2025 was a spectacular year as a writer! The highlight was, of course, winning the Crossword Book Award 2025. Everyone knows how slow the publishing industry is, so it was also such a joy to have three books published this year, by three different publishers! The Crossword Book Award ceremony was a grand, celebratory affair, and the fact that Denise Antao and I won the award for the best children's fiction was a dream come true. Jury members Deepak Dalal, Deepa Agarwal and Anita Roy had the kindest things to say about our book The Wall Friends Club. 'Wall Friends Club' stands out for its entirely unexpected and imaginative storyline and structure. It is a story of friendship, a most unusual one, that originates from pieces of paper stuck in the nooks and crannies of a wall. Although the protagonists have never met each other, the author, in a … [Read more...]
My Year in Writing – 2024
Reflecting on my journey as a writer is probably the post I enjoy writing most. Writing is such a slow business and wins are so few and far between that it's easy to get bogged down by all the endless waiting, the ghosting, and the rejections. Yet, when I look back at my year, I realise, again, how far I've come. Each year, I celebrate my wins. I celebrate the books I've written and the ones I'm writing. In brief, here's what my year brought me:two middle-grade books (one was already published by Scholastic Asia, but it came to India in January 2024)a Highlights Foundation scholarship to attend a course on revising a verse noveldozens of school visits, author events, and lit fests... and finally, an agent! Fishbowl Fishbowl is my second novel-in-verse for middle-grade readers. In some ways, it's more ambitious than my first, Uncontrollable, because … [Read more...]
Uncontrollable – The Story Behind the Story
I love to read about how a book that I'm reading came into being. What made the writer write this particular book? What are some of those little stories the reader knows nothing about?And that's why I've written a post like this for three of my books:Sisters at New DawnDragonflies, Jigsaws and SeashellsThe Clockwala's CluesNow, it's time for Uncontrollable, which has rather unconventional beginnings. Why did I write a fantasy in verse? What was I thinking?The answer is that it didn't start off in verse at all. I wrote it in prose, probably sometime in 2018, and I started pitching it in 2019. I'm a rewriter much more than a writer, and here's how Uncontrollable became what it is. I first pitched The Machine of Kallua (as it was then called) on 7 May 2019. Yes, I have a spreadsheet to keep track of submissions. Publisher One held on to for quite a while, … [Read more...]
My Year in Writing: 2023
The year 2023 was remarkably kind to me as an author. It was a year full of lit fests, school visits, and, most importantly, new stories! UncontrollableWhat can I say about Uncontrollable, my first verse novel?'Addictive.''Unputdownable.''Ambitious and original.'I keep going back and reading all these heart-warming emails I've received about it.Yes, it is ambitious. It is a middle-grade fantasy in verse. In November 2023, I was shortlisted for the Neev Literature Festival fellowship. During the interview, I met six children's literature experts, and they mentioned how they'd hunted for other examples of fantasy written in verse ... and had drawn a blank.They thought of Odder by Katherine Applegate, but it isn't really fantasy; the protagonist is an animal, but the book is realistic fiction nonetheless.So maybe, Uncontrollable is really one of its kind. It's both terrifying and … [Read more...]
Five Fictional Friendships I Loved Writing
Three years ago, to celebrate Friendship Day, I wrote about five times fictional friendships won my heart. For Friendship Day 2023, here's a post about five fictional friendships I enjoyed writing. And because I can't choose which one to write about first, I've put them down in the reverse order of publication. Dhara's Revolution "I wish for you a best friend as special as Carol. Equally, I wish that each of you can be like Carol for someone in your life"That's from the acknowledgments page of Dhara's Revolution, a book that's hot off the press and will be released at the end of this month. Carol and Dhara have a very special kind of friendship. They make charts together, even if they're competing. They learn each other's speeches.Until one day, the don't.A book about friendship and rivalry, I loved writing about Carol and Dhara and what makes them the friends they … [Read more...]
My Year in Writing: 2022
What can I say about a year when I FINALLY managed to take my books to audiences? At lit fests in Gurugram, Vadodara, Jaipur and Pune, I shared my books, interacted with children, and did school visits once more. Almost all through 2022, I was on a high!And yet, the true highlight of the year as a writer was the publication of a book I started writing in 2015, after I visited the beautiful forests of Nagzira. Red EyesRed Eyes is an environmental thriller, and it is one of the very few books I've written that was never rejected. I started writing it in 2015, but I'm what they call a pantser. I muddle about, writing what I can, letting the story take the lead. So, in the beginning, I had nothing but an assortment of tales told to us by guides we met in Nagzira and Tadoba.Guide tales? Interesting, sure, but I wanted more. So I started putting them all together in a story told … [Read more...]
Careers in Writing – Fergusson College
A career in writing - what does that mean? As part of UGC's STRIDE (Scheme for for Trans-Disciplinary Research for India's Developing Economy), the English department of Fergusson College invited me to talk about making a career in creative writing. What I loved was that I didn't speak just to students of the English department; it really was trans-disciplinary!What would a talk on a career in creative writing involve? For me, first, it would involve demystifying the publishing process. Secondly, to use a word that the organiser used, it would need to deglamorize the life of a writer. If you're talking about a career and not a hobby, writing is not about penning down your thoughts and expressing your feelings. No. It's not the random poem here, or the the snippet of deep, philosophical thought there.Okay, so you write poetry. When did you last buy a book of poems? Does your … [Read more...]
My Year in Writing: 2021
The year 2020 was such a boost to me as a writer! With a poem published by OUP, a picture book, a chapter book, a middle-grade book and a collection of short stories, how could 2021 even hope to compete?Even so, with two publications, an award shortlist, a book going into reprint and tons of reviews, 2021 was quite lovely too! How Big Is a Whale Shark? I wrote my first nonfiction picture book! It wasn't easy, but I enjoyed the process tremendously. Best of all, though, are the stunning illustrations. Mandar Mhaskar made How Big Is a Whale Shark? what it is with a beautiful colour palette and humorous illustrations. I love the artwork!Of course, the best part about being published on StoryWeaver is the number of languages into which the book gets translated. It's already available in four languages and will soon (hopefully) be out in … [Read more...]
Book Spotting!
When my first book, The Story-Catcher, was published, we started playing a game. We would go to every bookstore in every city we visited and try to find a copy of the book. It was impossible. And yet, it was exciting. I even got a spreadsheet from my publishers, listing the stores in which my book would be available, and we went to those stores in the city, hunting.I never found my book. Not even when it was on display like this:This was at Crossword, Mulund. Look at the number of copies on the shelf. You guessed right. I didn't see them.This was in the shop window of Chapter and Verse (now shut down), and I didn't see it. When I went for the Asian Festival of Children's Content in 2018, I knew my book Dragonflies, Jigsaws and Seashells would be in print. I had not yet received my sample copies, and I didn't even know how the book looked. I hunted … [Read more...]
The Clockwala’s Clues – The Story Behind the Story
When I wrote of how Sisters at New Dawn and Dragonflies, Jigsaws and Seashells came into being, I had every intention of documenting the journey of each published book.So much for that.It's been three months since The Clockwala's Clues was published, and I kept postponing writing the story behind the story. Yesterday, however, I visited Kolsa Gully, which inspired my Tipu Gully, so I decided to take a few pictures and finally write Clockwala Uncle's story.Unlike my other books, The Clockwala's Clues is heavily inspired by Pune, the city in which I grew up. In particular, it's based loosely on what is popularly called the Camp area, with its bakeries, old shops and diverse population.Here's an excerpt from the book:And here's a picture of Kolsa Gully: No, the key shop is not the first shop in the street, and no, it is not … [Read more...]