Hadeer Elsbai's Blog

august 2025 updates

this will likely be a shorter, somewhat more subdued roundup this month because my brain is clouds; possibly, probably, this is the grief. my cat tabby died one week ago. he has been my cat for 17 years, his whole life, and over half my own lifetime. he’s been there as i graduated high school, graduated college, got my first job, moved twice, published two books, went through the death of my best friend. 17 years. my house feels somewhat like a stranger’s; i hate walking into rooms empty of my l...

10 weird books i love

Weird, of course, is a matter of taste and opinion; one person's weird is another person's pedestrian. But, going off a generic interpretation of weird, I'd say that I don't read too many weird books! Mainly, this is because weird books are often weird because they don't make sense, and I really dislike books that are overly dreamy and confusing and have no satisfactory explanations. But there are exceptions! So I wanted to share 10 books I’ve read that are very weird that I love! These are in n...

july 2025 updates

chihiro tea, nyc

my post about outlining never came to fruition, mostly because i never got to the bottom of just how it is i outline. every time i think i’ve reached a conclusion, i start doing something previously anathema to my routine. in this case, it’s writing without editing as i go. as i continue to work on knight & wreckage, i seem to be making more progress just vomiting up words and events rather than outlining in detail beforehand. no complaints here — whatever works is fine by me! m...

10 favorite first lines

1. "in teixcalaan, these things are ceaseless: star-charts and disembarkements."

— a memory called empire by arkady martine

2. "the night marcella died, she made her husband's favorite dinner."

— vengeful by ve schwab

3. "the snow in the mountains was melting and bunny had been dead for several weeks before we understood the gravity of our situation."

— the secret history by donna tartt

4. “the trees have to be tied down by sunset. when the woodsmen come, they always try to run.”

— the wolf and the ...

june 2025 updates

i’ve been thinking a lot this month about outlining, and how i outline. it’s a question authors get asked a lot — how do you plan, do you even plan, are you a plotter or a pantser, etc. i feel like my answer changes every time i’m asked. part of the reason for that is just because i haven’t written very many books. i was lucky in that the first book i properly outlined, wrote, and completed was the first book of mine to be published. before the daughters of izdihar, i’d only ever written bits an...

a tale of two anime journeys

my anime journey comes in two waves, a decade apart. my current return to anime, such as it is, was most likely inevitable.

the first wave;

like many millennials, my introduction to anime was via a combination of dragon ball z, sailor moon, and pokemon, all thanks to cartoon network’s toonami programming block, which initially aired on weekday afternoons. every day after school, i would tune in at four for some anime, which at that point were just regular old cartoons to me, albeit more interesti...

my anime journey

my anime journey comes in two waves, a decade apart. my current return to anime, such as it is, was most likely inevitable.

the first wave;

like many millennials, my introduction to anime was via a combination of dragon ball z, sailor moon, and pokemon, all thanks to cartoon network’s toonami programming block, which initially aired on weekday afternoons. every day after school, i would tune in at four for some anime, which at that point were just regular old cartoons to me, albeit more interesti...

may 2025 updates

given my dramatic descent into an anime hyperfixation this month, i’m surprised and delighted that in mid-may, i managed to finish a major revision. it took me about five months. probably, it shouldn’t have taken me so long, but i am a slow writer and a slow editor. i like to give myself time to think and marinate, i like to take breaks, i like to do many other things besides write, and i am also pretty terrible at time management, so the hours in a day often slip right past past me, and i have ...

april 2025 updates

at dreamscape coffee in woodstock vt, now my favorite cafe in the entire world

i haven’t written or edited very much (or, at all) this month, mostly due to the anime situation i’ll get to below. i’ve had various thoughts and ideas swirling around in my head, but i’ve been completely blocked. this is a very particular kind of writer’s block, one brought about by a piece of media that brings up so many emotions it’s difficult to put them aside for long enough to see your own creative vision. i’ve b...

march 2025 updates

march has been a fairly quiet month, spent mostly vibing with friends and family, reading, watching tv, and continuing to work on revisions, which are coming along well enough.

i also did a lovely little event at a local public library where i got to talk about the historical roots of the alamaxa duology; i made a pretty presentation and it was really fun to share that with folks who didn’t know any of that history and dig back into what prompted my desire to write these books in the first place...