Fictional Violence vs Reality

Depictions of violence are a staple of genre fiction. This can serve a number of purposes, least of all the glorification of violence. War in The Lord of the Rings was a reflection of the trauma experienced by Tolkien in the trenches. Abercrombie shows the fruitlessness of the cycle of violence in his First Law […]

Magic, Faith and Fiction

Introduction Fantasy fiction has long been linked to the mystical, the unknown, and the extraordinary. This genre contains a unique strand of storytelling. It draws from rich cultural and spiritual traditions. This is known as Muslim fantasy fiction. Combining elements of magic, faith, and folklore, these stories explore new dimensions of the fantastical through a […]

Hidden Realms of Muslim Fantasy

The mind stills. The body relaxes. The spirit rises up, tethered to its mortal shell with a gossamer tendril. Free to wander the spiritual realm but tentatively connected to the physical world. The aim is to lose oneself in the awe of the Almighty. In my last post, I looked at the bestiary available to […]

Clash of Mythologies

The troll hefts its makeshift club and advances cautiously towards the glowing blue figure. He roars a challenge at the strange creature to show his dominance. But the blue figure is uncowed. She just smiles as she hovers above the ground and raises a single hand. The earth rumbles in response. In my last post, […]

When Folk Tales Collide

Western fantasy fiction is heavily influenced by Greco-Roman and Norse mythologies. From pantheons of fickle deities to mischievous fae folk, from great dragons to tunnel crawling wyrms. Over the decades, since fantasy’s emergence as a genre, more and more European folklore has made its way into fantasy fiction. Orcs, goblins, elves, dwarfs, etc., are well […]

Big Fat Thank You

This is a post dedicated to my long-term subscribers. I was just reviewing my blog stats and realised that many of you have been following me for over a decade. That’s an impressive commitment. Thank you and may the Almighty bless you and guide you. For those of you who have joined more recently, thank […]

Ink and Algorithms: AI vs. Human Writing

I wanted to test the mettle of AI, so as an experiment I fed Microsoft Copilot the blurb from my novel, The Changeling King. Here is the original prompt complete with the text of my blurb: Write me a chapter of a fantasy story using this blurb: At the height of the Age of the […]

The Influence of AI on Writing: Current Trends and Future Impact

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, but wanted to allow my thoughts on the matter to crystalise a little bit before committing words to digital paper. AI is here. Its been here for a while now but its finally becoming common place in the public domain. Understandably, its making some […]

The Miraculous Resurgence of Books

Clearly, books are not dead. Nor has the book apocalypse (bookopalypse?) taken place as predicted when ebooks started popping as PDFs, ePubs and .Mobi files. If anything, book sales are experiencing a healthy upswing again. The only people that seem to be reading ebooks is Gen-Xers like me. According to Nielsen Book Data (2022), 80% […]

A Man of Focus

This is my yearly excuse piece on why I haven’t written any new fiction in ages. Same excuse as last year, I’m still working on my PhD. Its started to dray a little bit, and there are plenty of distractions around for me to happily procrastinate with. I need to be more like the guy […]