head, and I knew that I could
not possibly retain this information very well. I'm also like,
no matter how many notes I take, I will forget
(32:16):
you know, what's in my notes, and I just end
up having to like do the research again. So I
did my best to avoid that, and it went well
for the first while, and then it all fell apart
and I ended up writing probably the last half of
the book after my last trip, after you know, returning
from Brazil, which you know, it made things really difficult,
(32:37):
but at that point I didn't have a choice. I
just I was good. I had to do. But if
I mean, if I could do it again, I'd give
myself more time. I would have avoided distractions, you know, articles, assignments,
any other things that came up. I think I made
a documentary in that period, so you know, no regrets
(32:57):
there that. I mean, that was my first first film.
But I think I just would have just given myself
more time to make sure that there was like maybe
three months between each you know, trip and draft. I
didn't need a clean draft, but you know, I needed
(33:18):
probably like you know, a month of research before the trip,
a week of the trip, probably two to three more
weeks of like more research in outlining and transcribing and
note taking, and then a month of writing for each chapter.
So if I could do it again, that's what I do.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, that's smart, but I mean I get it.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
We travel for private parts unknown, and sometimes you just
can't control all the other stuff that is going on
in your life.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So it's also it's also kind of an episodic book.
It can be read out of order, right, and each
chapter doesn't connect so closely to the next. So but
other books, you know, books with more tighter narratives, you
probably can't do that.
Speaker 5 (34:08):
So you finish a draft that you send to Simon
and Schuster. What was the editing process?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah, it changed. It started with like edits On the
first couple of chapters that I delivered, just to kind
of like set the tone, make sure that we all
sort of agreed on like the right structure and kind
of finding a bit of a blueprint for each chapter.
And then once that was done, then I was just
sending Like I kept sending things along as they came,
(34:36):
but I was receiving them in big chunks, and I
think like at the end it was like the last
four remaining chapters just kind of all came together and
then it was a little bit more you know, contained
after that where it was like edits On, like a
full draft going back and forth, but it was all
bits and pieces totally out of order until that point.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
Staying So how long I think I heard you say
like it was supposed to take one and it took
three years or whatever, Like how long was the process?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah? I think I signed. I mean I must have
signed that book deal in summer, I want to say
summer or fall of twenty seventeen. And I seem to
remember a year or maybe a year and a half
deadline from that point.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
And yeah, no, you were like, I'm still traveling, so.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, a year. Yeah I was. I was still traveling
at that point. I got I got some got some extensions,
and then COVID hit and that delayed things as well,
probably added another six months.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
But you're like sending them chapters. Yeah, so they know
you're working, they're not worried about it.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, and you know what, that's that's honestly, that's part
of the reason to also send chapters, you know, piecemeal
like that.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That's a good hack.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, it's a good.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Ad.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Buys you two extra years's.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Okay, So I'm curious about the fact checking process for
a book like this.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, fact checking in books doesn't really exist unless you,
as an author, make it exists. And this is this
is one of the Yeah, this is one of the
things I struggle with the most in publishing. One of
my first jobs in the industry was as a fact
checker for a magazine. I was an intern, but like large,
(36:33):
probably fifty percent of my job was fact checking something
that I don't just take it seriously, but I actually
take joy in it. And I just have so much
respect for the fact checking process. So it was quite
discerning to realize, not with this book, but with the
first couple of books that I that I ghost wrote,
that there was no fact checking process. You know, there's
(36:55):
a copy editing process, and in that they might check
the spellings of things or correct geography something like that,
but no, no one's looking at your sources. And so
I asked for a fact checker and time to fact check,
and my publisher they were so accommodating this whole process.
(37:18):
They assigned one of their editorial interns to do about
half the fact checking, all sort of like the low
hanging fruit that they could fact check by checking for
sources online. And then I spent about one thousand dollars
to hire a fact checker, a professional journalist and a
(37:40):
friend of mine. She probably deserved two thousand dollars for it.
She fact checked sort of the higher hanging fruit, the
stuff that you might actually need to call someone and say, like,
what did you mean by this? Did you actually say this?
Can you confirm this? That kind of stuff? So, yeah,
I mean, I I believe that fact checking should be
(38:01):
done independently of the writer. But if I didn't have
the money for that, and if I didn't, if the
publishers didn't have the resources for that, I would have
to do it myself. A book with a topic this sensitive,
I just I would not be able to I just
wouldn't be able to sleep. And look, there were errors
really in every chapter. Of course, of course I've been
(38:24):
a fact checker. I know that there has never been
an article. I think there's never been an article that
I fact checked over say five hundred words that did
not have an error in it. Everything has an error
in it, unless everything that hasn't been fact checked has
errors in it. I can say this categorically because I've
(38:47):
seen it. I know it.
Speaker 7 (38:48):
You're so right, Because sometimes, okay, I'll do like a
radio story or whatever, and just in the handing over process,
just in me turning it over to the digital team
or whatever, even if everything's right on my end, there.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Will just be like this is four people running down
the green and it's really three people.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
Or you know what I mean, just in that process,
I'm like, oh my god, you're so right.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Everything has an error.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Everything. You have to have a second paradse to comb
through it. We don't really have those resources in publishing anymore.
Newspapers never really did this because newspapers, you know, they
can run a correction the very next day. I think
magazines which would print you know, weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly,
(39:38):
bi annually, they have always been extra cautious about this
and invested in that, but less and less so these days.
I think they are maybe using their online platforms as
a bit of a crutch to excuse cutting their fact
checking resources, because they can now also correct things immediately
(39:59):
when they learn them, which is great. But also, what
about the printed version that's sitting on the you know,
in the doctor's office for the next two years.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
That is very interesting.
Speaker 5 (40:10):
I saw that there's no audible yet, so I want
to know if you're going to be voicing.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Okay, but I gotta tell you something amazing. I learned
recently that the first book I ever wrote called Amazing Cats.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Are you familiar with this book? No?
Speaker 3 (40:29):
But I love the title. I'm already on board.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
In two thousand and eight, I wanted desperately to be
a writer. I was searching Craigslist Craigslist for jobs, and
I found a job that said something like looking for
writers to write true stories about cats. It's like, Okay, Hi,
I've published a couple articles, and this.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Is it that is amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It's called Amazing Cats Stories of Intuition, Compassion, mystery, and
Extraordinary Feats. I found out by accident two months ago
in May. I found out that they made an audio
version of that book last fall. I don't know why
(41:15):
thirteen years later they would make an audio version of
that book. I'm curious. I think i'm old royalties. So
I'm gonna have to look into that.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Oh my god, I'm gonna have to go check that out.
I'm gonna have to listen to Amazing Cats.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So yeah, Praying to the West not on Audible yet,
Amazing Cats on audible dot Com. You can can get
it with your free credit.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
So wait, are there plans for an audiobook for Praying
to the West currently?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
No, No, we're working on the plans for the paperback version.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Okay, it's a slow rollout.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, okay, So your book came out during COVID. What
was the book to her experience like and the reaction?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, the reaction was great. I got really positive reviews
and feedback right out the gate, and you know, I
just I felt super lucky and grateful for that, but
you know, there wasn't really I mean, there was a
virtual book tour, which was busy, but it was also
a virtual book tour, right, and it was in September, October,
(42:20):
November of twenty twenty one, so you know, by then
people were pretty zoom fatigued and so they just weren't
coming out to online events as much. So that you know,
it was it was quiet, like, it was fine. I
had some great conversations. It also like really worked out
for me personally and for my family personally, because it
(42:41):
meant that I could do this all from home at
a very busy time. My last documentary came out at
the same time in September twenty twenty one, so it
was nice to be home for that. But I didn't
actually go travel for my first like book festival until
last May, like until May twenty twenty two, and that
(43:03):
was wonderful. They treated us so well, and I was like,
oh my god, I really missed out on like the
author experience. I really really missed out on it, and
I was so happy, but I was also a little
bit sad, you know, and kind of sad for like
younger writers too, you know, those ones who do have
the energy and maybe the you know, excuse to travel
(43:25):
and and have so much a benefit from that experience.
