CONVERSATION WITH BRITISH AUTHOR AND HISTORIAN, JAMES BARR-PART TWO

In the second part of the conversation,James Barr reveals his softer side and his experiences in the Indian sub continent.

Q:Have you ever got frustrated for having chosen to be a professional writer?

(smiles)yes,you have days when you are researching and you find nothing and there are also times when you are trying to write and get nowhere. But it’s true for every other author as writing is not at all an ‘easy job’. But if you ask me would you be doing anything else,I would say No!

Q:How do you deal with criticism and have you ever been accused of distorting history for selling a couple of more copies?

It depends on what kind of criticism it is. For my last book, some people thought it was hard to follow while some others were of the opinion that it did distort events.At the end of the day,it’s about your conviction in what you have done.As far as You are confident that you have done a pretty honest and balanced version of events without taking sides, you can deal with the criticism in a mature way.

Q:So far,You have written mostly about the Middle-East.Do you plan to do something else with your future works?

Yes,definitely! I am also interested in the relationship between ‘allied countries’ and the ‘tensions’ between them.

Q:Have you ever been to India?

I was invited to the Jaipur Literature Festival last year and I was astonished by the sheer number of people who turned up to hear Shashi Tharoor speak in the festival.You will never see something like that in England.India is an amazing Country.

Q:About Piracy?                           

Piracy in U.K is mostly about the digital copies that get illegally uploaded.But I think ‘hard copy’ piracy is not much of a problem in the U.K.

Q:How easy it is to be a full time-writer in the U.K.?

It’s not at all easy.Very few writers earn decent amount of money by writing full-time.In that sense,I have been fortunate enough.

((Nikhimenon is an Infectious Disease doctor by profession and a freelance book blogger by passion.He has been trained in India and in the U.K.The first part of this conversation can be read here.)

Conversation with British Author and Historian, James Barr-Part One

(James Barr is a British author and historian. His book on Lawrence of Arabia and the Arab Revolt, ‘Setting the Desert on Fire’, was published in 2006. ‘A Line In The Sand’, on the rivalry between Britain and France for dominance in the Middle East, followed in 2011. His latest work is on the post-war middle East and will be out by mid-2018. In this candid conversation with nikhimenon, he opens up about his work, inspiration and how he deals with criticism.This will be published in two parts,the first part can be read here)

James Barr

Q: What inspired you to be a writer?

Though I started writing when I was quite young, my first big ‘break’ happened about 15 years ago when I got an opportunity to pen down the history of a small organization in London. Immediately after the publication of that book I went to Syria and it was my experience there that served as the real inspiration for my debut work.Fortunately, it got good acceptance and my second work infact grew out of my first book .

Q:There are ‘best-selling’ authors authors who work with  newbie writers to bring out a book.What is your take on that? Do you think it works better that way or the ‘veteran’  is just lending his name for ‘easy money’?

Yes,you do hear about that.There are some authors who work with a team of people ,who inturn basically do the job for them.Well,if you are successful enough ,it’s a way of working. But personally, I would never prefer that kind of work .For me, the excitement of the job I do is about finding things out and if I delegate that job to somebody else, I would lose that ‘sense of discovery’ which is partly what I find exciting about what I do. Secondly, there is also the question of trusting other people’s judgement. As soon as you involve other people in the (writing) process, you are risking your reputation to someone else’s judgement. If the book turns out to be an awful one, it’s you (the ‘brand’) which ultimately suffers!

Q:What are your hobbies?

I used to like drawing. I think it has helped me a lot to kill time while attending extremely boring conferences(chuckles)!

Q: Do you ever plan to write for Television?

Not particularly!

Q: When will your next book come out?

I am just finishing my next book now and it should be out by mid-September ,2018. It’s a history of Anglo-American rivalry in the middle-east from the second world war through to the 1970s.

Q:Do you intend to write fiction at some point of time?

One of the big frustrations when you do these projects is the amount of stuff that you can’t use in the book. Most of the background data don’t go into your book and it’s quite tempting to make a fictional work out of all these ‘junk’ info. But to be very frank, I don’t intend to do something like that in the near future. Mixing fact and fiction quite often leaves a reader confused and having said that, it’s a reality that the style of history writing has changed a lot. People tend to write popular history as if it is fiction. I think I would struggle to ‘invent’ a story as I believe Truth is stranger than fiction.

(Nikhimenon is an Infectious Disease doctor by profession and a freelance book blogger by passion.He has been trained in India and in the U.K.The second part of this conversation will be posted soon.)

Interview:Author Nilesh Rathod

Image Courtesy-http://www.nileshrathod.in/

The other day, we interviewed the multi-talented Nilesh Rathod, the author of the recently released 'Destiny of Shattered Dreams'.

       Can you tell us something about yourself?

