↳ in which wren is a woman with a ruinous ability, kai is an enslaved wolf shifter, and circumstances conspire to have them relying on each other for survival. ​

I really like prompt challenges; I find I write more easily, without overthinking every little thing, and get motivated by the engagement that taking part in a writing challenge automatically grants me. So when the 2026 OC kiss challenge came across my Tumblr dashboard, I committed!

​Here is the first of seven excerpts!

​ ↳ in which there is a cyborg named sacha, a shapeshifter named cipher, a missing heir to a global conglomerate, a virtual reality called FAE.REALM that just might be carnivorous, and a quest

​It was impulse that moved her. 

He just looked so pathetic, with his body and his form both wracked by shivers—his hair curling and then straightening, plastered against his face; one iris going purple and the other orange, pupils rounding and slitting with each staccato breath; nose broadening and then narrowing, the bridge sometimes high, sometimes low; and his cupid’s bow flexing as his lips changed shape. ​

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.

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.

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.