An Interview with Nelofar Currimbhoy

I had the good fortune of interviewing Nelofar Currimbhoy after reading her book, “Flame” based on her Mother Shahnaz Husain’s life. Here is the interview for you to enjoy.

1. Why write a biography? Why not a story may be or something fictional?

Writing for me has been a passion as far as I can think back. I once wrote a 60 page poem ‘Eyes of the Healer’ and got it read by Darley Anderson , the well known British agent. He wrote back to say that , there was no doubt that there was talent but I should write prose because it was salable. Somehow the salability aspect of writing seemed like sacrilege and I still love my poetry. Why not a fiction ? Well I guess sometimes things take a life of their own. My mother and I happened to be at Barista when my she went to the little book shop they had started and came back with a copy of Gulzar’s biography by his daughter. When I opened it, it said ‘Promise me , you will write a book on me.’ For years she had been the audience for my writing and was convinced that I was the best person to write her story. I have written twelve thousand words of my first fiction novel and I am very excited about it. It’s an exotic romance, a saga. Ideally it should have come before the biography because it would keep the focus on my writing and not the subject. On the other hand the response from serious readers to the quality of my writing has given me -a first time writer- a thumbs up that’s propelled my enthusiasm a great deal. Many books to come from this pen, or should I say computer.

2. What inspired you to write this book?

My mothers life , in fact her ability to defy life and change every negative event that came her way into a challenge that had to be overcome was the sort of inspirational story that had to be told. I see this book as a self help book in the form of a life story that will inspire and encourage those that read it. Many women and men too will identify with it. Struggle is not gender specific and we all dream of success and fame. Here is the story of a girl born to a traditional Muslim family , married at 16 , she had her first child in the year and went on to become an iconic figure.

On the professional front her ability to stay ahead of her competition without advertising, her faith in the all Indian Dream of Ayurveda as a way of life and her astute and instinctive decision to market this science at a time when it was taken as outdated and old fashioned will make this book an interesting read for every dreamer who dares to dream the almost impossible.

I have walked her journey with her, and seen her life unfold like a saga of a story book and all I can say is that this story was worth telling.

3. Beauty is only skin-deep. Is that true? Do you believe in it?

Not at all. It starts with the heart , the goodness of soul shows in the eyes. A good nights sleep and a diet of fruits shows on the skin much more than any beauty product can. A beauty routine is a good addition to a healthy life style and above all a mind at peace.

4. How much of an inspiration has Shahnaz Husain been to you? If you had to name 3 character traits that you would want of hers, which ones would they be?

I have always maintained that no two people can be as different as my mum and me. She is fiery and passionate , I am calm and serene , she works best around a lot of people and noise , I am methodical and enjoy my space. Yet I have indeed been inspired by her in many . Her family values and her ability to find self expression without undermining the importance of her marriage is something I respect and endorse for all people. It is an aspect that is going to become more relevant by the day when the pressure of urban life is becoming oppressive and couples opt out too quickly. I would always like to hold the family values that she has taught me as sacred in my life.

Her ability to change the course of her destiny when its almost staring at her in her face and her desire to enjoy life to the level of making every moment lived a celebratory event are qualities I would love to keep for myself too.

5. How difficult is it to differentiate personal life from professional especially in a profession like yours when the borderline is too thin?

In my mothers life there is no separation between personal life and professional life. She lives and breathes her work every moment. If she is at coffee shop she is signing autographs. When she is shopping she is approached by people who want to ask her about a beauty issue. She never turns them back. I am sure she even dreams of her work.

As for me I am the other limit. I keep all media interviews away from my home. Home to me is sacred and a place for family and friends.I believe in privacy as the most essential aspect to keep my life and those near me functional. My children were never allowed to be photographed so they would grow up level headed. If I am out and recognized as my mothers daughter I find it awkward and an intrusion. I work meticulously , but only from my office table and when I come home I am mum and wife. I think my mum and I are best friends because we are perfect foils to each other.

6. Nelofar as a person…

Can a person judge themselves fairly. Its not an easy question to answer. Okay ! Here I go , giving it a try. I love nature and the outdoors. I am quite hung up on good values and principles. I feel that good work ethics in a company is a purifying experience. If I sound boring , I am not. I laugh a lot. I find things funny quite easily and I have sense of humour that I think is quick enough ! Well the rest is for someone to say when they write a book on me. Who knows ?

7. If not beauty therapy, then what profession would you be in and why?

I could be so many things. But within my circumstances I would still like to expand myself to experience something beyond, follow my bliss for a while and write many more books. I believe that we need to extend our vision to the maximum, to touch, feel, celebrate the entire universe if one can. I don’t believe in remaining trapped in a tight environment. Prisons are often of different kinds, not always concrete and sometimes we build them around ourselves. There is too much happening in the world and life’s opportunitiy can’t be a missed experience.