-          Born in Bangalore, brought up in Pune… I pursued my graduation in commerce and I ama Chartered Financial Analyst by education.I co-founded Ensemble Infrastructure India Limited in the year 2002 which, now employs over 2000 personnel. It has successfully delivered thousands of contracts including offices, hotels, hospitals and retail spaces.

·        Rupa has published many best-selling authors from Chetan Bhagat to Ravi Subramanian. Can you tell us briefly about your experience with your publisher?

-          They’ve been extremely co-operative and it has been an amazing experience working with Rupa.

          These days there are many desi authors writing in English.What do you think is your biggest USP when compared to your contemporaries?

-          English has been a primary language for Indians since the British era. However, of late the spread of language a lot of new authors are emerging and some of them have transcended borders when it comes to their quality of writing. Authors like Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh bring pride to us.

Writing is a creative art and doesn’t often need to follow a USP. In my opinion most genuine authors who know their trait simply write and their USP’s are cultivated by readers’ responses. Destiny of Shattered Dreams is a story of a middle class boy who pursues his dreams and gets caught in the embroil of modern day politics. The story is his take away of life as we live it today.

            When do you write and have you ever experienced writer's block?

-          I am going through one. I wrote my first novel within a month of starting to pen it, I spent double that time to just write the headers for the sub-plots, but once I got to writing, I was done within a month. I am a lazy researcher too; on the contrary research beyond a point is a road block to creativity. My first way to deal with a writer's block is to take a break, may be a day or two or even a week. I keep thinking and re-thinking about the scenarios without really penning them down. If I do get a break through, I start again. Reading another book or two within that break can help erase the block sometimes. And if nothing works, I simply force my way through the story, it might read bland or may sound timid when you do that, but remember it’s a small part of the story and there is always an edit option.

           Apart from writing,what are your other hobbies?

-          I love to read books..!

c   Amitav Ghosh,Salman Rushdie,Chetan  Bhagat;who is your favorite among these three Indian writers? Which one do you think is his best work till date?

-          Salman Rushdie..! MidNights Children is the best I feel

·   Indian Writing in English has truly come of age. What is your take on the future of the English language Fiction market in India?

-          India is a country that widely uses the language while, fiction books are pure entertainers. It shall evolve with time and grow further with increasing competition.   

     

    We are also living in an era when every author blogger wants to be a published author.Do you think this as a healthy trend?

-          Ya... Why not..? If there writing styles are better than the existing ones, I definitely think it’s worth giving a shot.

     Okay, one last question.I know it’s a little dumb to ask this,but still... You want to be remembered as a bestselling author or as an award winning one?

-          For now I’d want to be a bestseller. Maybe when the next book hits the market, I’d aim at becoming an award winning writer J But, more than anything else I’m happy to see my novel being loved by the readers..

 -nikhimenon

#Authorinterview: Sourabh Mukherjee

A month back I got "Shadows of death" to read and to follow it with an interview with Sourabh Mukherjee. I missed on the review of this awesome crime thriller ( will share soon) , here is the interview meanwhile- 

What was the moment  / incident that triggered the passion for writing in you ?

I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember. I have never really written for a purpose – it is just something I love to do. In my early childhood, I would spend hours writing, as well as making illustrations for my own stories. A number of my poems were published in children’s magazines back in the day. I continued to write through my teenage and later in college.

I kept writing in office magazines for a couple of years, but the demands of my career as an Information Technology professional and my travels across the world soon left me with very little time and creative energy to write fiction. I started churning out technical whitepapers and non-fictional articles that got published in business and technology journals of repute.

However, as I travelled across the world, I grew as a person getting to observe people from widely varying cultural backgrounds and to study their emotions, their thoughts, their behaviour from various perspectives. And stories began to grow all over again.

I started my fiction writing career with the popular e-books Nargis Through my Summers  and Loves Lost. Nargis Through my Summers and Loves Lost were released in paperback as Romance Shorts. Romance Shorts is currently available for purchase in the US, Canada and UK. The Indian edition will be released this month.

My short stories in various genres were also published in international e-zines like Under the Bed, Fiction and Romance from FictionMagazine.com. I won the Golden Pen Award in the Monsoon Romance Contest organized by Sulekha.com in 2014, which came as a huge motivation.

And then, In the Shadows of Death was published in mid December 2015 by Srishti Publishers.

Wow. That is quite a list. What helped you more : your creativity or your practice at writing ?

I would say, both.

Honestly, I do not follow a fixed routine when it comes to my writing.

I create a basic structure and chapter outlines and then I start writing the chapters with the basic premise in sight. And I let go, letting the sights and the sounds in my mind take over. It is, therefore, extremely important for me to be in the ‘appropriate’ frame of mind to write. I need to be in those situations myself. Therefore when I am writing a story, there are days when I am not in the ‘appropriate’ mood that the work demands, and I do not write a word.

