The Storyteller and the Terrorist in Our Newsfeeds

by Amina M. Derbi

Overview

Najmah Qamar is a passionate storyteller who ends up living through her worst fears as her tales come to life. Her words are carved into her readers' bones like the initials of a loved one into a tree trunk. Najmah's story begins as she tells stories while baby-sitting, at family gatherings, or just hanging out on a Saturday night. Each year she submits stories to her high school's literary journal. Each year she gets rejected. When this happens during her senior year she decides, after encouragement from her inner circle, to post the stories online. She makes a YouTube channel and her stories go viral. People from across the world watch her suspense-thriller storytelling videos and share them on social media. Najmah's fame sky-rockets along with her self-confidence and popularity. However, to Najmah's horror, her stories start coming to life. People start dying in her northern Virginia town and surrounding areas. The media coverage around these events becomes obsessive as the murders become linked with the YouTube sensation. Some news outlets even refer to her stories as "terrorist tall tales". Friendships are tested and trust falters along lines of race, gender, and religion as Najmah gets blamed for the homicides. The real terrorist could be anyone in her newsfeed, even someone she knows well. As Najmah tries to discover who the mastermind is, her life becomes threatened when she comes close to unveiling a dark secret, which has been hidden for decades right under the nose of the nation's capital.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781536949643
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	08/11/2016
Series:	Storyteller Series , #1
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.55(d)

About the Author

Amina Derbi has always loved books. They pushed her imagination to places she never thought it could go and allowed her to bond with characters who she never thought she would get to meet. Amina is fascinated by the power of words and their ability to allow us to experience another's joy, pain, and transformation. Derbi also appreciates many other forms of storytelling such as movies and TV shows.
However, as she dove into many novels, films, and TV programs, Amina began to notice that most of the time Muslim and Arab characters were portrayed purely as villains or victims whenever they were presented in the stories. Derbi thinks this should change and she is glad to see that today there are more diverse characters emerging, slowly but steadily in mainstream media. She hopes this will contribute to better relations between people of all faiths and cultures.
Najmah Qamar, the heroine of The Storyteller and the Terrorist in Our Newsfeeds, is the sort of protagonist Amina wishes she had a chance to read about when she was in high school. Najmah Qamar is brave, clever, and kind while being Muslim, brown, and American at the same time.
Derbi hopes her stories will take readers on many adventures full of twists and turns, while opening their eyes to some very serious issues which are a part of reality and not just fiction.