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 Baraka Umm Ayman Foundation (where I'm a contributor), 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!

❝ I am full of tenderness the way a cloud is full of rain
And I am full of joy the way a flower is full of sun
Ready to spill
Ready to grow. ❞

***

❝ Once upon a time, I loved you. Once upon a future, I will love you again. ❞

I recently went on a ten-day vacation to the Bahamas to visit my mom's side of the family and to escape the winter in Canada for a bit (the timing was excellent; we got slammed by two back-to-back snowstorms while I was gone). While walking around the Atlantis resort, which we'd visited for the day, we bumped into a mom and her toddler son, Romeo, whom we'd crossed paths with twice before. 

​I remarked to my mom and sister that it was funny how you could be somewhere with hundreds or thousands of strangers and yet spot the same unfamiliar-familiar faces over and over again. Laughingly, I wondered why I couldn't have had some repeat chance encounters with any hot guys...and it sparked an idea in me for a story.​

So far I've managed to hit 3 of my 2025 goals: update this site monthly (at minimum), write at least 100 words for LofM, and join a writing group. (Well, I sort of restarted an existing writing group, but I'm excited about it anyway).

As for LofM: I've so far written 3,800 words! Most of them new, too, instead of rewritten old words. I'm trying to zero-draft LofM again, with some changes to the plot and structure. I'm experimenting with an Arabian Nights-esque ​formatting where I write multiple short stories, all linked together into a larger narrative, and I'm enjoying it so far. Here's an excerpt:

Happy new year! I meant to write and post this in December, but procrastination snatched the time right out of my hands. That's ok; better late than never! As my mom recently reminded me, the Prophet (ﷺ) once said that even if the end of the world is quite literally happening, but you still have time to plant a seed, you should do so.  ​Or, as one of my favourite quotes puts it: The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. (The attribution of this proverb is not precisely known).
​
And now, because my memory is like Swiss cheese (full of holes), I thought it would be enlightening (for myself, mainly, though maybe you'll find it helpful too, dear reader) to take a look back at 2024, writing-wise.

 So......I am shocked. Delighted. Bemused. And baffled.

I wasn't feeling LofM's latest start (what else is new) and I could feel that the plot & premise was almost, but not quite, right....so i went scrolling through my hundreds of pages of drafts and snippets and scenes and--

I have some good stuff here! Ten years of working on this wip has left me with some fantastic fragments that I can cobble together and polish into something I'm really, really excited to write.

​I'm so glad I rarely deleted anything! I just now have to hunt through everything I have for what I want to try and patchwork into one single draft. But ah! this is so fun! and makes me feel so much better about the insidious voice in my head deriding me for having worked on this wip for 10+ years with nothing but pieces to show for it.