What I always hear from my readers is that they can visualize the scenes, and relate to the characters. And now you know why.

Why crime thriller for a debut novel ?

 Being an avid reader of crime fiction myself, I have always harboured an ambition to make my own humble contribution to this genre. The story, of course, had its germs in my own interests in human psychology and in the complexities of human relationships, especially in these times of changing social order.

Also, it does not make me too happy to note that, whenever we speak of popular detectives in English fiction, we end up naming characters created by foreign authors. With so much of quality fiction being written in India in the English language, where is that one pan-Indian character that is a brand by her or his own right and has instant recall? So, I asked myself, why not make a humble effort to create one in ACP Agni Mitra?

Do you think that the trend for romance books has declined in the last few years ?

I do not think so. Indian English writing is still primarily about Romance, with a handful of exceptions like Ashwin Sanghi, Ravi Subramanian and Amish, who are exploring alternate genres successfully.

We still have a situation where readers in India go to James Patterson, Gillian Flynn and Keigo Higashino when they want to read quality crime fiction.

Quite True. Hope authors like you change that. What is the kind of story that you would never write or want to be associated with your name ?

I cannot think of any such genre.

If you look at my body of work, I have written a number of romantic stories in my e-books Nargis Through my Summers and Loves Lost, available in paperback as Romance Shorts. My short stories published in e-zines are in genres like Horror, Drama, and Tragedy.

The way I look at this is, I write only about human relationships. The many ways in which they unravel and manifest themselves end up creating stories that sometimes excite us, scare us, or make us sad - leading to corresponding categorization of the stories into genres like Romance, Horror, Drama or Thriller. But, it's always the complicated and unpredictable human nature at the core of everything.

When I look at the feedback I have received so far for In the Shadows of Death, a large number of readers have been touched by the underlying element of tragedy in the story. My novel is primarily about our inner devils destroying relationships we value.

When you were creating the character for this book , did you improvise based on the plot or was it vice versa ?

The characters drive the story.

When I look at my city today, I see a Kolkata in the cusp of change. Contemporary Kolkatans are from a generation that is ambitious and ready to embrace 'the good life'. It is a generation which has seen its parents struggle, yet has barely gone through that struggle itself. And for many, there  is a singular focus on fulfilling their own desires and ambitions at any cost. In the process, Kolkata today is experiencing a significant change in its societal structure and core ethics of its people. This has been a key motivation behind my story.

As for the central characters, the investigating officer, ACP Agni Mitra comes across as an emotional human being dealing with his own personal crisis and not as an infallible, larger-than-life law enforcement machinery, as the protagonists are often depicted in stories of this genre. The character of the serial-killer has several layers and a parallel track throughout the novel in the form of the voice of the killer provides insights into the dark recesses of his mind. The novel creates situations where the paths of the investigating officer and the serial killer cross – not only as a consequence of the murder investigation, but also at an emotional level.

Are we going to see more of Agni Mitra in coming years ?

I am currently working on the next Agni Mitra thriller 'The Colours of Passion' which would be released this year.

And I would definitely wait for that ..

#AuthorInterview : Hariharan Iyer

Last week I read and reviewed Surpanakha by Hariharan Iyer. A brilliant book on politics, revenge , money games and strength of common people standing up for people we love. This week,we bring you a conversation with the author -

Which one character did you think of first in the book?

Zarina. You know why? There are a couple of things, which inspired me to write Surpanakha. One of them involved Zarina.

What was the inspiration behind the story?

A couple of years ago, a law intern alleged that a retired judged behaved in a sexually inappropriate manner with her. Celebrity lawyers took up her case. Media hounded the judge. He was forced to resign from a strategic post retirement job. Thereafter when the police registered a case and wanted the victim to testify, she vanished. We don’t know what happened. Was there pressure on her not to testify? Or was it decided that the purpose had been achieved? Neither the celebrity lawyers nor media felt obliged to explain their position to the masses.

Secondly, a series of articles by an IIM professor on the mushrooming NGOs and their questionable sources of funds forced me to think. Around the same time there were reports that well-known personalities who were running foreign funded NGOs were using the funds for buying branded jewelry, clothing and shoes! It made me wonder what the underlying motivation could be for floating such NGOs.

Both the above gave rise to a lot of what ifs in me and pushed me into the realm of fiction. And the novel was born. I would, however, like to clarify that it is not a real life story. Now you can understand why I thought of Zarina first.

Which character's personality/ manners resembles a real life person you know?

Mythili. And who is Mythili? A housewife who displayed extraordinary courage while dealing with a grave challenge to her husband’s career. I know of a couple of women who have shown this kind of courage.

What was the hardest thing for you to do while working on this book?

