What if the hostility we are seeing toward migrants right now is not really about migrants at all? What if it is about identity?

The promotional photo for Parenting Unpacked was taken on my dinning table with a glass of tea, two biscuits, and a coffee stain.

IngramSpark runs on a delay so the numbers I have are not the full picture. But here is what I can see.

The congress starts tomorrow. The speech is ready.

It is June 24th. Parenting Unpacked is available today.

I was listed first among the featured presenters.

Parenting Unpacked just sold its first pre-order. A printed copy to a reader in the United Kingdom.

I explained the demarketing strategy. It makes more sense the longer I talk about it. I am not sure I had enough time. And then we got to the SIETAR Valencia presentation and the conversation became something else entirely.

A few months after Maternity Abroad launched I had a live conversation about the book.

It arrived in a dream.

I was supposed to be an au pair in the United States. It did not work out. At the time it felt like a door closing.

I went to check on Parenting Unpacked on Amazon. Normal anxious author behaviour. And there it was.

People sometimes ask which book to start with. Honest answer: it does not matter. This is not Lord of the Rings.

Last year I went to a Rede Brasil Suíça event and did not know what to expect.

It is in the marketing, the products, the content. Someone figured out that nostalgia converts and now the whole internet smells like 1994.

I was maybe ten when I had a vivid dream and told a friend about it at school.

I came across The Ordinary's Markup Marché campaign. I made my own version for pregnancy books, using made-up covers.

So let's recap.

I have written before about bad advice. I have received enough of it to fill a book that nobody would want to read. But there is one that keeps coming back.

Someone called me the e.l.f. Cosmetics of independent publishing last week. I am choosing to take that as the highest possible compliment.