Desert Son: Tales of Le_Muslim_MAN

Chasing Pearls

Chasing Pearls. To date it remains my most popular story. On a site made of 90% female users I  guess that's sorta predictable. Chasing Pearls is my only story with any romantic focus. Chasing Pearls (despite it's action side plot) is also my most real-world story.

Empires of Faith, my first story on this site takes place in a future world with a historically inspired setting, in which some anti-religion madman controls like half the world and is trying to extinguish religion.

Musa And The Blade takes place in an unspecified time and fictional location, with various tribes and legends and history and centers around a young and despised orphan boy inheriting a legendary weapon and striving to become a great warrior.

The Legendary Warriors (later LHC) is indeed set in modern times, but it's a scifi action book with full on superheroes and people flying and stuff. Not exactly realistic.

Chasing Pearls is different. I wanted more realism out of it and to make it seem that maybe it could really happen. Not that I'd want something like it to happen to me or any other person, but you know what I mean. But I also wanted to make it interesting and not just totally mundane or reliant on drama.

I don't know if I've said this before but I kinda sorta have a thing against the cliches that dominate this site. So I darn sure wasn't about to turn to those types of stories.

I hate the asinine plotlines, the stupid "every male MC is a rich, buff dude who hates women because [ 1. His mommy died when he was young 2. His daddy didn't let him marry the girl he wanted 3. his ex cheated or disappeared only to resurface later in the story for drama once he's finally in love with the female MC or 4. because abs and motorcycles and gangs], I hate the romanticized abuse, and lack of Islamic benefit in the so-called Muslim/Islamic stories (having your MC be Arab/Desi/African does not make your story Islamic, believe it or not, and making the blue-eyed abusive jerk convert in the end also does not make it an Islamic story!)

With CP, I wanted to counter the romanticized abuse with something more.... ugh.... romantic? And I wanted to go against the thing of every MC being insanely rich to have someone more relatable. At the time I was writing, the cliche at least wasn't just CEO Badboys. But still, every dude was the cliche that parents force on their kids irl, BE A DOCTOR OR YOU'RE A DISAPPOINTMENT!!!

I didn't want another doctor character. What's special about that?

Or a lawyer. Or Engineer.

Now, I admit, teacher is also kind of overdone too, which is why I gave him ambitions to be something else too and have considered some career changes for the sequel.

But whatever, Ahmad was a teacher.

Now, in the first version, I was in a rush to get to the fun stuff. So the intro and many of the early chapters were rushed and clunky. I literally cringe (and sometimes close the screen) when I look over that old junk. Unreal stuff to feel fluff and romance until I could spring the surprise ACTION out of nowhere.

Honestly, I thought that would make it more impactful. Things went from a nice sweet happy perfect dream to BAM TROUBLE! Action! Intensity!

To past me's credit, it did get a rise out of some readers. And in some aspects it did work towards the end goal. But looking back, I feel it could have been executed much better.

That's why I started rewriting it. Remove the cringey stuff. Make it more paced because in the original, they got married hecka fast, and then the extreme plot conveniences of suddenly having a nice house, a new car, furniture, a job etc... pfft from my own dang life I can say THAT KINDA STUFF DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN FOR A GUY.