My first draft was 105,000 words. I gave the manuscript to a couple of beta readers and their near unanimous response was ‘The book is interesting, but cut down the size.’ And that was an unenviable job. Every word I had written appeared to be significant. Every word I deleted cried for its continuance. And indecisive period of 10 days. Finally I cut down around 15,000 words!

What are you working on next?

My next book. It deals with an aspiring young girl who wants to pursue medicine, but the reservation laws of the country would not allow her to do so. What does she do—curse her fate and choose another discipline to pursue like her elder brother did a few years earlier or fight back?  

What was your first step into writing and how far have you come from there?

I took to writing a couple of years ago. I blogged on media and current affairs for a year at valadyviews.blogspot.com and contributed articles to The Hoot, an online media watch portal before hitting on the idea for this novel.

Who is your favorite author in the Indian fiction scene at the moment?

S.L. Bhyrappa. He is a Kannada writer. Many of his novels have been translated into other languages. I like his Aavarana the most.

Guest Post by Best Selling Author 'Thomas M.D. Brooke'

  Here in this guest post,eminent writer 'Thomas M.D.Brooke' shares with us the inspiration behind his recent best-selling work,'Roman Mask'.Read on...!

Turning a negative into a positive – the inspiration behind Roman Mask

                     It was an October night, and I was returning home from a night out with a few friends in my local pub in London, when something happened that changed my life dramatically.  The nights were closing in, so it was already dark by the time I left the pub, but I was in a good mood.   I’d recently returned from a trip to Pompeii , so I’d been telling everyone of my excitement at walking through the Roman streets, marvelling at the murals and depictions on the well preserved houses, and laughing about the seedier aspects of the ancient city – the brothels and street graffiti that had also survived the great volcanic eruption of AD 79.

                It was probably because I was so preoccupied with these thoughts, that I didn’t see the guy who came out of an alcove and wrapped an arm around my neck.  My first thought was, ‘Am I being mugged?  Who’s going to mug me??’ – I’m a big guy, over six feet tall and I keep myself in pretty good shape, so I’d always thought the chance of this happening in Londonwere pretty remote.  But I was wrong.

                When the second guy came out from behind a car, then the third from behind a bush I knew I was in trouble.  This was no ordinary street robbery; these guys were out for blood, and the three of them surrounded me and between them punched, kicked, and smashed me to the ground, beating me to an inch of my life.

                Afterwards, as I tried to hobble home – one of them had crushed my foot, to prevent me from getting up – another passer-by saw me covered in blood and called an ambulance.  I was lucky, I got to live another day.  And within a few weeks, my bruises healed, and I began to walk without a limp, all physical signs of my encounter disappeared.  But that was just the start of my nightmare.

                I was completely unprepared for the mental-trauma that such an incident inflicts on you.  That winter was torture for me.  After any night out, I was terrified to go home; I found I was scared of the dark, constantly thinking that people would jump out of the shadows at me.  I’d never previously been a heavy drinker, but over that winter I found I needed to drink a lot just to give me the courage to walk home.  I could have called a taxi, but then people would wonder why I was taking a cab for such a small journey – this became another all-encompassing fear:  that others would find out about my terror.   This might seem irrational, but at the time, that fear was almost as great as being mugged again.

                Those first six months were very difficult, but then as the nights started getting lighter, an idea came to me.  After visiting Pompeii I’d been searching for a character to be a lead in a novel set in ancient Rome – someone who fully embraced the entirety of Rome, its seedier aspects as much as itsmagnificence.  Why not put my experiences to good use, rather than having it a weight bearing me down, let it be something that produces something positive.  At the time, the news on the television was full of stories of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with post-traumatic stress and it made me think how soldiers dealt with such issues in the ancient world.  My experiences had shown me the power that traumatic events can play on the mind, and I quite simply didn’t believe anyone who claimed that in the ancient world such a thing was not a concern because life was different back then.   The human mind was biologically exactly the same then as it is now, and just as fallible to conditions we now diagnose and understand the importance of.

                So I came up with the character Cassius, a great soldier, but someone who’d been affected by a terrible battle a few years before in the forests of Germany.   I knew from my own experiences how easy it was to fall into a trap of blaming yourself for your own perceived weakness, and I knew how living a lie to hide that same weakness can become a part of life.  I then started my novel in Rome so I could show Cassius being seduced by the many vices of that ancient city – something that is all too easy under such circumstances.  I then returnedCassius to Germany where he learns to understand and come to terms with his fears, just as I did whilst writing my novel.  The novel culminates in the Teutoburg forest and one of the most dramatic and historically significant battles of the ancient world.  Cassius needs to draw on all his courage and strength in the midst of that terrible event.

                I’m now pleased that I encountered those three men, that fateful night in October.  It was a terrible experience, but it gave me something so much more – I wouldn’t change it for anything.