Who don't get didn't get to have it on their
you know, on their first books. There's there's always going
to be more books. Hopefully there will be more experiences,
you know, book tour experiences. But yeah, you know, it's
it's uh, it was a bittersweet thing. I went to
the Fold Festival, the Festival Literary Diversity in in the
(43:47):
Metro Toronto area in Brampton, and so it was a
bittersweet experience. They sent the authors to the airport in
a limo. They were really like, you know, these we
were like sick kids. They treated us like sick kids
who'd like just come out of the Ronald McDonald's house.
They were like, oh, they've been they've been through so
(44:08):
much during this pandemic. Like they really they really deserved this.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
That's sweet though.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
It was so sweet.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
I saw that you got You've gotten to go to
some award shows. I think you won recently.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, I recently was awarded one of the Lieutenant Governor
of Alberta's Emerging Artists Awards.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
And the very next day, received the Wilfred Eggleston Nonfiction Prize,
which is the top nonfiction prize in the province, for
Praying to the West Amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Your parents and your family look super proud of you,
So that was adorable.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Looks can be deceiving. Yeah, I'm joking. I'm joking. They are.
They are. And I'm super grateful to have like such
supportive family members you know people have. When people ask me, like,
how do you write this book, it was such a
daunting efforts, Like, yeah, I married like an extremely supportive
(45:07):
person and have like a really supportive mother who looked
after our kids when I was away for twenty five
percent of my child's first two years on earth. It
meant a lot. Actually, you know, when I won the
Wilfred Eggleston Award, I went up there with like, you know,
another planned speech, and I just started. I brought my daughter,
(45:31):
she was my plus one, and as I went up there,
I looked across the room and she was just licking
the like pamphlet, like the program for the award show,
just to see what it tastes like. And I just
I started laughing and I just started like thanking her.
And then my wife and the next thing I know,
(45:52):
I was just crying. Oh yeah, thanked her, my wife,
my mom and like the women in my life who've
supported me and made like literally made this book possible
to write. And I just started crying.
Speaker 5 (46:07):
Okay, that's beautiful, And with that we will go to
our PostScript segment.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
First of all, what's next for you?
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Can you share anything you're working on and any bucket
list writing goals?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, I'm working on a feature version of the short
documentary that came out in the fall called The Last Baron,
which is about a rogue burger chain called Burger Baron
and how it became kind of a pathway to the
immigrant dream. It came out on CBCGEM in September, was
quite popular, and you know, from that response, we started
(46:53):
crowdfunding and investing for a feature and I'm working on
that right now and it should be ready to submit
for fe festivals by the end of August, I guess,
and then we'll see hopefully it'll be in you know,
first festival in January hopefully, which also happens to be
when Sun dances, so you know, high bars, Yeah, I believe.
(47:14):
I believe in high bars. So yeah, that's that's what
I'm working on right now. A couple of the things
here and there, but that's that's the big one. Like
I said, I have one big project at a time.
That's my big project.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
And what's what's the bucket list?
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Oh Man, Praying to the West kick my ass. And
I don't think I will write another reported nonfiction book
for a while, maybe a few more years. It just
it was just so it took so much out of me.
But I would like to. I think I'd like to
(47:48):
start writing some more fiction. I have an idea for
a novel and about a fourth of it that I
completed three years ago. Now I think it's time to
dust that off. But actually, what like my dream project,
and hopefully I should be able to start this by
the end of the summer, is to write a feature
(48:11):
screenplay about Frank Lactin, who is a distant cousin of mine,
who was the first Arab American movie star and lived
a incredibly fascinating life. I learned about him in the
process of writing Praying to the West actually and wrote
kind of the definitive article on him. He was a
very very complicated man, a silent film actor, who basically
(48:35):
played every ethnicity, always negatively. He kind of sold out
racialized people in order to be accepted as an American,
and that in itself was a struggle. I mean, he
was repeatedly turned down for his American citizenship, and you know,
(48:55):
in the end, died like very you know, very sad
and destitute. Never how he actually felt about his choices,
about his movie choices, I'll never know. He never spoke
about it publicly as far as I can tell, which
is why I think it needs to be fictionalized because
I'll never I'll never know what was in his head.
(49:18):
But I would love to write that. I would love
to write that script. Fuck.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That sounds fascinating. Okay, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
What is one piece of writing advice you wish you
could give your former self.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Kind of relates to what I just said. The time
to write speculative work that is like work that you're
not being paid to write necessarily, is when you're young,
you know, or at least before you have a lot
of you know, financial and familial obligations. Yeah, because with
(49:55):
the novel and with the script, I mean, these these
have been bouncing around my head for so long. And
I you know, I remember even before college in high school,
I would just have like an idea for a movie
and I would just go write the script. And I
had like three screenplays written by the time I went
to college, and the idea of doing that now, I'm like,
(50:18):
I just don't know how. Like when I got to
write a birthday card on spec, I feel like I
have to like plan for it, you know what I mean, So.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Block out my calendar for that.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, you know, before you're before you're like kind of
financially handcuffed to commercial work, even commercial work that you
love to do, but like contractually obligated work. Try to
get the passion projects out then, and also not just
get them out, but also like build a routine in
(50:49):
a practice of writing for writing sake, like writing you know,
speculative works. Because I never developed that practice. I've been
a professional writer since I was fucking young, you know,
I've been a professional writer since I was twenty, and
since then, I've just been like really focused on making
(51:13):
a career out of it, and you know, with my gains,
building a life for myself, and so yeah, I just
I never developed that practice.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Fuck, that's good advice. Okay. One tip for writers trying
to get a book published.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
I think in the in the book proposal process, trying
not to get caught up in the comps part of it,
which is like the comparative books, this is a nonfiction thing.
But I also think that when you're putting together a
you know, a proposal or a query letter with a
with a novel or a work of fiction, they the publishers,
expect you to compare them to other books and kind
(51:52):
of make a case for why the market deserves your
book or wants your book. And it is just the
reality is the market is a crapshoot, right, and nobody
can really, nobody can really predict what's going to be
a successful book or not from from comparative titles. And
(52:15):
you know that the creative nonfiction writers that I work
with at King's University here, this is the thing that
causes them the most amount of anxiety. And I'm here
to tell you it's it's probably the least should I
say the least, It's one of the least important parts
of your book proposal in my experience. And I say
(52:36):
this because I didn't have comps in my book proposal,
and that book sold, So don't get caught up in it.
You know, it's good to have, but like, don't stress
about it, don't overthink it.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, and it's a time suck. It is to go
down the rabbit hole of like what.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
It's a suck suck to.
Speaker 5 (52:57):
Okay, what's your all time favorite piece of your own writing.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Well, there's there's an investigate a comedic investigative piece called
will the Real Burger Baron Please Stand Up? Which became
the movie The Last Baron, which I didn't give you
the new title. The feature title is The Lebanese Burger Mafia.
And till this day, like I've written maybe a thousand articles,
(53:23):
and till this day, this is the one people want
to talk to me about. You know. It's it's it
means a very Western Canadian thing, this burger Baron. But
it's like, what's the deal with them? Why do they
all look different? Why do they have like they all
have like weird different logos, and why are they all Lebanese?
