About Maham Fatemi
fantasy author
My Story
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been thinking up stories. I remember doodling on notebooks as a child and drawing picture books with funny 4-5 line stories, which later evolved to telling elaborate stories to my younger sister with a huge cast of make-belief characters who had their own backstories. Which eventually led me to write down those strange stories at fourteen! None of those books/stories were any good (in fact, they’re very cringy now that I look back on them), but they helped me develop a love for storytelling that carved my path to publishing my own books!
My first book, The Ruins of the Heartless Fae, came about when I was a few weeks postpartum with my first child, watching my husband play a dark fantasy video game. I was absolutely fascinated by the ruins and the ominous vibes from the game (a game I knew nothing about) and it inspired me to write my own story about a richly dark castle ruin full of monsters and lore, and that snowballed into book one of the Heartless and the Wicked series.
At that point, I had already written several manuscripts (none of which were officially published), and I wanted to take a different approach to this book. I wanted to publish it “for real”. I had been pushing my writing aside with this idea that I wasn’t ready yet–that my craft wasn’t polished enough, that my books weren’t good enough, and that my storytelling wasn’t there yet. But I shoved all those thoughts aside because, honestly, when are we ever really ready? So I dove in, published book one, and the rest is history!

Contact Maham
maham@mahamfatemi.com