Q: First tell us something about yourself?
Well, My name is Salma Soliman, I am a 35 years old Egyptian and a proud mother of 2. A girl, Malak 3 and a half years old and a boy, Selim 2 years. I’ve always been so passionate about 4 main and constant things ever since I was a little girl; kids, reading, writing and dancing, and as I grew up, my passion for them grew as well and never changed or dimmed.
Q: How and when did your journey start as a writer?
I started writing in my early teenage years on things that consumed me back then like feelings I felt for the first time, the first heartbeat and the first heart ache, friendship, fears, that sort of things. Then my writing really started flowing when my precious grandmother passed away during my first year in college. The grief I felt made the words start pouring and my writing matured with the experience a little. Then I got married and started to pursue my motherhood dream, only to find out that it probably might never happen for me that’s when ideas started racing in my head and words erupted on paper.
Q: When did you write your first story? Is it published or not?
Well, as hard as it still feels to talk about it, but the truth is that I started writing my first book “The Series Of Kindness, Volume 1” in the middle of a significant trauma. When I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility and undergone several failed IVF attempts only to be more certain that it is never going to happen for me, that’s when my husband told me it was time we tried something new and Oh my! Thank God we did! We traveled to the UK to undertake another round of IVF with a new approach and for the first time I conceived triplets, but sadly I lost my boys in my 6th month which somehow pushed me towards the darkest yet brightest phase of my life. The darkness of losing my precious babies and the light that after all I CAN conceive. Those two opposite and profound feelings lead me into a rollercoaster of emotions that I found myself writing stories to my unborn children manifesting through them the human beings I would wish them to grow up into and as I wrote I felt closer and closer to them and my dream felt so attainable. My book includes 5 stories and as I finished my fifth, I was ready to give birth to my beautiful miracle “Malak”.
My book is published now by Austin Maculey publishers. You can find it on all major online retailers like amazon, Barnes and Noble, Waterstones, WHSmith and Book Depository under the name “The Series Of Kindness, Volume 1”. You can also find it on my very new Instagram page KINDKIDS21 by Salma Soliman where you will soon find a bunch of interesting and apealing ideas on how to advocate Kindness to your kids, so please follow and stay tuned!
Q: Tell us something more about your books?
I believe in my series to the very core, because it was written with all my heart and with great intentions, so I hope it touches parents and children and speak to their hearts. The book talks about Karim, Hanna, Fares, Farida and the little people who are neither super people with super powers nor are they princes and princesses, neither do they own talking animals or magic lamps, yet they are all are heroes of kindness. Each have changed the world into a better place with their very own minds and hearts. They understood that only by true freedom, freedom to love, freedom to live and freedom to be only themselves can they change whatever they don’t like in this world and make It a better place, can they love fearlessly and fully, can they achieve their best potential and be the best version of themselves.
5 different stories of KINDNESS, each story includes songs and a direct message in the end to make sure the intended moral sticks with our children. They are all stories of taking actions and making things happen, of positivity and power, of faith and believing. The values presented in this book are of Love and Appreciation, Inner Beauty and Compassion, Peace, Courage, and Passion. This book is a manifestation of the human beings I wish my children grow up into.
Q: Why do you choose kids as your reader ? is there any specific reason?
Well, first I am in love with kids, with how fresh, receptive and simple they are, In love with the amount of curiosity, liveliness, playfulness they add to everything they do. Second, kids are the future, they are all our tomorrows and new beginnings, they are the ones to shape the destiny of our days to come. So building their hearts and minds can not only change fate, but can recreate the world in a better and kinder sense. I really wish that my series of kindness can be engraved in at least one of my reader’s heart and one day motivates him or her to do even one act of kindness that changes someone’s life or maybe even everyone’s lives.
Q: How did these stories and characters come to your mind?
As I mentioned earlier, they came to my mind through the course of a very long and emotional experience, however, I believe that all characters of authors are embedded somewhere within them, either they are some kind of hidden version of themselves, or the version they wish themselves to be, or a version of a person they have met or they wish to meet. So characters all come from within, they come from our own perspectives and the multiple manifestations of ourselves and people we know or wish to know.
Q: Do you want to leave any message for your readers?
To my beautiful readers and their amazing mothers and fathers. Help your children believe that their essence is good and kind. Help them believe that they have the strength and wisdom to change whatever they don’t believe is right. Help them believe in the beauty of everything they see and embrace the world with all the love in their hearts then let it be. Help shape the hearts and souls of the next generation, believe in utopia and heaven and bring up your children believing the same. KINDNESS can create miracles, so allow your children to make their own miracles!