And you know it's such a mystery and that and
(53:44):
and it is that's why I wrote the piece and
tried to find out who the original Baron was and
found out that there were multiple people claiming to be
the inventor of this. It's just a really fun and
kind of sincere, you know, article about being an immigrant
son to like owners of a family restaurant in this diaspora,
(54:05):
this like Lebanese diaspora in Alberta with a burger chain
at the center of it.
Speaker 5 (54:11):
Oh. I love knowing that that's part of the evolution
of the last baron and feature.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
That's so cool.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
I am kind of obsessed with iterating on work in
that way where it's like one form and then it,
you know, turns into something else and something else.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
I love that I do this all the time. My
other documentary, Digging in the Dirt, which is about mental
health and suicides in the Alberta oil patch oil and
gas industry, I wrote three articles on that topic before
that documentary was developed, and it was developed kind of
the combination of two iterations because my co director, Dylan
(54:50):
Reese Howard had made a unbeknownst to me, he'd written
and directed a scripted short film about the same topic
about like an oil worker who was becoming more and
more desperate and hopeless. And after he read one of
my articles and he told me about his movie and
we're like, well there's something yeah, so oh.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
My god, I love that. Okay, well this has been fantastic.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
This has been great. Yeah, this is so fun.
Speaker 5 (55:21):
Everyone should check out Pandemic University, which is how we
know each other. And I've taught a couple classes for
you through Pandemic University. And how else can listeners connect
with you online?
Speaker 1 (55:35):
You can connect with me on MSN, Messenger, I'm just true,
follow me on Twitter. Twitter's the best one. It's Omar Moaalam.
I'm sure this spelling. My last name will be in
the show notes.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
Yes, okay, awesome, Well, thank you, this has been amazing
and the wrap Chef's kiss God, I already regret this.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
So that is is it for this edition of The Bleeders.
Thanks again to Omar. What a fun interview.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
It was so great to get to know more about
this aspect of his multifaceted career.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Bleeders.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Writing is so much better with friends.
Speaker 5 (56:18):
I'm your host, Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on
social media.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
I am at.
Speaker 5 (56:23):
Courtney Cosak, last name is Kocak on Twitter and Instagram
and make sure you're signed up for the Bleeders Companion
substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives. There's so much
good stuff that I send out to my free list,
and I actually just launched a paid subscription with some
extra goodies, where I take you behind the scenes of
all my best buylines. I published a post about my
(56:45):
return to stand up comedy and how I got ready
to crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs and whether
or not I think it is worth it. I also
did one of my favorite workshops I've ever taught at
a Manifestation workshop that I did for the New Year,
but it's really good anytime of the year.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
So there's so much good stuff for free.
Speaker 5 (57:05):
Subscribers and even more for paid subscribers.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
And there is a link in the description for that.
Speaker 5 (57:13):
And join me again next time for another all new episode.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
I got a pretty good advance, you know, but like
a pretty good advance for a book, but not a
lot of money for travel.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
You know.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
The travel ended up costing about twenty thousand dollars on
its own, I think maybe more actually, so I supplemented
that with.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Grant's Today's Guest wrote a travel memoir, and he was
scrappy and fortunate enough to find extra funding to cover
the many trips he had to take around the world.
Omar Malalam wrote Praying to the West, how Muslims shaped
the Americas, but he found it was hard to tackle
that subject matter as a casual observer. He had to
(00:44):
find a new relationship with the religion he grew up
with and had grown apart.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
From now when I really started to become a I
guess that character in my own book with more of
an with kind of an arc that I was setting
up out to, I guess explore. It was one of
my earlier trips. I went to Trinidad, and I kept
being greeted and treated like a Muslim brother and kind
(01:13):
of expected to pray with people. And I found that
people were opening up to me because they thought I
was a pious Muslim person and not necessarily as like
a journalist, more like just like a curious brother. And
I felt very conflicted about that, so I felt like
(01:34):
I needed to be more After that, I felt like
I really need to be a lot more transparent with
my subjects, but I specially needed to be more transparent
with my readers.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Omar dives into the whole process, from getting it started
as a ghost writer, to how he landed his book,
deal casting his mosques, the editing process with Simon and Schuster,
some really insightful tips for writers, and more.
Speaker 3 (01:58):
In today's episode, There's nothing to writing. All you do
is sit down at a typewriter.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
And bleed.
Speaker 5 (02:11):
Welcome to the Leaders, a podcast and support group about
book writing and publishing. I'm writer and podcaster Courtney Cosak,
and each week I'll bring you new conversations with authors,
agents and publishers about how to write and sell books.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Hi, my name is Omar Moalam. I am a journalist,
documentary filmmaker, and the author of Praying to the West
How Muslims Shape the Americas.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
So I actually know Omar because I taught a few
workshops for his pandemic university, so he's watched me teach podcasting.
But this was our first time sharing the mic.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
It's nice to get a chance to experience it's the
Courtney Cossack podcast experience. I'm excited about this. I took
our daughter out to a movie yesterday, a new movie,
and she asked the most profound question. She asked, why
do they keep making movies when there are so many
movies I haven't seen? And it's like, yeah, why did
(03:20):
we keep writing books when there are so many books
we already haven't read?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Okay, well, people have more things to say.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
So funny that Omar's daughter is making grown adults question
their career path with our philosophical question. We're fragile. Please
don't come for our life decisions.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Anyway, Omar wrote.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
A very interesting and worthy book that we're going to
get into.
Speaker 5 (03:49):
But first the five questions. When did you first identify
as a writer.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
I think I might have been as young as like
seven or eight. I have a very distinct memory of
folding up pieces of paper, big pieces of paper into
these like six page folded comic books that I would write,
and they were mostly words because I was never a
good drawer, so there was just a good couple of
(04:17):
pictures on there and then trying to sell those to
my friends and neighbor friends, and one of them, this
was probably the first reality dose as a writer. One
of them told me that their father advised them, because
I think I was trying to sell them for two bucks,
that their father advised them that they should not pay
(04:38):
more than a quarter.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Bo.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
That's how valuable your art is.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
So you know what, they were right? They were right.
That was good fatherly advice.
Speaker 5 (04:52):
Oh that's hilarious. Okay, so you started young. What is
your all time favorite book?
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It's funny. I don't feel I have a very strong
connection to a single book, not the way that I
do with movies and music. And really, yeah, no, I
get asked this question and I never have a proper answer,
and I was just asked it last week. I was
teaching at a youth writing camp and we wrapped up
(05:19):
on the fifth day and I was like, okay, ama time.
I thought they wanted to talk about craft and stuff,
and they.
Speaker 3 (05:24):
Were like, what's your favorite book?
Speaker 1 (05:26):
What books do you love? I was like, oh god,
this again. I think if I were to pick one,
probably nineteen eighty four of George Orwell's nineteen eighty four
and only because I think that was the first book
that I read where I felt like I was having
a profound reading experience and where I understood the I
(05:48):
guess commentary in a book, how can you can tell
a story while also making commentary on the world and
on life? And that one resonates with me. So I
think that's probably and it's also maybe the one book
I've read more than once.
Speaker 5 (06:05):
Interesting. Okay, I like that answer. What's your dream writing routine?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Money is no object, time is no object. What's the fantasy?
Speaker 1 (06:14):
So first of all, I'm not living in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
No, you're the son of Alberta.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
I know, I know, I'm probably living like I don't know.
I'm probably living in Mexico somewhere like doesn't need to
be coastal, maybe Mexico City, maybe somewhere in the Middle East,
somewhere warm and where I can be outside to work.
