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," offering tips on monetizing your writing and navigating the content-creation journey.
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Your ear catches what your eye skips
Published about 6 hours ago • 3 min read
Hi Reader,
Time for my weekly update, and it starts with something I've been sitting on for months.
My Bethesda Magazine "Women Who Inspire" feature is out. I spent part of the summer interviewing three of this year's honorees —women working in journalism, the arts, and education— and those were the conversations that reminded me why I got into this in the first place. Go read them. They're better than anything I'd put in a newsletter.
Meanwhile, on the production side: one of my client books is in soft launch — the ebook is live and taking pre-orders while the print editions come together behind it. And soon enough I'll be adding a second client book to my imprint, Suburban Media Press. Two titles moving at once. The thrill of watching a manuscript stop being a Word file and start looking like a book has not worn off yet.
I also had three discovery calls this week with people who all described the same problem in different words. I'm glad I can solve their issues with my book coaching, publishing, and ghostwriting services.
Busy week. In the flow. Grateful, as always.
Stay creative, Natasha
✍️ This week's insight
Read your opening page out loud before you send it anywhere.
No, not in your head, actually out loud, to an empty room if you have to.
Your ear catches what your eye skips: the sentence too long to say in one breath, the word you've used four times on one page, the line that sounds smart on the screen and flat in the air.
It's the fastest edit that costs nothing and catches the most.
Try it this week on whatever you're working on, and let me know what you unraveled.
🖼️ Photo of the week
Most of my problems get resolved after a walk in the woods.
🎁 The Writer's Goody Bag
✍️ Must-Have Tool: Atticus. Writing and formatting in one place, which almost nothing else does. You draft in it, format in it, and export print-ready PDF and EPUB files that KDP and IngramSpark will actually accept — instead of finishing your manuscript and then handing it to a second piece of software and hoping.
🎙️ One episode worth your time — Amazon Was Supposed to Kill the Bookstore. James Daunt Had Other Plans. Freakonomics, 32 minutes. Daunt started with one shop in London and has since turned around both Waterstones and Barnes & Noble — by handing buying decisions back to individual stores instead of running them from head office. Worth it for any author, because it's a straight answer to a question we mostly speculate about: how books actually get in front of people who weren't already looking for them.
🌍 From My Little Corner of The World
I was the guest this time. I sat down with Jared Bauman on the Niche Pursuits Podcast, and we went deep on the business behind the writing — how I actually use Substack, LinkedIn, and YouTube to bring in clients, and which free things are worth giving away. If you've ever wondered how a writing practice turns into a business that feeds itself, watch it here.
I recently sat down with Anjeanette Carter, a Substack bestseller, seven-figure copywriter, and agency owner. She showed up with her Fiverr “over $1 million” trophy (it currently holds up her ring light), and I showed up with the hard questions. You can view the interview below (Please consider subscribing to my YouTube channel).
Discover the secrets to successful publishing with industry expert Terry Whalin. In this episode, we dive into the myths surrounding book publishing and how to effectively market your work.
P.S.: If you enjoy my podcast, you might want to keep me caffeinated, and maybe, maybe buy me a cup of coffee or two. I would really appreciate it.
📣 Featured this week: They Called Me Wyatt
The narrator of my first novel is murdered on her birthday.
She wakes up inside the body of a small boy in Seattle.
He is three years old and barely speaking.
She remembers exactly who she was.
The words will not come out of that mouth.
She has to work out who killed her without being able to ask.
She solves it in silence.
They Called Me Wyatt is my debut novel, a murder mystery that runs between Maryland and Seattle.
I wrote it with three kids and a full-time job, by gluing my butt to the chair every morning at 6:00 am
If you want to support an indie author like myself and you are into speculative multicultural fiction, you can grab it here.
🚀 Work with me
1:1 Coaching — Write Your Book in 120 Days.
If you're stuck rewriting chapter one for the fifth time, you don't need more willpower. You need structure and someone in your corner. Here's what we do together:
Build a clear, chapter-by-chapter roadmap, so you always know what to write next
Set a realistic writing cadence and hold yourself accountable to it
Work through the stuck points — the messy middle, the opening you can't crack, the doubt
Get you to a finished draft you can actually publish
Here is what my client Noami, whose debut non-fiction book is coming in the fall, had to say about my coaching time with her.
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," offering tips on monetizing your writing and navigating the content-creation journey.
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