'Roman Mask' can be bought online through the following links 1,2,3.

-nikhimenon

Interview: Kate Langdon, Author of 'Making Lemonade'

                   
                Kate Langdon,is the author of the recently released novel,'Making Lemonade',which is already making waves. She is a writer of contemporary, intelligent, and humorous chick-lit.Her characters are loveable and real characters.Prior to becoming an author, Kate has been a journalism student, a tennis coach, a writer for television commercials, a burger bar owner, and an event manager. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her partner and young son.In this short e-mail interview,she tells us about her future plans,her inspiration and a lot of other interesting stuff.

• On her Journey as an author- I began writing a short story about a loveable yet haphazard female character and things snowballed from there, before I knew what was happening it was longer than a short story and I was writing my first novel, That Slippery Slope…not something I had intentionally set out to do. When it was finished I took a chance and sent the manuscript off to major NZ publishing houses, it was subsequently published by HarperCollins and things progressed from there.

•  On her inspirations- I’ve enjoyed various forms of writing since I was a child, poems and short stories, and I was an avid reader as a kid, always with my head stuck inside a book. I had an amazing English teacher all through high school who really inspired me and made me fall in love with many of the great authors. (English was the only subject I was any good at at school!) However, novel writing was something I stumbled across by chance, when I was 24 and desperately waiting for the next Marian Keyes novel to be released.

• On 'Making Lemonade'- Making Lemonade is my third novel and my inspiration really came from being in my mid-thirties and wanting to write about relatable female characters of a similar age who are, for various reasons, at a low point or tumultuous crossroads in their lives. They’re forced to pick themselves back up off the floor and think about what it is they really want for themselves, and their lives going forward. They’re also forced to reflect on the dreams of their youth, discovering that although things may not have turned out as they had planned, being happy within themselves is all that really matters.

'Making Lemonade' is published by Harper Collins and is available in amazon.

-nikhimenon

'Indie authors have the opportunity to take control of the start of their careers!'

In the first part of the interview Ekta had told us about her journey as a writer and how hard it is to play the dual role of a homemaker and a writer.In this concluding part,she tells us about her favourite books,future plans and the prospects of indie publishing.Read on!

They say we are currently in the golden age of Indie Publishing.Madam,what is your take on that?

---I agree 100 percent! Now more than ever indie authors have the opportunity to take control of the start of their careers.Many people don’t realize that when a person gets published by a traditional publishing company, that new author doesn’t have much say in many things regarding his/her book. For example, if an author’s book becomes popular his/her editor may dictate that the next book be written in a particular way. The editor is trying to help the author capitalize on what made that person popular in the first place, but readers usually read a variety of things. They don’t mind if their favorite authors experiment a little bit. A traditional publishing company is often uncomfortable with experimentation, sometimes stifling a writer’s creativity in favor of a secure investment: what sold once will probably sell again.

In indie publishing authors have complete control. If a person wants to start his/her career with a YA novel and then try a romance next, no one will come in and say the author can’t do it.That doesn’t necessarily mean switching genres right away is a good idea, but at least the author can give it a try.The difference in control also applies to the amount of money the author gets paid—in other words, the traditional publishing company gets the majority of the money and the author gets a minimal cut. In indie publishing the author gets to keep most of the money. I say “most” because a smart indie author will hire a professional editor, a professional graphic designer for the cover and a professional formatter for the interior. A smart indie author will pay these professionals and then gets to keep the rest of the money.There are many things that complicate the pursuit of indie publishing, but it gives thousands of talented writers the opportunity to share their stories with readers. At the end of the day, that’s only a good thing.

 Yourfavourite author?genre?

---This is like asking a mother which child is her favorite! I’ve thoroughly enjoyed books by JhumpaLahiri, John Grisham, Mary Higgins Clark, some Nicholas Sparks. As you can see I enjoy women’s fiction, mysteries, and even love stories (not romance novels; there’s definitely a difference!) I LOVE fiction about World War II and the bravery—and depravity—of that time period.

Recently I’ve started enjoying middle grade and YA novels—The Hunger Games, Harry Potter, the Mister Max books by Cynthia Voigt, among others.

Although I’m not an avid sci-fi/fantasy reader, I have a warm spot in my heart for the Wheel of Time series by the late Robert Jordan. A close friend introduced me to the series when I was in high school, and despite the fact that it’s a fantasy series I think anyone who loves to read would enjoy it. At its core the series is about a group of friends who are trying to find out who they are meant to become and how their relationships with one another change in the process. Anyone can relate to that.

   

These days there are quite a number of desi authors writing in English. What do you think is your biggest USP when compared to your contemporaries?