(06:47):
That's the important thing. I want to be comfortably outside
to work. And then I think it would it would
involve me waking up early as I as I always do,
but actually getting to work within like the first hour
hour and a half of waking up, and then not
(07:07):
having to read a single email until maybe the end
of the day, you know, and just writing and reading
and writing and reading, because reading is writing and jotting
down notes and scribbling out you know, different structures of
different sections, experimenting with that. Picking up the phone to
(07:28):
call someone to clarify something or to get some quick research,
and they pick up, they pick up on the first ring.
Speaker 3 (07:36):
This is a good fantasy.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Oh my god, it's amazing. And they always have time
for me. That's the crazy thing. They always have time
for me. And they're never evasive. There's no question that
is off the record or that they you know, don't
want to be asked. And then I think that, you know,
probably around one o'clock, go for a jog, come back hour, eat,
(08:01):
get back to work at about three, and I work
till about six and days over, no more emails. Even
when I check the for emails, there's no.
Speaker 5 (08:10):
New ones, emails, illegal email, just like we don't have it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
Yeah, that's that's probably my dream routine.
Speaker 3 (08:20):
Yeah, what is your real writing routine?
Speaker 5 (08:23):
And I've been talking to some parents lately, so I'm
curious how much your kids factor into this.
Speaker 3 (08:29):
A fair bit.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
I think, you know, my real writing routine honestly is
other than the tropical part of it and the email
part of it, It's not that far off. Maybe it's
actually maybe it is far off. I mean, my real
writing routine is I do wake up early, but I
don't usually start working until about nine. And unfortunately, the
(08:51):
first thing I do is, you know, check emails and
messages and get caught up on all that stuff, and
that could take that. I mean, that could take me
till one o'clock sometimes, and then I go for a
jog and I think about what I want to write,
and I do a lot of planning. And sometimes if
(09:12):
I need to revisit interviews, I'll listen to my interviews
on my job, or if I'm picking up where I
left off, I might take everything that I've written up
to that point, all the text, copy it, paste it
into like a text to MP three file, and I'll
listen to it, which is a weird thing to be
(09:33):
listening to while you're jogging, you know, working up a sweat,
but it works, and then you know, get cleaned up
and try to work until six or seven. You know,
I used to be able to go pretty hard. I
used to be able to just go go and go
have dinner and keep going, stay up really late. But
(09:54):
you know that, I just I have kids now, and
it's totally different. I have a great off.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Like I are you in your office right now?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I am. Yeah. I work with two monitors, two big monitors.
And the reason that I do that is because I
like to have like word processor transcripts, you know, all,
like one monitor is just research and one is just
my word processor. And I love that, and so I
do like to work for my office. But I also
(10:23):
have like ADHD and need to change my environments quite frequently.
So I work out of libraries a lot. I probably
change environments at least once a day. And I want
to say it's, you know, because of the kids, but honestly,
it's not because of the kids. It's just like before
the kids existed, I was doing this too.
Speaker 5 (10:44):
Is it just pandemic you and your creative work?
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Like, is that all you have to juggle?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
No? No, not at all.
Speaker 3 (10:53):
Is there a whole other job?
Speaker 1 (10:54):
Yeah, kind of like I teach an m a mentor
to creative nonfiction writers at the Universally of King's College
in Halifax. I just accepted another teaching job, so I'll
be teaching another course. In the fall. I have Pandemic
University obviously that I run, have a good team there,
but I also teach there as well. I am always
(11:16):
probably working on one article and then one big project.
So that was the book before and right now it's
a documentary.
Speaker 3 (11:24):
Yeah, okay, I relate to that.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
Yeah, I mean I'm a screelancer. Yeah, but like I
love it. Like it's a hustle, but that's not just
the life I chose, but it's the life that I want.
Speaker 5 (11:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
I love having lots of stuff on the go until
it overwhelms me and it becomes a burden, and I
you know, I'm just kind of a distractable, burnt out mess.
But when the balance is there, it's it's great. I mean,
and I think, you know, coming back to having ADHD,
I think I thrive in this kind of Yeah. I
(12:01):
thrive with this kind of situation because I'm I always
seek out novelty and luckily I always have it.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Totally.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Okay, what is one piece of writing that makes you
jealous you didn't write it?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
There is a great book called Boys, What it Means
to Be a Man Today, a great nonfiction book about
sort of the the idea of manhood and how we
shape good men from the time that they are boys.
It's a wonderful book, and it's something that I think
about a lot, especially more so now that I have
(12:38):
a son as well. But it was something that I
thought about a lot for years, just dealing with my
own own stresses. And I made a documentary about men's
mental health a few years ago as well, so something
that it's a topic that I've been very interested in
for a long time. It's a wonderful book and the author,
Rachel Giza, who's a friend of mine and is just
(13:01):
the perfect writer for it. And I say that because
this book was based on Okay, So this book was
based on an article that she wrote for the Walrus
magazine cover story and the idea and the program for
boys that was sort of at the center of it.
It was an idea that I had as well, and
(13:21):
I was planning to pitch it to the Walrus and
I sat on it, and I sat on it and
I sat on it, and then like almostly, maybe two
years later, never doing anything about it, saw that.
Speaker 6 (13:32):
Someone else, somebody wrote someone else wrote it exactly right,
and for the same magazine that I wanted to write
it for and I didn't know Rachel at the time,
and so I was like.
Speaker 1 (13:43):
I was legitimately jealous. Legitimately I love that. And then
I read the piece, and then I read the book,
and this is coming back to, like why she's the
perfect person to write it. I wasn't even a parent
at the time. She was a parent of an adopted boy.
She was She's a woman, she's lesbian, married to another
(14:07):
woman who they adopted this boy, and they were trying
to raise him, you know, with their values, and we're
kind of navigating this world in a very very unique way,
and it just gave her such a unique perspective. And
she really was the perfect person to write that book.
(14:28):
And so yeah, I'm happy she did.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
I love that story. That's maybe the best one yet.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
And we became friends after that book came out and
I had a chance to meet her.
Speaker 4 (14:40):
So so before we really dig into the book, we're
going to take a brief detour to talk about Omar's
rap career.
Speaker 3 (14:52):
But just trust me, it's worth it.
Speaker 5 (14:55):
So very early in the book, you apologize, yes, are
sort of for your sins as a rapper.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
When did you first identify as a rapper.
Speaker 5 (15:09):
I was like, oh my god, I love this cure
the rap questions.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Yeah, I mean I started rapping probably when I was
like twelve thirteen, recording on cassettes, and then you know,
I had a little rhyme book with some really really
like obscene things in it. I remember my mom finding
it once and just being horrified and kind of destroyed,
(15:37):
and oh man, I just yeah, I forgot about that
memory for maybe twenty twenty years until write this very moment.
I think I was so scared that I started crying anywhere.
Speaker 3 (15:51):
We're like, this is not who I am, and this
is a different version.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
It was, yes, like you don't understand performance art. Yeah,
I was undeterred. In high school, I figured out how
to like record audio and download instrumentals. First of all,
I learned that instrumental beats like existed, Like beats of
like my favorite rap songs existed, and you can download
(16:15):
them on Napster. Wow. What an invention. And so I
just like went out and started recording songs, and I
think like by the ninth grade, I had like an
LP recorded. I would burn these CDs and figured out
how to like print little CD labels and did like
(16:38):
cover in the back and I must have sold like
thirty to fifty of those in junior hid. Well, here's
the thing. It also means that there's like thirty to
fifty of those out there in existence, and that is
the scariest that keeps me up at night courtnaying.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
That is so funny. What were you rapping about?
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Oh my, oh my god, I was rapping about what
rappers rapped about. I was using the N word like
it was. It's bad. Yes, no, it's bad. It's bad.
