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...]
Flipped – Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories
With Flipped - Mystery Stories and Sci-Fi Stories, we have another first at my book club - an anthology! Full disclosure - I have a story in Flipped too, but we won't be reading that one.I love the idea of the Flipped books. You read a few stories, then decide you want another kind of story, so you just flip the book over and discover another genre. Short stories work well at my book club too, so there's a lot we can do as we read this anthology. Sci-Fi Stories A couple of years ago, I invited a friend and NASA scientist, Dr Sreeja Nag, to conduct a session for my writing programme on science stories. Like every other guest session I've organised, I learned a lot from the session. What is science fiction anyway? What kinds of stories make for believable science fiction? Taking an idea from another session Sreeja conducted, we'll explore a few writing … [Read more...]