Everything happens for a reason, and every so often, something small comes about that can have a big impact; so much as rearranging how you see yourself. Those little instances can be whatever you make of it. Last month, something hit home for me and wasn’t an in person encounter but something that arrived in an email.
It had been years since a local Portuguese gift shop first stocked copies of my book, back when it was newly released and everything about self-publishing felt both thrilling and scary. Years passed on, and I it felt as though the high of that release was long gone. So when I opened my inbox one day to find a request asking for a delivery, I had to read it twice.
They wanted to buy more copies.
I felt a rush of excitement followed by something warmer—validation coated with gratitude. I responded right away, and within a few days I was hand-delivering a stack of books, feeling a thrill I hadn’t realized I’d been missing. What made it even sweeter was learning why the request came in the first place; a customer had specifically asked for my book for a Christmas gift.
That detail stayed with me. Somewhere out there, someone thought of my words when thinking about giving something meaningful to another person. That alone would have been enough, but the moment kept unfolding. At the same time, the shop also picked up copies of my second book. Seeing them move a number of copies in one place—years after that first leap into publishing—felt deeply gratifying.
It reminded me that stories don’t expire on a release date. They wait. They find new readers in unexpected ways, often quietly, without announcement.
Not long after, I also checked the Toronto Public Library website and noticed something else that made me pause; two copies of The Portuguese Immigrant: Atlantic Heritage Story were currently on loan, and there was even a hold placed on one of them. Strangers, reading. Waiting. Turning pages I once stared at alone on my screen.
All at once, these small moments felt like a gift—one I didn’t know I needed. Writing so often happens in isolation, fueled by hope more than certainty. I write when elicited, driven by a force to narrate stories that help understand inheritance. Then after sharing my work out into the world it’s rare to get to see where it lands. But every now and then, the world writes back.
This past Christmas, that response has made me feel more like a writer than ever before. Not because of numbers or milestones, but because the appetite is still there. The stories are still moving, still being shared, still finding their way into hands and hearts. December had validated for me that readers are looking for these stories and that was a good feeling to know that someone out there is getting lost in my prose. That was more than enough to keep me going.
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