Look I was. I was like a weird I know,
I was a fourteen year old kid. I know, yes, exactly, No,
they exist. They exist. There's at thirty to fifty ways
(17:22):
to cancel me right now if they want.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
You know what, that's beautiful though, You're like, this is
out there. I sort of have to own it.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
I have to own it, you know what. On my
first like actual album album that I like had printed
and was semi studio recorded, I think I had the
foresight to address that in a song. So anyway, yeah,
(17:51):
you know, fourteen year old weird kid one of the
only like immigrant families in a small bird of town
with like three thousand people who you know, just didn't
fit in in any way. Also, like would watch and
rewatch Spike Lee's Malcolm X all the time and would
do like Malcolm X impressions. And I just really thought
(18:12):
that I was the blackest kid in town, really really did,
and you know, maybe to an extent I was.
Speaker 7 (18:21):
I know there is something in that though, but oh
my god, all of this is so fucking funny.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
When did you grow out of it? And we're like,
oh my god.
Speaker 1 (18:32):
I grew out of it probably like the very next year.
I don't know, I mean grew like grew out of
the like you know, the the hard know, the wanna
be black kid.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Yeah, but I continue to rap, and you know, I
continue to record, you know, music, and it's been ten
years since my last album, ten years since I was
a rapper. Last week I did come out of rap
retirement to perform in the Youth Camps talent show. I
(19:04):
was teaching at a youth writing camp and there was
a contractually obligated instructor talent show that I initially tried
to get out of, but again it was contractually obligated,
and I didn't know what else to do, so I
just I quickly, you know, found one of my old
(19:26):
beats and did a song and the kids didn't hate it.
Speaker 3 (19:30):
Give me just a couple lyrics, oh.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
God, okay. So it's like it's like my attempt at
like a club song for girls, like a body positive
club song for girls. And the hook is my wife wrote.
The hook is when life gives you mascara, make masquerade. Okay, yeah,
(19:53):
look you gotta you.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
Know, with the right beat, I can imagine it.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
It works. It's like it starts with like, ooh she okay,
you know the makeup store Mac Yeah, okay, so it's
called macface and it starts with like, ooh, she's got
her macface on. Can't take off the mask until the
mass scare is gone. Bucks and blonde with bucks to
blow swaovs be crusted on her bra to the bar
(20:21):
she goes. She's knee deep in books, sleeps with texts
because degrees won't earn themselves. So East sashimi with her
number two pencil. It's her number one. Then shoed for
krem de nude. I'm not gonna keep going.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
Okay, Well that officially concludes a wrap portion.
Speaker 3 (20:41):
That was lovely.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
I think God doesn't it.
Speaker 3 (20:54):
Okay? So Praying to the West, what's the premise?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
So Praying to the West is a travel memoir about
the lost and ignored, and sometimes it erased a history
of Muslims in the Americas. So I grew up Muslim,
don't practice it Islam, haven't for a long time, but
have always had sort of a cultural connection to it.
And around twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, when Islamophobia became quite
(21:22):
mainstream with the rise of Trump and other right wing
populists in the Western world, I wanted to address it,
but I want to address it in a reported way.
And I thought that you know, only people knew how
far back Islamic history went in the Western world, and
particularly in the Americas. It is that the Muslim presence
(21:44):
here is as old as any non indigenous faith, non
indigenous culture. People knew that maybe they wouldn't have so
many reasons to fear it if they understood just how
it has influenced society Western society already. And I thought
that the best way to do that would be to
travel to sort of important Muslim communities in America. So
(22:06):
I started in Brazil and went up to the Arctic
to very unlikely places for there to be Islamic history
and mosques, and I tell the story through existing mosques
today and why they exist and the people who built them,
the influence that they've had, and the influence too that
the regions have had on their communities as well. And
(22:27):
along the way, I sort of, you know, I deal
with my own complicated relationship with Islam and with organized
religion and self.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Yeah, I mean I super related to that part of
the book because I mean I feel like that with Catholicism,
like and I kind.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Of have never been outside of the cultural stuff attached.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
To the religion at all, and so anyway, I found
that very relatable.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
I think it's relatable for a lot of people. I
mean a lot of people who leave their religions just
kind of gradually and not because of some sort of
traumatic experience will often find themselves coming back to those
traditions because they mean something to them, and they are
also a way to connect with their families. And that's
for me, that's really what it ultimately is. It's a
(23:17):
way for me to connect with my family.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
So I'm curious, what year did you start the whole process.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
I want to talk about the book proposal and then
also and maybe this all ties together, but you have
an author's note at the beginning, and it kind of
lays out like the rules or the way that you're
thinking about the book. And I'm curious how much of
that was in the initial proposal. Were you, like this
(23:46):
is straight reporting, Were you.
Speaker 5 (23:48):
A piece of it initially and did you plan on
tackling your faith in that way or is that something
that happened, you know, during the process.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
This is a great question, So I would say that,
so the first trip, there's about thirteen trips that I
took for it. The first trip was in March twenty
seventeen that was in the Arctic, and the last one
was to Bahia, Brazil, and that was in December twenty nineteen.
(24:18):
So I kind of did it backwards over over two
and a half years. I mean, I did it out
of order, basically, And I mean I knew that I
was going to insert my opinions in the book. I
knew it was going to be a first person book
that I do first person journalism generally, but I did
not think that it was going to be a memoir
(24:40):
until probably the last couple drafts of the book. Proposal
and yeah, and I don't remember exactly why, but I
think I just felt like historical nonfiction can be a
difficult thing to relate to people unless you can show
(25:04):
them how it relates to you. And ultimately, I mean,
I think that using first person narratives, it just kind
of gives people like a vehicle, a vessel to sort
of live the story through. Now, when I really started
to become I guess a character in my own book
(25:25):
with more of an with kind of an arc that
I was setting out to I guess explore. It was
one of my earlier trips. I went to Trinidad, and
I kept being greeted and treated like a Muslim brother
and kind of expected to pray with people. And I
(25:46):
found that people were opening up to me because they
thought I was, you know, the highest Muslim person and
not necessarily as like a journalist, more like just like
a curious brother. And I felt very conflicted about that,
so I felt like I needed to be more After that,
I felt like I really need to be a lot
more transparent with my subjects, but I specially needed to
(26:09):
be more transparent with my readers and let them know
sort of where I'm coming from what my biases are,
why I have these biases, and that ultimately led me
to explore more of my you know, personal experiences growing
up in the faith.
Speaker 3 (26:26):
So the book proposal process, how did that evolve?
Speaker 1 (26:31):
I mean I knew that I wanted to write a book.
I'd ghost written two books already with Simon Schuster. Yeah,
and they really liked working with me, and they were
basically like, Okay, what do you want to write now?
You know, we're interested in publishing one of your books.
And so it was it was quite a like privileged opportunity.
(26:53):
I worked with my agent on a couple of ideas
and that's how this came about. Like I you know,
I told her what I was in sit In and
what I wanted to do and what I want to
set out to do. And I had an idea of
writing about Islamic history in Canada actually, and she was
like too small, Like you have this opportunity to sell
(27:16):
an international you know, to sell a book to Simon
and Schuster and tell an international story. She was like,
why not America or North America? Rather, I was like,
well why not the Americas? So yeah, I mean that's
that's kind of how it started, and I probably spent
about two or three months doing historical research and putting
(27:41):
together maybe the first draft of the book proposal. And
it went through seven drafts before it went to the publisher,
and we only sent it to the one publisher because
they gave me a great offer and that was that nice.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
So the travel part of it, you visited like forty
to fifty mosques and then honed in on like.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Thirteen thirteen of them.
Speaker 3 (28:01):
Yeah, so how did you pick? How did you cast
your mosques? And what were the travel logistics of that?
