The Z-Axis

Book Review: The All Souls Trilogy by Deborah Harkness

By: Amira K. July 6, 2017July 17, 2017

Book ReviewA Discovery of Witches, All Souls Trilogy, Deborah Harkness, epic fantasy, fantasy, genetics, magic, reading, romance, science, vampires, witches, writing12 Comments

Have you read Deborah Harkness’s A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES yet? If not, why not? It’s okay if you haven’t. I’m late to the party, too. The first book was published almost six years ago and I didn’t know about it until last year. You could have asked me that question a little over a year…

Branding For Authors: An Overview

By: Amira K. June 19, 2017January 1, 2018

Publishingauthors, book sales, brand, branding, brands, chuck wendig, j.d. robb, marketing, nora roberts, publicity, publishing, stephen king, tahereh mafi, writers, writing2 Comments

As a writer and a winemaker, I think a lot about branding. Branding is critical for selling wine, because it’s impossible to know what’s in the bottle until you buy it and open it. Branding builds a relationship of trust between the buyer and the winemaker: when the buyer knows the brand, he knows the…

Book Review: THE SNOW LEOPARD by Peter Matthiessen, and THE GLASS BEAD GAME by Herman Hesse

By: Amira K. February 25, 2017June 12, 2017

Book Review, Musingsbook review, Herman Hesse, meditation, personal, Peter Matthiessen, reading, The Glass Bead Game, The Snow Leopard, writing, Zen Buddhism2 Comments

It must have been an act of supreme universal goodness that delivered each of these books into my hands at differently similar times when I needed them for differently similar reasons. The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen I half-borrowed, half-stole from my sister almost two years ago when I was re-embarking on a journey I began almost…

What To Drink With What You Read (Political Resistance Edition)

Are you a #NastyWoman who has recently joined the Resistance movement against Trump’s fascist administration? Are you a long-time political activist with a renewed call to duty? Are you an ordinary citizen trying to figure out how to turn your Facebook activism into political activism? Well, you’ve come to the right place. In this post,…

Four Ways to Ease the Transition from Writing Fiction to Non-Fiction And Vice Versa

By: Amira K. January 10, 2017June 12, 2017

Publishing, Writingbusiness, craft, fiction, marketing, non-fiction, novels, publishing, writing4 Comments

So you’re a writer. You’re creative, right? You’re multitalented, right? You’ve got loads of ideas spinning around that ol’ brain of yours, and you want to bring them all to fruition. Whether as short stories, poems, novels, or creative non-fiction, you’re a writer with a lot to offer, and it’s time to turn all those…

Writing As Political Resistance

By: Amira K. December 21, 2016September 25, 2017

Politics, Writing1984, conservatism, donald trump, george orwell, liberalism, native son, political resistance, politics, resistance, richard wright, writing5 Comments

On March 24, 1933, the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic passed the Enabling Act, which gave the German Cabinet the ability to enact laws that bypassed the Reichstag, essentially conferring dictatorial power upon Adolf Hitler. On October 27, 1917, the October Revolution by the Bolshevik party established the Soviet government in Russia, a government that…

Building Up The Bones: A Poem

By: Amira K. December 5, 2016July 8, 2017

Compositions, Poemsart, fiction, magic, music, poems, Poetry, writing10 Comments

I am ready to build my house, now I have bones to to build my walls Feathers to put a roof over my head Stories to lay as my foundations. My windows will be made of eyes So that when I look out of my house, I will see souls The fences around my house…

Book Review: “The Awakening of David Rose” by Daryl Rothman

By: Amira K. August 4, 2016August 3, 2016

Book Reviewbook review, books, daryl rothman, fantasy, fiction, reading, the awakening of david rose, writing, young adultLeave a Comment

In 2013, I met a friend. His name was Daryl. We met at a writing conference, and he told me he was (unsurprisingly) writing a book. Several, actually. He was editing one, a young adult fantasy novel, and was pitching that, along with an adult literary fiction novel, at the conference. He seemed cool. We traded…

Book Review: “H Is For Hawk” by Helen Macdonald

By: Amira K. July 28, 2016June 12, 2017

Book Reviewbook review, BrainPickings, depression, England, H is for Hawk, Helen MacDonald, loss, memoir, mental illness, tragedy, writingLeave a Comment

“H is for Hawk” is currently causing an uproar in the British literary world, achieving mountains of acclaim from critics and fellow writers on both sides of the pond. I first found out about it through BrainPickings, a weekly digest of assembled blog posts that thematically explores famous thinkers and works through the use of quotes, relevant…

On Fantasy

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away… Just kidding, it was only twenty years and three thousand miles away. Hang on…that’s a suspiciously long way from my current location in the space-time continuum. Let’s try this again. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, a young girl named Amira…