See the article below: This plan for White Cloud Press to publish my Fatima book did not happen. Fatima’s Touch is published by Ruhaniat Press. For more information see http://www.ruhaniat.org/index.php/work/ruhaniat-press

I just finished a phone conversation with Steve Scholl of White Cloud Press in Ashland, and my book will be published there in 2017. Yes. I can celebrate, and will be— over the next year. FATIMA’S TOUCH, POEMS AND STORIES OF THE PROPHET’S DAUGHTER.

I have felt the urgency to make this happen, as world events usher in terrible stories linked to Islam, driving away any association with kindness and compassion, with no thought to the family visited by Angel Gabriel at the beginning of the seventh century, or the man Muhammad, who believed he was in the line of Abraham of the Old Testament. FATIMA’S TOUCH looks at her life based on historical writings in fifty-three poems. I should stop here, because much can change in a year, but for the moment, this is it.

[There are three poems from the book and an interview  with me in the April issue of AJI Magazine: http://www.ajimagazine.com ]

I remember living on a small sailboat, a thirty foot trimaran,  in 1970. We were sailing down the coast of Baha, with no radio or cellphone, just point-to-point navigation, calculating latitude and longitude. We’d had our dingy stolen near San Diego so we needed a dock to land. There was no road down Western Baha in those days. All that was left in the cupboard was rice. We had fresh water. It was my watch, the 9-12 slot, day and night. That morning, and I was at the helm with a line out the back, trolling for fish. Suddenly a strike! Reeling it in carefully, there on the deck lay a good size tuna. I remember my stunned surprise and delight, not unlike being told I have a publisher, not just a line out. A fresh meal-of-words lifted out into the sun.

May this book’s story continue to unfold and bring understanding and increased clarity. May it be read far and wide.  <><  <><   <><