About

(This shall be written in third person so I don’t feel like a show-off.)

Zen (officially known as Zeinab Alayan) was born on the 16th of October. It was a warm and bright Sunday, and her parents couldn’t have been more delighted to receive a baby as beautiful as her. The birds were chirping, people were rejoicing… oh scratch that. You don’t want to hear rubbish like that. Though the birthday bit is true.

Ever since she was a little girl, Zen had always loved books. Unlike other kids her age who preferred to go out and play, she tended to sit at home and read. The first book she ever chose herself was a Ladybird edition of Thumbelina, and many books followed after that. Even though her first language is not English, she always picked out books in that language. Eventually she started writing, and her first story was about a rabbit, and she wrote it in red ink. That’s all she can remember about it because shortly afterwards she spilled a glass of water on it. At the age of 12 she started working towards creating a collection of horror stories, and due to her fascination with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a number of her stories starred vampires. But that didn’t last for too long, especially when she’d start a new story when she was a mere 10 pages into another.

After a while she branched into fanfiction and wrote stories for a number of her favourite fandoms, such as Harry Potter and Rurouni Kenshin. It wasn’t until 2008 that she returned to writing original fiction, and that was only with the help of NaNoWriMo. Puppet Parade was the first novel she finished, even though the first novel she wrote during NaNo was The Muse Bunny – it’s quite a long story, involving a Tinker Bell, crashing computers and bunnies who refuse to go down without a fight.

Being bilingual – with English and Arabic under her belt – she graduated from university with a degree in Translation and Interpretation. She was studying English Literature as well, but eventually got too bored with all the old literature that she dropped out. Currently she works at a translation company, and runs an online company with her fiancé (who writes amazing things), and you can find it under the name Manuscript Magic (yay shameless advertising).

During her free time, Zen likes to watch sitcoms, anime shows and movies. When she’s not being a couch potato, she draws, does chores and eats her most favourite food in the world – chocolate.

To recap: Zen is a writer, an editor, a translator, a bookworm, an artist, an avid movie watcher, an anime fan, a procrastinator, a paranoiac, a dork, a bit of a Grammar Nazi and most importantly… a chocoholic.