I've been writing! Here are some sneak peeks from both The Storyteller, The Prince, and The Djinn and Rivener. ​

I. My heart leaping with anticipation, I pushed at the wall. It required some effort, but I shoved as hard as I could and it opened inward on silent hinges, the bottom grating against the floors, and revealed a dark tunnel and, luckily, no sign of the Wazīr. I was too excited to think about it at the time, but he would hardly have been pleased to find out I’d been following him. 
I could hardly contain my excitement. I was about to have my first real adventure!

II. Hajja was buried on the twin hill to which Qahtan was built upon. It was called Madinat Al-Raha, or the City of Rest, and was enrobed in pale green grass, dotted with yellow and fuschia flowers in the midst of spring. Holm oaks stood here and there to provide shade under their sprawling branches. White, pale blue, and pale yellow tombs covered the hill like a field of fallen stars, interspersed by grander mausoleums.

In an effort to get through the books I own before reading new books, I picked up The Girl From Everywhere, which I actually started reading back in October of 2025 and then DNF'd. But one of my personal intentions of the year (as opposed to my writerly intentions) was to actually allow the process to be a process. And since I didn't hate the book, I was just struggling with the pace of it, I picked it back up.

I'm sort of glad I did? It was good for my attention span, I think, and there were some rewards.

✦

What I enjoyed: 

• the premise - a time (& dimension) travelling sailing ship via maps! 
• the prose - there were some really gorgeous descriptions that set the scene
• Nix's name
• The thorough-seeming historical research

It's that time of year again, where I look back at this year and forward into the next. And what a year 2025 has been! I met my husband and got married, moved out, travelled, figured out many things, revived a writing society with my mom, and started a bi-weekly writing meetup, mostly to get my own butt in gear. 

Of my 2025 writing intentions, I have:

• written for LofM, but not 100 words, and not monthly
• written more book responses
• read 12+ books, but not solely ones I already own and haven't read before
• set up a substack
• joined (started) a writing group
• attended 1+ writing group meetings

You meet Death, as everyone does, on the last day of your life. It greets you at a crossroads, and that isn't a metaphor; you're at the junction of Mot Road and Suchart Street when it appears before you, looking exactly as you might imagine Death personified would look—hooded, faceless, bearing a scythe of smoke and endings, ominous and yet not threatening. Death is simply there. More there than anything else, in fact, making everything else feel ephemeral and unreal. Yourself included.

TIME TO GO, it says, or whatever the equivalent is for a meaning impressed on reality and filtered in such a way so that your mortal mind can comprehend.

You grit your teeth and ground yourself against the summons already hooking into you, peeling your Self from your body with the delicacy of a web painstakingly unravelled, and you look Death right in its non-face. "No," you tell it, with such firmness that, for a moment, your "No" is more like NO — not words, but immutable fact.

Death is, for a moment, taken aback. (Quite an achievement. Death has never been surprised before, having seen, quite literally, all.)

NO?

"No. There is still much I have to do, and I refuse to die until things are better, and that is a—" THREAT.

The last word reverberates, beyond language or air or vibrations or anything on the physical plane, and Death--

Death wavers.

Death has never wavered. Not in all of existence.

You smile grimly, unhitch Death's demands from your mortal coil, and turn away from it.

And it lets you go.

And the world trembles, preemptive shivers.

No one is ready for what is to come.
​
But you are.

Well, I'm back! I helped run an event for Sakina Literary Society of the Arts (which I'm a co-founder of), I got married, went on a mini-moon (a precursor to our honeymoon - which has to happen later because of work), moved, and poked out a few words onto a few pages. Laying it all out like that...ok so maybe there's good reason I haven't written much. But that's not what this post is about! This post is about a book I read which was captivating if not strictly enjoyable. To find out what I mean, read below!

I thought I'd read Deerskin a long time ago, though now I think I actually read a different adaptation of the fairytale Donkeyskin. Still, when I chose to start Deerskin, I did so knowing I'd read and enjoyed other McKinley works, so I borrowed the e-book from Libby and got to reading.

I got through part one and put it down, fully intending to DNF it. It's such a dark story (which I was prepared for, given the horror of the fairytale it's based on, but not prepared enough, as it turns out). And its lyrical sort of prose makes it both engrossing and dizzying to get through if you don't focus. It's also written very much like a fairytale, with elaborate descriptions, poetic repetition, and in a narrative style with little traditionally structured dialogue, which can make it difficult to parse without dedication.

Where has the time gone? It's almost July and I've fallen behind on updating this blog. 😞

In terms of personal updates: I've helped set up and photograph two events for Sakina Literary Society (which went really well, alhamdulillah) as well as updated the site, I'm being transferred to a new location at work, and I've been preparing for my wedding & a move! Which means I have not done very much writing, or even thinking about writing, which is both disheartening and disappointing. 

I'm burnt out for sure, but I miss writing and - more importantly - the drive to write. I miss thinking about and planning stories, but nowadays I don't feel like I have the brain space for it. I know this is pretty normal given the givens, but also I feel like I can do better. (Am I holding myself to unrealistic standards? And being too hard on myself? ...Perhaps...but ugh, life will always life and I can't let that be a reason I don't write at all!)

Alas, I only have one real update for you. Legends of Mourra Vol. 1 is ticking along at a glacial (pre-global warming) pace. I wrote half a chapter...and then decided it needed to be written in a different character's pov, and started it over. And yes, it's still the chapter on how Halah and Ilyas (and Zsa Zsa the warcat) first meet. At least I've named the city they meet in - Sadafa, the capital city of Al'Amain, a coastal kingdom just south of Mourra - the latter which is the kingdom Halah is from and where our main storyline starts. 

I'm thinking...that I would like to start doing little prompt fills again, just to keep my writing skills from rusting and also to feel like I'm creating something. My story ideas feel too big and like they require too much energy and focus and time that I can't really devote right now. Either that or I need to start getting into fanfiction again - there's nothing so energizing like comments and reviews from readers.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I'm off to wrestle with the pervasive feeling of failure! 

​Until next time, happy reading and writing!