---Although I grew up bilingual, because I was born in the States English is my first language. If I compare myself to desi writers authors who were born and raised in India (and I say this with the utmost of humility and meaning no offense to those writers), I know I have an advantage because I’m writing in my native language. When I add to that my experience with spelling competitions, I feel like I have a deep knowledge of words that I can apply to my work.There are many desi writers like me who were born in this country and who have had a wide exposure to words like I did. While we can relate to one another in terms of culture and the immigrant experience, I like to think that my particular upbringing, personality quirks and ideas about the world make my stories stand out.

Which author would you say you really look up to?

---This is a tough question to answer. I think I like JhumpaLahiri’s approach to her work, in the sense that she doesn’t let a schedule or a contract dictate how often she writes. For her fans it’s agonizing waiting for every one of her books to come out, but when it does we realize why. In order to write the way she does, a writer has to expend effort and energy and—most importantly—take time. Despite all the advice to indie authors that they should publish frequently, I think it’s still important—crucial, even—to take that kind of care of your work.

What are your top five favourite novels that you would recommend to all bookworms?

--- (Again, it’s hard for me to pick my top favorites, but here are books I would recommend without a second thought.)

1. Doomsday Book by Connie Willis (a sci-fi-cum-historical fiction tale set in the future in England as well as simultaneously in the fourteenth century during the time of the Black Plague; it’s brilliant!)

2. The Book of Answers by C.Y. Gopinath (a satire on the political situation of India that captures in the most subtle ways the country’s current state; again, brilliant!)

3.All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (set in France during World War II, it tells the story of a blind girl and what kind of affect the war has on her family; this one will break your heart and take your breath away all at the same time.)

4. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman (I couldn’t stop laughing throughout this entire book. A widower decides he wants to commit suicide because he can’t live without his late wife anymore, but little things keep getting in his way and keep postponing the suicide. Anyone who enjoyed the Pixar movie Up will love this one.)

5. Wish by Beth Bracken & Kay Fraser; illustrated by Odessa Sawyer (The story is simplistic, because this is a YA book, but the illustrations are so lush readers will feel themselves sinking into the pictures.)

In India,bookworms still prefer paperbacks to e-books.Madam,when can we expect a paperback version of your books?

---Because I’m only releasing a pair of stories at a time, it isn’t cost effective to release two stories as a book; it would be too short. But I’ve strongly considered the possibility, when I’ve published enough stories, to put all of them in a collection and release that as a paperback. If I do decide to pursue that course, fans of the stories will know well in advance—I will definitely keep everyone up to date on the course that Prairie Sky Publishing will take!

---Thank you so much!

(As told to nikhimenon)

Interview With Author Ekta.R.Garg

 'The traditional publishing company gets the majority of the money and the author gets a minimal cut. In indie publishing the author gets to keep most of the money'

'I began reading at the age of 4 and always felt happiest in my free time when I had a book in my hand'

'Short stories have a hard time attracting attention; some people call them the weaker sister of the novel'

'It’s hard to find an audience with so many people in the same field'

Ekta .R.Garg rose to fame with her innovative 'Stories In Pairs' series.In this candid interview, conducted via e-mail in parts,she speaks about her inspiration,future plans and the benefits of being an indie publisher.Read the first part of the interview here.


In the acknowledgement section of 'Two for the Heart', you have revealed that your love for writing started during your school days. Can you elaborate a bit on that?

I began reading at the age of 4 and always felt happiest in my free time when I had a book in my hand. At the age of 8 I started writing poetry and short narratives for fun. I just found the whole idea of trying to express myself in the written word in a creative way so interesting. 

Soon after that I began competing in spelling competitions, which drew me all the way into the world of words. When you study to compete, especially when you’re studying hard because you want to win, you spend many hours reading these words and finding out what they mean. My hours of study and practicing spelling complemented the writing I was doing.

In the sixth grade our teacher gave us a writing assignment. She wanted each student to create an original story and said we could make it about four or five pages long. This was in the time when we hand wrote everything—no one was using computers in my school yet—so writing a story was quite an involved process.

I thoroughly enjoyed crafting the story and created a mystery with a pair of twins as the main characters. The girls go on a vacation and find a missing treasure. I actually wanted to turn it into a series at some point.

I enjoyed writing the story so much that I took a risk: I wrote a story 20 pages long. I felt a little nervous, because I didn’t want to get penalized for going over the limit. Instead my teacher gave me a high score and wrote “Interesting story! Maybe a budding author here!” in the margin of the last page.


That comment stayed with me and still makes me smile. I really think my teacher planted a seed that stayed and has now started bearing fruit.

You are also a publisher. What do you think is the biggest challenge for budding writers?


---Definitely getting discovered. One of the down sides of indie publishing is that thousands of writers have started competing for the attention of readers who have many other things demanding their time. It’s hard to find an audience with so many people in the same field. But it’s also oddly comforting; an indie author can just think, “I’m not doing this alone; I’m not the only person experiencing these hardships.”

