About

Adil H.

I write fantasy set in an old Amazigh world of the Atlas, because it is the one I know and because almost nobody is writing it.

Why this world

Epic fantasy has spent a long time in one part of the world. Its mountains are Alpine, its halls are stone and timber, its old religions are northern. That tradition produced extraordinary books. It also left a great deal of the map unused.

North Africa has mountains that hold snow into summer, villages that read weather the way other people read faces, ceremonies that run from dusk to first light, and a body of stories about what waits underground that nobody has turned into this kind of fiction.

So I am writing it as a manga: short chapters, hard cuts, powers you work out by watching rather than by being told.

How I write

Four rules I do not break.

Show, never explain
If a scene needs a paragraph afterwards telling you what it meant, the scene failed. I cut the paragraph and fix the scene.
One image, then silence
A single strong comparison lands. Three in a row cancel each other out. The white space after a line is part of the line.
Nobody wins by accident
Every outcome rests on something you were already shown. Luck is not a plot device, it is an apology.
The mystery is the point
I know exactly what is underneath this story. You will find out at the speed the characters do, and not one page sooner.
Fifteen years old, no clan, no name worth saying out loud.
I wanted to know what that world does to a boy like that.
Where it is going

Three volumes.

Volume One — The Dawn of Tizi n’Ifri is finished and out now. Fourteen chapters: a village, a mountain lake, a tournament, and a night that ends the life Tafar had.

Volume Two — The Sleep of Walili is written and in revision. It goes underground, and it does not come back up quickly.

Volume Three is planned.

The series is written in French and translated into English by me, which is slower than hiring someone and produces a text I can actually stand behind. Arabic will follow.

If you want to know when the next one moves, the mailing list is the only place I announce anything. One email at a time, and only when there is something real to say.

Start here

Volume One — The Dawn of Tizi n’Ifri

The Breath of Origin
© Adil H. — All rights reserved.