Speaker 5 (28:10):
And I guess you knew that it was going to
be set up, so there was some funding and did
you have to supplement that?
Speaker 3 (28:17):
Like how did that work?
Speaker 1 (28:17):
Yeah? I got a pretty good evance, you know, but
like a pretty good advance for a book, but not
a lot of money for travel right now. The travel
ended up costing about twenty thousand dollars on its own,
I think maybe more actually, so I supplemented that with grant's.
I don't know what the situation is like in other countries,
(28:38):
but in Canada.
Speaker 3 (28:40):
Not as good. I can tell you that.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Yeah, we have a lot of grant a lot of
funding sources for the arts. I mean it comes from
our inferiority complex with America and this perpetual fear of
Canadians that we will not have any culture because American
culture is so dominant that we have to we have
to subsidize it, and we also have to restrict the
(29:05):
amount of American content that is on our airwaves and
in our I don't want to say, in our bookstores,
but maybe there are rules against certain percentages. I don't know,
but basically there is a decades long effort at like
every branch of government here to support and encourage the
(29:27):
development of Canadian arts, and that's why we have all
these grants. So I was able to secure about twenty
thousand dollars from three separate branches of government and sort
of arts councils.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
God bless Canada. That is amazing.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
Yeah, I mean I have a friend who has received
seventy thousand dollars so far to write her first novel,
like what will be her first published novel? Now, I
mean it's an amazing idea and it's an important book,
and she obviously has been writing some incredible excerpts and
outlines in order to get this funding. But yeah, I
(30:10):
mean it exists. So yeah, yeah, so that's that's how
I did that. As far as picking the mosques, it
was a mix of sort of I guess, triage and triangulation.
I knew that, you know, some mosques, believe it or not,
are kind of famous. So the First Mosque in Canada,
(30:34):
which is actually here in Edmonton, is one of those
famous ones. The Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, which
is sort of seen as like the Middle Eastern and
Muslim hub of America, also another famous one. You know.
It's one that like Washington sends diplomats to in order
to improve Muslim relations. So there are some mosques like
(30:55):
that where it's like, yes, those I want to know
their stories and tell their stories. Other times it was like,
you know, with Trinidad, I went there, I probably went
to ten different mosques, and I was looking for one
that best represented the story of that country and that
country is like Muslim population. Other Times I just kind
of like stumbled upon this in my research and I
(31:17):
was like, yes, I need to get there. So that
would be the mosque of an indigenous Mayan community in
southern Mexico that I was not expecting was like I
need to be there, and then you know, situations like
that would make me decide also what some of the
redundancies were. So there was a there's a mosque in
Argentina that I wanted to go to, but it was
(31:37):
a little redundant of the Mexican one. So that's kind
of how I how I cast them, I guess.
Speaker 5 (31:45):
So then, were you writing as you go or did
you wait until the research was done and then plow
through a draft.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
How did that work? I tried to write as I go,
because you know, each which chapter could have been its
own book, and it was a lot of information to
hold in my head, and I knew that I could
not possibly retain this information very well. I'm also like,
no matter how many notes I take, I will forget
(32:16):
you know, what's in my notes, and I just end
up having to like do the research again. So I
did my best to avoid that, and it went well
for the first while, and then it all fell apart
and I ended up writing probably the last half of
the book after my last trip, after you know, returning
from Brazil, which you know, it made things really difficult,
(32:37):
but at that point I didn't have a choice. I
just I was good. I had to do. But if
I mean, if I could do it again, I'd give
myself more time. I would have avoided distractions, you know, articles, assignments,
any other things that came up. I think I made
a documentary in that period, so you know, no regrets
(32:57):
there that. I mean, that was my first first film.
But I think I just would have just given myself
more time to make sure that there was like maybe
three months between each you know, trip and draft. I
didn't need a clean draft, but you know, I needed
(33:18):
probably like you know, a month of research before the trip,
a week of the trip, probably two to three more
weeks of like more research in outlining and transcribing and
note taking, and then a month of writing for each chapter.
So if I could do it again, that's what I do.
Speaker 3 (33:38):
Yeah, that's smart, but I mean I get it.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
We travel for private parts unknown, and sometimes you just
can't control all the other stuff that is going on
in your life.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
So it's also it's also kind of an episodic book.
It can be read out of order, right, and each
chapter doesn't connect so closely to the next. So but
other books, you know, books with more tighter narratives, you
probably can't do that.
Speaker 5 (34:08):
So you finish a draft that you send to Simon
and Schuster. What was the editing process?
Speaker 1 (34:14):
Yeah, it changed. It started with like edits On the
first couple of chapters that I delivered, just to kind
of like set the tone, make sure that we all
sort of agreed on like the right structure and kind
of finding a bit of a blueprint for each chapter.
And then once that was done, then I was just
sending Like I kept sending things along as they came,
(34:36):
but I was receiving them in big chunks, and I
think like at the end it was like the last
four remaining chapters just kind of all came together and
then it was a little bit more you know, contained
after that where it was like edits On, like a
full draft going back and forth, but it was all
bits and pieces totally out of order until that point.
Speaker 5 (35:00):
Staying So how long I think I heard you say
like it was supposed to take one and it took
three years or whatever, Like how long was the process?
Speaker 1 (35:09):
Yeah? I think I signed. I mean I must have
signed that book deal in summer, I want to say
summer or fall of twenty seventeen. And I seem to
remember a year or maybe a year and a half
deadline from that point.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
And yeah, no, you were like, I'm still traveling, so.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, a year. Yeah I was. I was still traveling
at that point. I got I got some got some extensions,
and then COVID hit and that delayed things as well,
probably added another six months.
Speaker 3 (35:46):
But you're like sending them chapters. Yeah, so they know
you're working, they're not worried about it.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Yeah, and you know what, that's that's honestly, that's part
of the reason to also send chapters, you know, piecemeal
like that.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
That's a good hack.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
Yeah, it's a good.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Ad.
Speaker 3 (36:03):
Buys you two extra years's.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (36:07):
Okay, So I'm curious about the fact checking process for
a book like this.
Speaker 1 (36:13):
Yeah, fact checking in books doesn't really exist unless you,
as an author, make it exists. And this is this
is one of the Yeah, this is one of the
things I struggle with the most in publishing. One of
my first jobs in the industry was as a fact
checker for a magazine. I was an intern, but like large,
(36:33):
probably fifty percent of my job was fact checking something
that I don't just take it seriously, but I actually
take joy in it. And I just have so much
respect for the fact checking process. So it was quite
discerning to realize, not with this book, but with the
first couple of books that I that I ghost wrote,
that there was no fact checking process. You know, there's
(36:55):
a copy editing process, and in that they might check
the spellings of things or correct geography something like that,
but no, no one's looking at your sources. And so
I asked for a fact checker and time to fact check,
and my publisher they were so accommodating this whole process.
(37:18):
They assigned one of their editorial interns to do about
half the fact checking, all sort of like the low
hanging fruit that they could fact check by checking for
sources online. And then I spent about one thousand dollars
to hire a fact checker, a professional journalist and a
(37:40):
friend of mine. She probably deserved two thousand dollars for it.
She fact checked sort of the higher hanging fruit, the
stuff that you might actually need to call someone and say, like,
what did you mean by this? Did you actually say this?
Can you confirm this? That kind of stuff? So, yeah,
I mean, I I believe that fact checking should be
(38:01):
done independently of the writer. But if I didn't have
the money for that, and if I didn't, if the
publishers didn't have the resources for that, I would have
to do it myself. A book with a topic this sensitive,
I just I would not be able to I just
wouldn't be able to sleep. And look, there were errors
really in every chapter. Of course, of course I've been
(38:24):
a fact checker. I know that there has never been
an article. I think there's never been an article that
I fact checked over say five hundred words that did
not have an error in it. Everything has an error
in it, unless everything that hasn't been fact checked has
errors in it. I can say this categorically because I've
(38:47):
seen it. I know it.
