Let's talk about the first step
All writing that comes from a human being (and what a weird world we live in that that needs to be qualified) comes from an idea.
And here I want to speak about where I think the idea of my novel came from, now only ten months away from publication. I cannot do better than that as, in the end, ideas are mysterious things.
The core idea of my novel is the setting of Medina'tul-Agham, which is a medieval city that is not only an Islamic society, but a matriarchal one as well.
As far as I can tell, that core idea came from the question. "Can the law of the faith that I am a part of... Sharia... explain the faith of the family that I grew up in?"