January Updates- The Storyteller, the Prince, and the Djinn

Photo by Damian Kamp on Unsplash

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:

Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Mourra, there was a girl named Halah. She was not a princess, but she was of the noble class, for she was descended from one of the tribes who had established the kingdom itself. She was also the middle child in a family of nine, and though her parents loved her very much, she was quite often overlooked, simply because there were so many children and her parents—who governed a fertile region named Souda for its rich dark earth—had much to do and not enough time to do it in.

Halah did not much feel overlooked, because she was the acknowledged favourite of her grandfather. He was a special man named Luqman; at one time he had been Wazīr to the king! But that was long ago—and a different story—and now he was simply her grandfather, who told her marvellous tales and took her along with him on his adventures, where he collected even more stories.

(His real purpose was something quite different, but it was not one Halah learned of for many years). When Halah was around thirteen summers or so, she met a runaway slave. This was in Al-Amain, a coastal kingdom to Mourra’s south, where great ships sailed the world and returned with treasures and foreign spaces and exotic creatures. And, in this case, a boy.
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Halah’s first impression of him was his height. He was very tall, though he had a young face. A young, scared face. A young, scared, scarred face. There was a white line cutting across his cheek and nose and ending just under his right eye. She did not know it then, but it was from the lash of a cruel, iron pronged whip, and it had nearly cost the boy half his vision.

He was running when she met him. Running down an alley, clutching something close to his chest, and being pursued by two burly men wearing the uniforms of the Coastal Guards. He narrowly avoided crashing into her and tripped instead, and the thing in his arms was revealed to be a tiny black cloud of a warcat cub.

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