Speaker 7 (38:48):
You're so right, Because sometimes, okay, I'll do like a
radio story or whatever, and just in the handing over process,
just in me turning it over to the digital team
or whatever, even if everything's right on my end, there.
Speaker 3 (39:03):
Will just be like this is four people running down
the green and it's really three people.
Speaker 5 (39:10):
Or you know what I mean, just in that process,
I'm like, oh my god, you're so right.
Speaker 3 (39:15):
Everything has an error.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
Everything. You have to have a second paradse to comb
through it. We don't really have those resources in publishing anymore.
Newspapers never really did this because newspapers, you know, they
can run a correction the very next day. I think
magazines which would print you know, weekly, monthly, bi monthly, quarterly,
(39:38):
bi annually, they have always been extra cautious about this
and invested in that, but less and less so these days.
I think they are maybe using their online platforms as
a bit of a crutch to excuse cutting their fact
checking resources, because they can now also correct things immediately
(39:59):
when they learn them, which is great. But also, what
about the printed version that's sitting on the you know,
in the doctor's office for the next two years.
Speaker 3 (40:07):
That is very interesting.
Speaker 5 (40:10):
I saw that there's no audible yet, so I want
to know if you're going to be voicing.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Okay, but I gotta tell you something amazing. I learned
recently that the first book I ever wrote called Amazing Cats.
Speaker 3 (40:25):
I love it.
Speaker 1 (40:26):
Are you familiar with this book? No?
Speaker 3 (40:29):
But I love the title. I'm already on board.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
In two thousand and eight, I wanted desperately to be
a writer. I was searching Craigslist Craigslist for jobs, and
I found a job that said something like looking for
writers to write true stories about cats. It's like, Okay, Hi,
I've published a couple articles, and this.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Is it that is amazing.
Speaker 1 (40:52):
It's called Amazing Cats Stories of Intuition, Compassion, mystery, and
Extraordinary Feats. I found out by accident two months ago
in May. I found out that they made an audio
version of that book last fall. I don't know why
(41:15):
thirteen years later they would make an audio version of
that book. I'm curious. I think i'm old royalties. So
I'm gonna have to look into that.
Speaker 3 (41:24):
Oh my god, I'm gonna have to go check that out.
I'm gonna have to listen to Amazing Cats.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
So yeah, Praying to the West not on Audible yet,
Amazing Cats on audible dot Com. You can can get
it with your free credit.
Speaker 3 (41:39):
So wait, are there plans for an audiobook for Praying
to the West currently?
Speaker 1 (41:43):
No, No, we're working on the plans for the paperback version.
Speaker 3 (41:47):
Okay, it's a slow rollout.
Speaker 5 (41:49):
Yeah, okay, So your book came out during COVID. What
was the book to her experience like and the reaction?
Speaker 1 (41:57):
Yeah, the reaction was great. I got really positive reviews
and feedback right out the gate, and you know, I
just I felt super lucky and grateful for that, but
you know, there wasn't really I mean, there was a
virtual book tour, which was busy, but it was also
a virtual book tour, right, and it was in September, October,
(42:20):
November of twenty twenty one, so you know, by then
people were pretty zoom fatigued and so they just weren't
coming out to online events as much. So that you know,
it was it was quiet, like, it was fine. I
had some great conversations. It also like really worked out
for me personally and for my family personally, because it
(42:41):
meant that I could do this all from home at
a very busy time. My last documentary came out at
the same time in September twenty twenty one, so it
was nice to be home for that. But I didn't
actually go travel for my first like book festival until
last May, like until May twenty twenty two, and that
(43:03):
was wonderful. They treated us so well, and I was like,
oh my god, I really missed out on like the
author experience. I really really missed out on it, and
I was so happy, but I was also a little
bit sad, you know, and kind of sad for like
younger writers too, you know, those ones who do have
the energy and maybe the you know, excuse to travel
(43:25):
and and have so much a benefit from that experience.
Who don't get didn't get to have it on their
you know, on their first books. There's there's always going
to be more books. Hopefully there will be more experiences,
you know, book tour experiences. But yeah, you know, it's
it's uh, it was a bittersweet thing. I went to
the Fold Festival, the Festival Literary Diversity in in the
(43:47):
Metro Toronto area in Brampton, and so it was a
bittersweet experience. They sent the authors to the airport in
a limo. They were really like, you know, these we
were like sick kids. They treated us like sick kids
who'd like just come out of the Ronald McDonald's house.
They were like, oh, they've been they've been through so
(44:08):
much during this pandemic. Like they really they really deserved this.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
You know.
Speaker 3 (44:13):
That's sweet though.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
It was so sweet.
Speaker 5 (44:16):
I saw that you got You've gotten to go to
some award shows. I think you won recently.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Yeah, I recently was awarded one of the Lieutenant Governor
of Alberta's Emerging Artists Awards.
Speaker 3 (44:29):
Congratulations, thank you.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
And the very next day, received the Wilfred Eggleston Nonfiction Prize,
which is the top nonfiction prize in the province, for
Praying to the West Amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:42):
Your parents and your family look super proud of you,
So that was adorable.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Looks can be deceiving. Yeah, I'm joking. I'm joking. They are.
They are. And I'm super grateful to have like such
supportive family members you know people have. When people ask me, like,
how do you write this book, it was such a
daunting efforts, Like, yeah, I married like an extremely supportive
(45:07):
person and have like a really supportive mother who looked
after our kids when I was away for twenty five
percent of my child's first two years on earth. It
meant a lot. Actually, you know, when I won the
Wilfred Eggleston Award, I went up there with like, you know,
another planned speech, and I just started. I brought my daughter,
(45:31):
she was my plus one, and as I went up there,
I looked across the room and she was just licking
the like pamphlet, like the program for the award show,
just to see what it tastes like. And I just
I started laughing and I just started like thanking her.
And then my wife and the next thing I know,
(45:52):
I was just crying. Oh yeah, thanked her, my wife,
my mom and like the women in my life who've
supported me and made like literally made this book possible
to write. And I just started crying.
Speaker 5 (46:07):
Okay, that's beautiful, And with that we will go to
our PostScript segment.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
Let's do it.
Speaker 3 (46:22):
First of all, what's next for you?
Speaker 5 (46:23):
Can you share anything you're working on and any bucket
list writing goals?
Speaker 1 (46:29):
Yeah, I'm working on a feature version of the short
documentary that came out in the fall called The Last Baron,
which is about a rogue burger chain called Burger Baron
and how it became kind of a pathway to the
immigrant dream. It came out on CBCGEM in September, was
quite popular, and you know, from that response, we started
(46:53):
crowdfunding and investing for a feature and I'm working on
that right now and it should be ready to submit
for fe festivals by the end of August, I guess,
and then we'll see hopefully it'll be in you know,
first festival in January hopefully, which also happens to be
when Sun dances, so you know, high bars, Yeah, I believe.
(47:14):
I believe in high bars. So yeah, that's that's what
I'm working on right now. A couple of the things
here and there, but that's that's the big one. Like
I said, I have one big project at a time.
That's my big project.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
And what's what's the bucket list?
Speaker 1 (47:27):
Oh Man, Praying to the West kick my ass. And
I don't think I will write another reported nonfiction book
for a while, maybe a few more years. It just
it was just so it took so much out of me.
