Zeinab Alayan's Blog, page 2

The Most Beautiful Bookshop in the World

In October, I had the absolute pleasure of spending my birthday in Italy. We visited Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan, Como, Bellagio and Turin… and it was probably the best 11 days of my life, even though right now it almost feels like one beautiful dream. Venice was my favourite. Words cannot describe how charming it […]

What Translators Can and Can’t Do

I watched “Arrival” this weekend. For the uninitiated, it is a movie about aliens arriving on Earth and the world’s attempts at communicating them. The main character, Louise Banks, is supposedly one of the best linguists in the world, a translator whose work has greatly helped the United States, and naturally she is recruited to […]

Writing is dangerous. No, really – it is.

I think, in those years, my hand sorta forgot what it was like, writing full-blown novels, assuming it had completely passed on the baton to the tips of my fingers. So it was in for a rude awakening when I made it write 30+ pages in 3 days, and it retaliated by giving me my own rude awakening. Quite literally.

Happy International Chocolate Day!

It’s that time of the year again, the day when I kick my chocoholism up a notch and share mouth-watering pictures of my eating adventures with the lot of you. I’ve actually been so eagerly awaiting this day that I started celebrating a day early! I went to a lovely little place called Cocoa Kitchen, […]

Potter on a Pedestal

On Sunday, 31st of July, at 3:15 a.m. I wrapped my hands around a fresh new copy ofHarry Potter and the Cursed Child.My friend and I attended the launch/Harry Potter birthday party, did a meet and greet with Hagrid, stayed out of Snape’s path, gorged on some wizarding candy… then waited patiently until the UK […]

A Random Freebie Has Appeared!

So… apparently I had scheduled a 2-day promotion for my book for the 13th and 14th of July, and then promptly forgot about it. Goes to show what a serious writer I am – not only am I absolutely neglectful blogging-wise, I don’t even remember my own events. Been too busy running around catching Pokemon […]

Back to Ink and Paper

Inky hands, correction pen stains, crumpled up paper, doodles on the corners… that was more or less my perpetual state as a writer when I was younger. Then computers came along and I migrated to the digital forms of writing, leaving my notebooks behind to collect dust while I sang the praises of Microsoft Word, […]

Level Up

I turned 27 last October, and try as I might to pretend that age is just a number and you’re only as old as you feel (20!), I still can’t deny that my thirties arejust around the corner. I don’t like it. The 20 landmark was awesome, but the 30 one… not so much. No […]

Sanderson’s Laws of Fantasy Writing

Today I had the privilege of meeting the wonderful Brandon Sanderson a second time. I wish I could say I didn’t fangirl again, but I did. I was so in awe of this man that I completely forgot any and all questions I wanted to ask him. Got three of my books signed though, and […]

Of Writing Robots & Lazy Humans

Procrastination Station took me to Reddit today (as it often does), where I came across a 2-week old AMA (a Q&A sort of thing where anyone can ask the poster of the thread anything) by R. L. Stine, whose books I’m sure have kept many ofyou up at night on more than one occasion,andone person […]