I'm a Jordanian-American author and journalist with over two decades of experience.I help authors, both aspiring and established, publish their books through book coaching or memoir ghostwriting. I publish the weekly newsletter "The Storyteller Quest," which offers tips on monetizing your writing and navigating the content creation journey.
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The update I've waited years to send
Published about 24 hours agoΒ β’Β 4 min read
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Hi friends,
It's been a while, and it's time for an update on what's been going on with my writing business. Things are going well, and I can finally say I have a steady stream of income and recurring clients. It took me years to get to this point and a lot of blood, sweat, and tears (to use a cliche), but I'm finally there. Here is a bit of what has been going on in the past few months:
π I'm now publishing my clients' books through my own imprint. I now have a full self-publishing support arm β interior design, cover, ISBN, distribution, the whole production pipeline. If you've been writing a book and dreading the "what do I do once it's done" part, that's now something I handle alongside coaching. The first book my company has published is the memoir by my book coaching client, Karen Holmes. You can read her story here.β
π£ And marketing. Because writing the book is half the work, the other half is making sure the people who need it actually find it. I'm now offering launch and ongoing marketing support for my clients' books, too.
π₯ My first children's book is out.The Lonely Cucumberβ a small, gentle multicultural book about belonging and healthy eating that started as a bedtime story for my kids and grew into something I'm proud to put in the world. It's available on Amazon. If you have small humans in your life who need a quiet story about finding their people, this is for them.
Meanwhile, I continue ghostwriting and book coaching.
That's been my quiet spring, and yeah, it has not been easy to get to that phase. If you want to walk a similar path to mine, where you run your own creative business, then stay resilient, stay positive, and, as always, stay creative.
Best,
Natasha
βοΈ This week's insight: The chapter you're avoiding
A trick I sharpened from Hemingway.
Don't stop writing at the end of a chapter.
Stop mid-sentence, when you know exactly what comes next.
βοΈ Tool of the Day: Sultana β my AI Chief of Staff
This is the most useful thing I've built for myself this year. Sultana is a custom AI system I set up using Claude and a workspace tool called Cowork. She runs the operational layer of my business β drafts emails in my voice, surfaces priorities every morning, tracks every client and lead, manages my content calendar, and (full transparency) helped me put together this very newsletter.
Why I'm telling you this: most writers I work with lose 8-12 hours a week to email, scheduling, and admin. That's a full writing day. If you've been thinking, "there must be a better way to handle all this so I can actually write," an AI Chief of Staff might be the answer. I'm planning to write a longer piece on how I built her. Reply to this email if you'd like me to send it your way when it's out.
π§ Read and Write With Natasha Podcast
She wrote 31 children's books in six months.
Twenty-seven of them in fourteen days.
I assumed it was a typo.
It wasn't.
So I asked her the question every writer secretly answers: where do the ideas actually come from?
She hears them.
Walking the dog.
Lying awake at 2 a.m.
If you want to get inspired and discover ways to find new ideas, watch this one. (Please, consider subscribing to my channel)
Veteran Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab and I launched "Two Arab Journalists, One Levant," a joint Substack with a weekly live show on Mondays at 12 PM ET. We cover what English-language outlets often miss in the Arab world. Subscribe here. ββ
I've been commissioned byBethesda Magazine to profile three women for their "Women Who Inspire 2026" feature. The honorees won't be public until the issue runs. Can't wait to share the article with you. β
I will be running a free session on how to start your podcast from your bedroom. The session is organized by Women Business Owners of Montgomery County. You can sign up for free here.β β
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π Work with me
She found me on LinkedIn. β Then she wrote a book while running a company across 30+ countries. β βRasha Oudeh sent me a DM. β She already had the material for an amazing book. β A lifetime of it. β Born in Jordan, eldest of seven, she started with $200 a month in Amman and built her way across Frankfurt and ZΓΌrich with no safety net. β Today, she's the CEO of a Swiss healthcare manufacturer. β What she didn't have was the shape. β That gap β between having a book in you and having a book β is exactly why book coaching exists. β So here's what we actually did. β β We built the structure. A lifetime of stories with no order became an arc a reader could follow. β β We decided what to leave out. Every strong book is defined as much by what's NOT in it. A lot of coaching is just permission to cut. β β We demystified publishing. The real options, what each demands, how to choose with clear eyes. Most writers stall here β not on the writing. β My job was never to write her book for her. β It was to help her see it clearly enough to write it herself, then keep her moving when most people quietly stall. β Her book,Leadership Without Sugarcoating,is out now. β
My client Rasha Oudeh with her new book
If Rasha found the road while running a company across continents, "I'm too busy" gets a lot harder to justify. β Got a story, a body of experience, or a half-finished draft stuck between your head and the page? β
π Book a free 30-minute Discovery call below
No pressure. Just clarity on what your book needs next.
I'm a Jordanian-American author and journalist with over two decades of experience.I help authors, both aspiring and established, publish their books through book coaching or memoir ghostwriting. I publish the weekly newsletter "The Storyteller Quest," which offers tips on monetizing your writing and navigating the content creation journey.
She found me on LinkedIn. That's worth noting, because if you're reading this, you're probably the kind of person who finds people on LinkedIn and then talks yourself out of sending the message. Rasha Oudeh sent that DM because she had a goal and she was determined. She already had enough material for a book. What she didn't have yet was the shape, and that gap, between having a book in you and having a book. This is exactly the reason book coaching exists. So I want to walk you through what...
Hi Reader, I want to tell you about Karen. When she came to me at the end of last year, she'd been trying to write her memoir for years, the story of living most of her life in a body she didn't want, and her journey as a transgender woman. She had the story. She had the urgency. What she didn't have was a finish line. So she enrolled in my program, Write Your Book in 120 Days. Then she did something most aspiring memoirists never do. She showed up. Every week, Karen wrote 4,000β5,000 words....
Hi Reader, Time for real honesty here. I'm going to be vulnerable, so buckle up! I used to think amazing success stories only happened to other writers. That big clients were reserved for the lucky ones. For all the tech bros online who keep flexing. That I was too βsuburban mom,β too invisible, tooβ¦ ordinary. These things don't happen to me. Not in the cards for me (or whatever limiting beliefs I used to tell myself). Once a suburban mom, always a suburban mom Until I sent one DM. Yes, one...
