laylakarzai

[laylakarzai]

[laylakarzai]

[laylakarzai]

Can’t believe I could relate to a character this much

[laylakarzai]

[laylakarzai]

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[laylakarzai]

“Actually do have to love it a little bit, not much more annoying than your agent constantly blowing up your phone on how things are currently going along. Why, need to get into touch with someone from the outside? Because I’m sure anyone else here is having the same connection issues.”

“Don’t you just love that there’s absolutely NO service in this damn town? First, the damn worms and now my cell is acting up.”

[laylakarzai]

“Wait, really? How did you learn that? Would that mean we’re screwed either way though, I mean talking, breathing? Don’t those cause vibrations?”

    “They’re coming— don’t move a muscle! They only respond to vibration.“

[laylakarzai]

Layla had cursed herself for not bringing her laptop with her. Usually, she would. Usually, her routine was to go to Walter’s, then to the Saloon for lunch where she would take out her laptop and write down things she could observe. It was strange how she arrived only two months ago and already has a routine, maybe this is what life is like in a small town, she thought to herself and made a mental note to somehow incorporate that later. But of course, she didn’t have her laptop with her. Somehow she had forgotten to plug it in before she went to bed and when she went to grab it before heading out, it was only on 5%. So, of course, she left it at home. She didn’t even bring a notebook with her, she didn’t even have a damn pen to write on her arm though that could be something she might be able to find at Walter’s, and yet something was happening. A real mystery, so of course her gaze was fixated on the situation. Trying to take in every single detail, so that she would remember as much as possible. She heard the question from the slightly older girl and audibly sighed, a conversation would take away from her focus. But she didn’t want to give anyone an impression that she was rude, especially with how small of a town that Perfection Valley was. So she replied, “Honestly, I wish I knew. Ground’s shaking, opening up. That’s all I heard.” She said matter-of-factly before continuing, “We had a lot of earthquakes back in California, even some water pipes burst from underground, but something about this reaction is different. I don’t get it.”

     It’s only been a few weeks but Charlie already knows the in-and-outs of Walter’s. Not that there was much selection. This time something catches her off guard on her journey through town. Just down the road had been a small gathering of people alongside a police car. Efforts to hear what they were talking about from a distance had been futile so she nears the other person upon entering the store, grabbing something from a stall beside them - chowder? Gross. She’ll glance at the ingredients and pretend to be interested purely for the sake of striking conversation though. 

       “So what’s all the commotion about?”

[laylakarzai]

SONITA ALIZADEH // have you seen LAYLA KARZAI around town? We’re trying to make sure they’re still in town, especially with everything that’s been happening lately. SHE is a 20 year old CIS FEMALE. currently residing in Perfection Valley, but they’re originally from FREMONT, CALIFORNIA. they are best known for being an UP-AND-COMING AUTHOR, and i hear they’re pretty BRIGHT-EYED yet also INTRUSIVE at times; i hope they continue to survive.

ABOUT LAYLA.

Layla was born on March 8th, 1999.

Her parents had both come from Afghanistan as children, their parents taking them with them as they escaped the Soviet-Afghan War. Her mom and her family was originally from Khost and settled in Washington, DC. Her dad and his family were originally from Herat and settled in Los Angeles, California. They met at the University of California at Berkeley, where her mother studied Political Science and her father studied Biology and instantly hit it off. They married while still attending school, and a few years after graduation, they had Layla.

She has one younger brother, who is two years younger than her.

She knows fluent Dari, but she always loved the English language. The way that her parents would build her vocabulary before she got to school was she would wake up to a stack of ten notecards with a word written on it and would have to find what she believed to be the matching definition to each somewhere in the house.

Her love of creative writing started when she was in the first grade. Everyone in the class wrote a short, ten-page, story. And she couldn’t have loved it more. In the fifth grade, she had to write a mystery short story, thirty-pages. One could just see how her eyes lit up.

In high school, she took AP classes for English. In her free time, she would write her novel, writing what she knew. Writing her story. Sure, the protagonist had a different name, Khalida Zahir, and sure Khalida was from rural Kentucky instead of a Californian city. But everything else was her. It was about an Afghan American teen growing up in a post-9/11 world, never feeling truly American because of how people around her would treat her. Never feeling truly Afghan because her parents had left during the Soviet-Afghan War, nearly two decades before she was born. Learning to love herself.

When she started her novel at 14 years old, she never planned to publish it. It was solely therapeutic, for her to express something about herself that she did not know how to otherwise bring to the attention of others. To understand what her identity meant. To cope. To survive. At the time she had started, she wasn’t even telling her parents that she was writing this.

On her 16th birthday, she did tell them, however. She had decided that she wanted to take creative writing more seriously, maybe even major in it in college. Her parents had also, for her 16th birthday, gotten her a new computer, and she felt she needed to rise to their attention her novel, as she was unsure how to transfer the file. Her parents read it and loved it, insisting to their daughter that she had a real talent.

She finished her novel at 17 and submitted her work to different agents. Eventually, she got one to click. Got her novel professionally edited, and then published by HarperCollins when she was 18 years old.

She still wasn’t going to let being a published author stop her education though and started at the University of California at Riverside majoring in Creative Writing in the Fall 2017 semester.

However, she felt more drained of any creativity attending university than anything else. After the Fall 2018 semester ended, with only three semesters under her belt, she dropped out. In January 2019, she moved to Perfection Valley, hoping the relocation helps as she works on her new novel, which is a mystery novel.

For the record, she is bisexual.

She is a Sunni Muslim.

I’ll eventually get a real, proper biography up but that could take months so have this in the meantime. If there’s anything you want to know about her, just shoot me an IM on here or discord.

ABOUT THE MUN (NATALIE).

Heyy, I’m Natalie! I’m a 22 year old (who sometimes forgets she’s 22 and keeps writing 21 oops). I use she/her/her’s pronouns and live in Pennsylvania, so that’s EST! I’m mixed Aamsskáápipikani, Lenape, and White (mostly Irish, Scottish, and German with some Sardinian, Russian, and Scandinavian). I used to watch a lot of the SyFy channel (before I lost it on my TV because we went down to a bare minimum plan), shamefully at one point thought A Christmas Twister was a good movie?? I haven’t roleplayed in almost three years (will be three years in June) so please ignore anything rusty from me. I also play Bridgit Thomas!