But I would like to. I think I'd like to
(47:48):
start writing some more fiction. I have an idea for
a novel and about a fourth of it that I
completed three years ago. Now I think it's time to
dust that off. But actually, what like my dream project,
and hopefully I should be able to start this by
the end of the summer, is to write a feature
(48:11):
screenplay about Frank Lactin, who is a distant cousin of mine,
who was the first Arab American movie star and lived
a incredibly fascinating life. I learned about him in the
process of writing Praying to the West actually and wrote
kind of the definitive article on him. He was a
very very complicated man, a silent film actor, who basically
(48:35):
played every ethnicity, always negatively. He kind of sold out
racialized people in order to be accepted as an American,
and that in itself was a struggle. I mean, he
was repeatedly turned down for his American citizenship, and you know,
(48:55):
in the end, died like very you know, very sad
and destitute. Never how he actually felt about his choices,
about his movie choices, I'll never know. He never spoke
about it publicly as far as I can tell, which
is why I think it needs to be fictionalized because
I'll never I'll never know what was in his head.
(49:18):
But I would love to write that. I would love
to write that script. Fuck.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
That sounds fascinating. Okay, I'm looking forward to it.
Speaker 2 (49:26):
What is one piece of writing advice you wish you
could give your former self.
Speaker 1 (49:33):
Kind of relates to what I just said. The time
to write speculative work that is like work that you're
not being paid to write necessarily, is when you're young,
you know, or at least before you have a lot
of you know, financial and familial obligations. Yeah, because with
(49:55):
the novel and with the script, I mean, these these
have been bouncing around my head for so long. And
I you know, I remember even before college in high school,
I would just have like an idea for a movie
and I would just go write the script. And I
had like three screenplays written by the time I went
to college, and the idea of doing that now, I'm like,
(50:18):
I just don't know how. Like when I got to
write a birthday card on spec, I feel like I
have to like plan for it, you know what I mean, So.
Speaker 3 (50:28):
Block out my calendar for that.
Speaker 1 (50:29):
Yeah, you know, before you're before you're like kind of
financially handcuffed to commercial work, even commercial work that you
love to do, but like contractually obligated work. Try to
get the passion projects out then, and also not just
get them out, but also like build a routine in
(50:49):
a practice of writing for writing sake, like writing you know,
speculative works. Because I never developed that practice. I've been
a professional writer since I was fucking young, you know,
I've been a professional writer since I was twenty, and
since then, I've just been like really focused on making
(51:13):
a career out of it, and you know, with my gains,
building a life for myself, and so yeah, I just
I never developed that practice.
Speaker 3 (51:23):
Fuck, that's good advice. Okay. One tip for writers trying
to get a book published.
Speaker 1 (51:31):
I think in the in the book proposal process, trying
not to get caught up in the comps part of it,
which is like the comparative books, this is a nonfiction thing.
But I also think that when you're putting together a
you know, a proposal or a query letter with a
with a novel or a work of fiction, they the publishers,
expect you to compare them to other books and kind
(51:52):
of make a case for why the market deserves your
book or wants your book. And it is just the
reality is the market is a crapshoot, right, and nobody
can really, nobody can really predict what's going to be
a successful book or not from from comparative titles. And
(52:15):
you know that the creative nonfiction writers that I work
with at King's University here, this is the thing that
causes them the most amount of anxiety. And I'm here
to tell you it's it's probably the least should I
say the least, It's one of the least important parts
of your book proposal in my experience. And I say
(52:36):
this because I didn't have comps in my book proposal,
and that book sold, So don't get caught up in it.
You know, it's good to have, but like, don't stress
about it, don't overthink it.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
Yeah, and it's a time suck. It is to go
down the rabbit hole of like what.
Speaker 1 (52:53):
It's a suck suck to.
Speaker 5 (52:57):
Okay, what's your all time favorite piece of your own writing.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Well, there's there's an investigate a comedic investigative piece called
will the Real Burger Baron Please Stand Up? Which became
the movie The Last Baron, which I didn't give you
the new title. The feature title is The Lebanese Burger Mafia.
And till this day, like I've written maybe a thousand articles,
(53:23):
and till this day, this is the one people want
to talk to me about. You know. It's it's it
means a very Western Canadian thing, this burger Baron. But
it's like, what's the deal with them? Why do they
all look different? Why do they have like they all
have like weird different logos, and why are they all Lebanese?
And you know it's such a mystery and that and
(53:44):
and it is that's why I wrote the piece and
tried to find out who the original Baron was and
found out that there were multiple people claiming to be
the inventor of this. It's just a really fun and
kind of sincere, you know, article about being an immigrant
son to like owners of a family restaurant in this diaspora,
(54:05):
this like Lebanese diaspora in Alberta with a burger chain
at the center of it.
Speaker 5 (54:11):
Oh. I love knowing that that's part of the evolution
of the last baron and feature.
Speaker 3 (54:18):
That's so cool.
Speaker 5 (54:19):
I am kind of obsessed with iterating on work in
that way where it's like one form and then it,
you know, turns into something else and something else.
Speaker 1 (54:28):
I love that I do this all the time. My
other documentary, Digging in the Dirt, which is about mental
health and suicides in the Alberta oil patch oil and
gas industry, I wrote three articles on that topic before
that documentary was developed, and it was developed kind of
the combination of two iterations because my co director, Dylan
(54:50):
Reese Howard had made a unbeknownst to me, he'd written
and directed a scripted short film about the same topic
about like an oil worker who was becoming more and
more desperate and hopeless. And after he read one of
my articles and he told me about his movie and
we're like, well there's something yeah, so oh.
Speaker 3 (55:14):
My god, I love that. Okay, well this has been fantastic.
Speaker 1 (55:18):
This has been great. Yeah, this is so fun.
Speaker 5 (55:21):
Everyone should check out Pandemic University, which is how we
know each other. And I've taught a couple classes for
you through Pandemic University. And how else can listeners connect
with you online?
Speaker 1 (55:35):
You can connect with me on MSN, Messenger, I'm just true,
follow me on Twitter. Twitter's the best one. It's Omar Moaalam.
I'm sure this spelling. My last name will be in
the show notes.
Speaker 5 (55:47):
Yes, okay, awesome, Well, thank you, this has been amazing
and the wrap Chef's kiss God, I already regret this.
Speaker 3 (55:59):
So that is is it for this edition of The Bleeders.
Thanks again to Omar. What a fun interview.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
It was so great to get to know more about
this aspect of his multifaceted career.
Speaker 5 (56:12):
Thank you for joining me for this episode of The Bleeders.
Speaker 3 (56:16):
Writing is so much better with friends.
Speaker 5 (56:18):
I'm your host, Courtney Cosack, and hey, let's connect on
social media.
Speaker 3 (56:22):
I am at.
Speaker 5 (56:23):
Courtney Cosak, last name is Kocak on Twitter and Instagram
and make sure you're signed up for the Bleeders Companion
substack for all kinds of newsletter exclusives. There's so much
good stuff that I send out to my free list,
and I actually just launched a paid subscription with some
extra goodies, where I take you behind the scenes of
all my best buylines. I published a post about my
(56:45):
return to stand up comedy and how I got ready
to crush my showcase. I wrote about MFAs and whether
or not I think it is worth it. I also
did one of my favorite workshops I've ever taught at
a Manifestation workshop that I did for the New Year,
but it's really good anytime of the year.
Speaker 3 (57:03):
So there's so much good stuff for free.
Speaker 5 (57:05):
Subscribers and even more for paid subscribers.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
And there is a link in the description for that.
Speaker 5 (57:13):
And join me again next time for another all new episode.
Speaker 3 (57:17):
In the meantime, Happy Bleeding
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