What is the inspiration behind stories in pairs? As in, what made you come up with this brilliant idea of penning down stories sharing a common theme and a link?

---I have dedicated serious time and effort in the last three or four years to studying the publishing industry. When I made the decision in the summer of 2014 to begin indie publishing, I already knew I would face stiff competition from the thousands of other writers who had gone before me. In order to stand out from the crowd, I knew I had to do something just different enough to pique people’s curiosity.

I started with the idea of short stories. As the mother of two young children, I don’t have the time and energy to devote to a full-fledged novel. But because I’ve been conducting my own writing workshop for the last two years I knew I could handle developing and writing short stories.But short stories have a hard time attracting attention; some people call them the weaker sister of the novel, although I don’t agree with that assessment at all. It takes just as much skill, craft and art to construct a compelling short story as it does a novel.

Getting people to acknowledge that and understand it is a different matter.

I knew I would have to find a way to make my stories stand out. So I kept brainstorming ideas and decided to start publishing stories in pairs. But I wanted to make them special and thought I should find a way to make them connect. 

That connection also helps emphasize the larger idea behind Stories in Pairs: that we all have a story to share, and our own stories connect with other people’s stories. We never know how or when those stories will intersect or how big of an impact our stories will have on others. But no one can deny that those connections can and will happen.

 In the second story of the first book (Remembrance), Dr. Pooja Mehra is making a brief appearance. Can we expect her character to make a comeback in your future stories also?

---I don’t have any plans for her to appear in upcoming stories, but I definitely won’t rule it out. You never know where and when characters will appear in future stories!

You are playing the dual role of an author and a publisher. Which role do you enjoy playing the most? Why?

---No guesses about it: definitely writer! I love creating stories and characters and finding a compelling way to share those stories with readers. Now that I’ve begun publishing my own work, I know the probability of a growing audience is real.

Having said that, however, I find the challenges of being a publisher interesting. I won’t lie: I’ve definitely wished more than once for the big budget and big team of a traditional publishing house. But I also find an immense satisfaction in accomplishing each task, big or small, by myself. And because I’ve read so much about how the industry works and how other indie authors have succeeded, I already know where to go for answers to my questions. There’s enough comfort in that fact to allow me to be intrigued by this new role.

(The second part of this interview will be published tomorrow)

-nikhimenon

In conversation with Kishore Modak

Author of Maid In Singapore (2012) comes up with another intriguing tale Lost In Pattaya. Having read and loved both the books , It was a treat to have this conversation with Kishore Modak :

You have an impressive job profile and looking at that one wonders, how did you start writing? Did you begin with novels or were there other works before your first book?

Thanks a lot for your kind words and the opportunity to speak to you here. I started writing about three years back. Before that I had not really written anything with the intent of seeking readers. The writing has been a result of thoughts inside my mind that just had to be let out. Fiction is a platform that lends itself to expressing very real thoughts in the garb of fictitious flotation. In the beginning it was simply that, an outpouring. When I finished writing my first book, titled, The Corruption of Inspector Deshmukh I was pleasantly surprised with four publishers coming forth with proposals for paperbacks. After signing with Grapevine we went through the process of editing etc. before I was struck with the ideas that became ‘Maid in Singapore’. You may be surprised to hear that ‘Maid in Singapore’ was written over a period of merely a fortnight, the idea had taken such a deep root that I found it extremely fluid to convert it into a manuscript. When the Grapevine team read the ‘Maid In Singapore’ manuscript they too supported my decision of shelving ‘Inspector Deshmukh’ and proceeding with ‘Maid in Singapore’ as my first offering to the market. 

Apart from novels I have also penned a radio play and few articles which can be found on my blog.

2    Was “Lost in Pattaya” an instant manuscript from the beginning?  

‘Lost in Pattaya’ was a much more tedious journey. The novel was re-written with the settings changed to Mumbai and Goa rather than Bangkok and Pattaya. You can imagine the back breaking work that would have gone in. It did not work out and we had to revert back to the original settings of Bangkok and Pattaya before we went ahead with the publication. In my mind the settings of a book are what lend a character and a feel to books like Lost in Pattaya. Tampering with that often kills the manuscript.

3      You are currently based in Singapore so it is accepted that you know the lifestyle and society there better. Is that the only reason for both your books to be based in Singapore?

KM: South East Asia is a true confluence of cultures and civilizations. It is a melting pot of Indian, Chinese, Western, Far Eastern and Indigenous cultures. From the remains of the most ancient relics of humanity to the modern advent of metropolises, South East Asia offers a colorful people, people full of stories. So, having lived and travelled across this region, it was natural for me to anchor the settings of these two published books in this region. However, Maid In Singapore starts in Singapore, moves the action to London and NYC before resting in the Philippines. Lost in Pattaya is completely set in South East Asia, but, The Corruption of Inspector Deshmukh is set entirely in the Western Ghats of India.