I was first introduced to social work by a precious friend, Ms. Jetsun Pema, His Holiness The Dalai Lama’s sister and since my training centres for women have become a rewarding part of my life. Apart for my contribution to Shahnaz Herbals, I would like to be known as someone who made a difference to people’s lives.

8. What does success mean to you?

Sleeping at night with the belief that I did my best and that I have retained a clear conscious about what ever I did.

9. Nelofar the writer….

As a writer I am completely influenced by my childhood hero John Keats. A story needs to be seen , felt , tasted and touched. Your words must be palpable. The reader must walk the journey with you, you have to take him along . One cant be a distant narrator but an up close and personal voice that rings within you. That is my idea of writing and I believe – from those who have read my book – that I have achieved that in Flame.

You can buy the book, “Flame” on Flipkart on this link:

Buy Flame: The Story of My Mother Shahnaz Husain from Flipkart.com

An Interview with Alma Katsu

Hello everyone! I loved The Taker. The book reaached out to me this year and will be one of the books that I will return to before the year ends. Here is my review of the book. At the same time, after reading the book, I was flooded with questions for Ms. Katsu. Here is a short interview with her. Thank you Alma.

How did the idea of, “The Taker” come to you?

The novel grew out of a short story I wrote a long time ago, which was a ghost story set on an abandoned farmhouse in rural Maine. I kept thinking about the characters in the story and what happened to them after the story ended—and those characters were Jonathan and Evangeline (who was the ghost). I’d taken a long break from writing fiction to concentrate on my day job, but when I began writing again, that story became the first chapter in what was to become The Taker. That short story is nowhere to be seen in the final version of the book, by the way, as the story ended up changing quite a bit over time.

Did you always set out to write a book? If not a writer, then what would you have been?

My story is probably the most common for anyone who aspires to work in the arts: I grew up wanting to be a writer, then reality set in.

I have always been a reader. Like many readers, I tried my hand at writing. I was very young at the time, and somehow got it into my head that I would be a novelist. It soon became apparent that this wasn’t something you could just pursue as a day job, so I worked at newspapers for a short time. Even newspaper work was hard to come by full-time, so I eventually went into another line of work: I became an analyst for the US government. It was a great career, but after twenty years I realized that if I didn’t return to writing I probably never would.

I didn’t return to writing fiction thinking I’d be published. I wanted to see if I could learn to write a novel. I’d become a senior analyst by that point and knew the level of effort it took to really master a skill. I knew I hadn’t worked as hard as I needed to in my early twenties. I went to grad school for writing and spend ten years working on the book. I’d run into a problem that I couldn’t figure out, put the book away and work on another one, figure out a way to fix the problem and pull The Taker manuscript out again, run into another problem, repeat the cycle. That would be a piece of advice I’d give aspiring novelists: don’t make it all about the one book. I learned a lot about writing from the books I worked on during the in-between times, and it’s pretty common to have to write several novels before you have one that’s publishable.

Your Literary influences…

So many, too many to list here. Horror classics, like Bram Stoker and Edgar Allan Poe, Shirley Jackson. Patricia Highsmith. Thomas Hardy. John Barth, John Irving, Thomas Pynchon, Neal Stephenson. Virginia Woolf. Sandor Marai—I consider Casanova in Bolzano a direct influence on The Taker.

Alma – the writer…

…wishes people read more. Wishes there was more of a conversation about books, the way there is about celebrities, and movies and television. For the life of me I can’t understand this worshipping of celebrities.

Did you ever wish that one of the characters of The Taker were to come to life? If yes which one and why?

I suppose the obvious answer is Jonathan, because he’s so beautiful. He’s also maddening, and not very giving, and ultimately it would be too frustrating to spend any length of time with him, I think. Adair is another obvious choice (if you’re of an adventurous frame of mind), as long as you can keep your emotional distance from him. Unfortunately, those two characters are so colorful and larger-than-life that they make the more normal ones, like Luke, seem uninteresting by comparison. At least Luke wouldn’t be potentially harmful to everyone he meets.

The book creeped me out in several places. Did you feel that while writing it?

Yes. There are a number of creepy scenes in The Taker that jolt the reader. But books are reflections of life (with perhaps a few distortions) and in every one’s life there’s going to be at least one jarring, unsettling experience that shakes you profoundly enough to make you see life differently. The Taker has “those moments” for a couple of the characters—hence, I think some readers have found it to be a bit much to take. I wanted the book to be outsized in every way, a real epic, and that meant going a little overboard in that respect (darkness), too. (I have to say, however, that it is hardly the darkest book ever written, and I suspect that part of some readers’ reactions might be because I’m a woman and they don’t expect a woman to write such a dark book.)

Alma – the reader…

…reads widely but tends toward literary fiction and (since you’re catching me on a bad day) is tired of the trend toward formulaic fiction. Novels are becoming like television programming: bland and interchangeable, with no real character.

How does it feel to know that The Taker has been so well-received almost all over the world?

