Fayaz Shah

One of the joys of urban fantasy writing is the chance to create a realm that can lend to so many beautiful stories and characters. That is what I have done with my novels, but it went to the third novel, Breaking Point, when it started to materialise: Nytheria is a 1000 light years away from Earth but has a closer conenction than one would imagine.

You can read all about it here:

The Nytherian Universe | Fayaz Shah | Urban Fantasy Beyond the last star. Between the nebulae. Before memory began. There is a world beyond this one. It exists past the edge of our galaxy, suspended between two ancient nebulae whose light has been travelling towards us for longer than our civilisation has existed. It is not a planet in any sense fami...

Something I don't talk about enough: how my career shaped the fiction I write. I've spent most of my professional life in business, building and growing pharmaceutical companies, developing teams, navigating the tension between commercial pressure and genuine patient impact. It doesn't sound like the obvious background for an urban fantasy author. But here's what I've learned: the best world-building isn't built from imagination alone. It's built from observation. And years of watching real people face real pressure gave me something invaluable: a precise understanding of what transformation actually looks like up close. Not the plot version of transformation , the villain who has a change of heart in chapter eighteen. The real version. The kind that happens incrementally, painfully, and often incompletely. Where someone becomes something different not because the story demands it but because the cost of staying the same becomes too high. That's Jo in The Soul Master. That's Dr. Clay in Spirits. That's Rafa in Breaking Point. The Nytherian Universe is set in a spirit realm. But the questions it asks are the ones I've watched real people wrestle with my entire adult life.

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Great to be back on this page...

Fayaz Shah (@fayazshah) Here’s my very first article on Substack! I just find that there is so much meaning in life that we are spinning way too much to notice. Yes, meaningful work requires attention and depth but there are points in the day for reflective thinking, which for most folks becomes optional. I find ten minu...

Terrific to reach 50,000 words now the novel is buzzing with ideas, great plots and twists.

Great to reach 20k words for my sixth urban fantasy novel, The Plague Meridian. This is the juncture where traction starts to build with some wonderful dialogues and plots...

Our purpose in writing is to add to the total.

To add something new to the world, not to overpower others or replace what already exists.

A voice.
A query.

A shadow that had never been there.
Most tales won't alter the course of history.

However, they transform someone in private, discreetly, and at precisely the right time.

Each book is a tiny act of giving.

To put it another way, I was present. This caught my attention. For me, it was important.

You don't have to start from scratch.

All you have to do is turn it slightly differently.
One sincere addition at a time is how literature develops.

A narrative is never complete, that's my experience...

It's just deserted in the process.

You eventually stop refining sentences and begin to have faith in them.

You accept this as it is and stop wondering what else it might be.

There wouldn't be any books if authors waited for perfection.

Every book is a snapshot of your personality at the time it was written, including your abilities, bravery, obsessions, and blind spots.

You'll notice defects when you come back months later.
That does not imply that you were unsuccessful.
It indicates that you have developed.

People believe that writing exhausts you.
The odd yet lovely reality is that the more you write, the more you want to write.
It's a paradox that only authors can comprehend.
You tell yourself you'll manage a paragraph as you sit down, exhausted.
And in some way, a spark emerges between the first and fifty-third sentences.
a flow.
momentum.
At first, there was no desire.
As the words grew, so did it.
Inspiration drives writing, not the other way around.

There are two types of writing: one that you select, and the other that selects you.
I've attempted to explain this weird, restless urge to write to those who don't have a story in their veins.
It's not an aspiration.
It isn't self-control.
It has a deeper, more ancient, almost ancestral quality.
It's like having a line in your head when you wake up that won't go away until it's written down.
It's hearing conversations while you're cooking, driving, or taking a shower, as though your characters don't give a damn that you have a life outside of theirs.
It's the spark behind the sternum, the itch behind the ribs, the soft voice murmuring, "Return to the story."