The settings in which books are cast are extremely important since the story and the characters feed off those settings. Verisimilitude in fiction, often comes from the interaction and behavior that the settings force the characters to enact, almost as if the settings themselves are a character in a novel. It is the reason why re-writing Lost in Pattaya in non-South East Asian settings just did not work. It had to be in South East Asia for it to jump to life and to add colour to the tale.

4      Both your books have different plots – believable yet difficult to accept. Are these stories purely fiction or inspired?

All my three books, two published and one in my disk, have been inspired by real life people and incidents. They may seem bizarre but the inspiration for all the books have come from exchanging stories with friends and acquaintances over coffee or drinks or simply in short corridor conversations. Some stories just take root in the mind, and over a period of time they grow and reach a size where they have to be written out and cannot be ignored any longer, they just need to be released from the prison of the mind.

5  Did you ever wonder if these stories would be rejected by Indian market? Your first book particularly had some mixed reactions when it came out.

Yes, all the time, failure lurks in the dim corridors of our mind. If you see the talent around and draw simple odds of writing, and then getting published, they are so meager that you might as well not write at all. It is the brash I believe, that write before computing the probability of success, and for them it is the story that they want to relate which is important, rather than the formula-genres that the publishers demand on their websites. From the beginning, I have enjoyed reading my writing and that has kept me going, almost as if I need only one fan, me myself.

Maid in Singapore has extreme views rather than mixed ones. Readers either love it or they hate it, and there in it triumphs. I have had almost no one who has ignored it, they have either loved it or hated it. It remains dear to me and I think the fortnight that I wrote it in is like a magic that finally revealed a hidden trick to me myself.

6      Is there any story that you would want to write based on India, set in perhaps your home town ? 

Yes there are. One particular idea revolves around historical fiction, it has been taking a proportion in my mind. If that sees light, it will be set in and around what are the boundaries of the current state of Maharashtra. Also, if we decide to move forward with the un-published novel (Inspector Deshmukh), then that too is set in the Western Ghats which is where my ancestry traces back to.

7      

Where did you spend your childhood? What books influenced you most growing up?

My childhood was spent travelling across India since my father was serving in the Indian Army as I was growing up. A bit later in life, education and work kept me mostly in South India but then owing to the requirements of business travel I have travelled across quite a few large cities across Asia and the US. I have been living in Singapore for about a decade now.

When I was growing up Tintin had a profound influence on me. I still believe there are important lessons in storytelling that can be learnt from Herge and his treatment of the Tintin journals. In those early years we read the abridged classics which were part of the daytime curriculum as well as the hide-and-read Harold Robbins phase, which were read at night. Still remember speeding through ‘A stone for Danny Fischer’. Before the internet, adolescent excitement was often provided by a black market of kids exchanging books they knew were not age appropriate. A little later the expansive works of James Michener kept me enthralled for years. He provided a platform for us to understand our world better through fiction, a worthy recommendation for those who claim – I have stopped reading fiction altogether. More recently I have been completely taken in by John Banville, particularly his Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler trilogy. Jeet Thayil, David Mitchell and JM Coetze too have had an influence on me in the recent years. All the while the classics of literature is something I always turn to, like a coach who can help you when you are stuck with style and technique. Amongst those classics, all the original English works of Vladimir Nabokov have left a deep impression on me. His treatment of human frailties is very bold, often because it is a very real and genuine portrayal.

8      What according to you makes your stories and writing stand apart from the rest of the writers? Is it something you consciously work on?

Thanks a lot for the question. I am glad that there is a stand-out-ness here.

Consciousness itself is a differentiation, since it forces us to narrate a unique and individual existence. Like this interview and its editing, which has been a unique meeting of grounds, yours and mine. So the answer is YES, I work on it, since the whole idea is to set a story, like a cake, or an ice-cream with a unique recipe for another to relish.

I think sexuality and its adult treatment is unique in my works. We shy away from visceral topics, and I have simply attempted not to do so in my books. A lot of readers, especially younger ones are surprised with the raw treatment of adult themes that my books have, but I have to say that the acceptance that I have received as I have presented these new themes to the audience has been very encouraging to me. It proves that there is always a space for us to present new content and themes through fiction.

I assume you have kids and I wanted to ask if your kids have a habit of reading? And, how you would as a parent try to make them read since you are such an avid reader yourself.

Yes I do have kids and the fourteen year old is always happy spending time with books. Reading does need a host when you are young, someone who can show you the pleasure that good books can provide. I have always picked out the books that I have enjoyed and passed then on to my kids.

Thank you Kishore for your wonderful thoughts.

Thanks a lot for reaching our and allowing me to table some of my views on the questions you have put forth. It has been a pleasure.