Interviewing M H Ayinde
Hellooo!
One of the fantasy books that has made the biggest impression on me this year is A Song of Legends Lost by M H Ayinde I hats got a great tale told with a really impressive level of character and world building that takes some chances that for me really pay off and delivered a truly exciting and inventive read. For me one of the most accomplished epic fantasy debuts I’ve ever read. It was a please to invite M H Ayinde to the blog to discuss the novel and what is coming soon!
How do you like to booktempt people into reading A Song Of Legends Lost?
Come for the intricate lore, stay for the zombie cat? But more seriously: A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST offers readers a long, complex, sprawling epic fantasy with battles, monsters, a huge cast, and lots of mysteries to unravel, all set in a queernorm world inspired by cultures we don’t often get to see represented in the genre.
I really liked how the story moved around the characters and was not afraid to let a character go off-page while other events happened. What led you to that approach and how do you keep an eye on the timelines when writing such an epic tale?
I’m so glad you liked it! To be honest, it never occurred to me to try another approach. I love big, complex epics with lots of characters, and I love the freedom of being able to tell a broad story via lots of different perspectives. It was really important to me that this story be told through people from different walks of life, particularly working-class perspectives, which we don't often get in epic fantasy. It can be a challenging way to tell a story as readers can forget what happens with one character if they leave them behind for a while, or they can miss hanging out with their in-world bestie, but some of my favourite books are told this way and I wanted to recreate the feeling I had while reading them.
In terms of how I keep track... I tend to write each character or location in isolation, so I stay with that character / place and write their story through to the end before switching to the next character. Then I make detailed chapter summaries (sometimes called “reverse outlining”) and slot everything together in Scrivener, which I use for drafting, so I can easily shuffle things around to ensure the timelines still make sense. I’ll then do a couple of readthroughs and tweak the text to ensure the tone and level of tension work when moving from one character to the next, and that any thematic or plot-level crossover happens smoothly.
What jumped out for me when reading it was the many levels of history and society that lurk in this story. How did you go about creating the Nine Lands?
The Nine Lands evolved over a period of many, many years. I created the universe that A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST is set in a very long time ago, and spent years dipping in and out, writing books set in different time periods and then abandoning them. So I had a lot of lore and history in place by the time I came to write this book. But more specifically, I wanted a very multi-cultural setting, and once I started thinking about the themes of colonialism, the rest followed. I keep very detail spread sheets and world bibles, which I add to or change if something new occurs to me as I write. And I spent a lot of time writing from character perspectives that I ended up not using, but which added a lot to my understanding of the world.
How did you settle on the idea for Invoking?
I really wanted to channel my love of the Final Fantasy video games and also that one scene in THE LORD OF THE RINGS when Aragorn summons the army of the dead, into this book. When I first started writing the book that became A SONG OF LEGENDS LOST, it was actually monsters that were summoned, but once I started thinking about the ancestor magic element that I wanted to include, I realised summoning ancestors worked much better for what I was trying to say with this book, and it fit with the themes of stolen history. I also wanted something that could unite the various real-world cultures I was drawing inspiration from, and a history of ancestor veneration was common to them all. Plus, on a very superficial level, I wanted an excuse for epic magical battles!
Which character is your favourite to write and why?
My favourite character to write is Father Boleo, the morally grey monk who is this world's equivalent of a wizard. He’s grumpy and sarcastic, a tone which comes easily to me (!) and he is also a character who has a lot of conflicting interests to juggle, which I love. Boleo has a strong sense of curiosity about the world and is very driven, which I also really relate to. I love writing Runt, too (I tend to enjoy the characters who make highly… questionable choices!)
What three words can you use to describe the next book in the series?
Fiery, Tragic, Hefty
What else can we look forward to from you in the near future and where can we find out more in this weird world of social media?
Book 2 of The Invoker Trilogy is finished and will be out in April 2026 in the UK / June 2026 in North America. I'm currently getting stuck in writing Book 3, whilst also trying hard not to think too much about the next series I’m hoping to write (another secondary world epic fantasy.) I'm on most social media platforms as @mhayinde, and I also have a monthly newsletter, which you can sign up to on my website www.mhayinde.com
If there was one book, not your own, that you wish you could get everyone to read what would it be and why?
THE FIFTH SEASON by N K Jemisin. It’s such a masterpiece of worldbuilding, storytelling, and allegory, as well as really shining a light on the way culturally and institutionally ingrained prejudice works. I love how it centres the innate power those who are demonised by society often have – whereby the oppressors are often dependent on the existence of those they oppress. I could talk about that book (and series) all day! I’d also like to shout out a couple of my favourite novellas – THE DEEP by Rivers Solomon and RING SHOUT by P Djèlí Clark.