The book has gotten some wonderful reviews, and I get great email from readers, and I know I am very lucky. It’s gotten it’s share of bad reviews—no book will be loved by every reader. One surprise has been that the setting—early America—hasn’t been offputting to readers outside the US. Post-Colonial America is hardly a beloved time or place for readers, like Regency England.

When did you realize that you had so much more to say that The Taker become a trilogy?
The Taker was originally written to be a standalone, but by the end of the book I saw the opportunity to stretch the boundaries even more—turn it up to 11 on the emotional scale for readers, if you get the Spinal Tap reference—and what writer could resist that?

Your thoughts on the modern literary scene and your favourites from it…

As I mentioned, I read pretty widely. So on one hand, I really enjoy mystery writers like Denise Mina and Tana French, and on the other hand, literary authors such as Adam Haslett. I particularly like writers who experiment with narrative form such as David Mitchell, although his last novel, The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, didn’t do that.

What I don’t like about the modern literary scene is that the celebrity culture is establishing itself here, too, and the only books that get any major coverage—which is still important for a book to be able to “break out”—are the ones that have tons and tons of money behind them. Readers aren’t aware that the tsunami of publicity for the books that land on the bestsellers’ lists came from the publishers’ checkbook, not on the actual merit of the book.

This is the end of the interview, however not of the series. The second instalment will be out soon and I for one cannot wait for it.

Interview with Mohammed Hanif

After I finished reading, Our Lady of Alice Bhatti, my thoughts were all over the place and I had questions for the author. I managed to conduct a short interview with Mohammed Hanif over the phone and here it is for you:

1.A Case of Exploding Mangoes is radically different from Our Lady of Alice Bhatti. What inspired Our Lady?

Lots of brilliant, gutsy women I have worked with. Also an unhealthy interest in other people’s personal lives.

2.Your take on the Pakistan that you see today…

Pretty bleak place, with bits of it blowing up every day. Weather is lovely though.

3.Our Lady is satirically funny and at the same time there is this sadness attached to it. How closely do you relate or connect to Alice’s point of view?

I spent a lot of time with her while writing this. Spent even more time with her while not writing and just thinking about her. But I don’t really know if I am any closer to her point of view. I wasn’t aiming for a realistic portrait of a profession nurse. I think in the end all I have ended up doing is channelling my own obsessions.

4.What influenced you to be a reader first and then a writer?

Boredom I guess. I grew up in a village where there was no TV, no newspapers, no books. Printed word was a rare exotic thing and I found it very exciting. And a lot of random, obsessive reading can lead to some scribbles which after a lot of rewriting can sometimes turn into writing.

5.Your literary influences…

Too many. Punjabi classical poets. Virginia Woolf. Hanif Kureishi. Truman Capote. City pages of local news papers. Day time TV.

6.Mohammed Hanif the writer…

is always at war with that other Hanif who hates writing.

7.Mohammed Hanif’s next book would be about?

Love, I hope. Or some spectacular crime.

You can buy his books here:

Buy Our Lady Of Alice Bhatti from Flipkart.com

Buy A Case Of Exploding Mangoes from Flipkart.com

Tomorrow Pamplona Blog Tour 2011, Gig 9

Laura’s Question: How easy or difficult it was to work on the translation, considering that the book was written in dialogues and so much imagery was involved?

I really enjoyed working on the dialogue. It felt almost like translating a play sometimes! I have to confess to sitting there in front of my computer and talking to myself occasionally, just to check that the dialogue worked. One aspect that I spent some time thinking about was the absence of quotation marks in the book. I tried inserting quotation marks in one short section to see what effect it would have, but it just didn’t feel like Jan’s text anymore. I did perhaps normalise the text a little, by, for example, inserting the names of the speakers at points where I felt the attribution wasn’t quite clear or by rearranging the order of the elements in the dialogue to something that felt more natural in English, but I decided to stick with Jan’s choice not to employ quotation marks.

One interesting point about the amount of dialogue in that text was that the short lines made the book thicker than Peirene’s other titles. Peirene aim to keep their books under 200 pages, which was a challenge on this occasion because so much of the page was taken up by very short lines: ‘Yes.’ ‘Okay.’ ‘No.’ Tomorrow Pamplona may look longer than Peirene’s other titles, but that’s mainly because dialogue is such an important feature of this book.

This translation was a real pleasure to work on, as the original text flows so well and the tension is so strong.

An Interview with Arjun Shekhar

Hi everyone. Here is the interview with Arjun Shekhar I had the opportunity to conduct via mail. You can also read my review of “A Flawed God” here as well

1. Why the topic of Corporate Politics and The Share Market?

I feel that the Share Market is shrouded in a mist and though it affects everybody viscerally, people know nothing about it. I wanted to demystify the fog, let people know how the share market affects them directly and why they should know about it. As I said to another interviewer, the audience I had in my mind was my mom. She is an enlightened housewife who is wedded to an ex-government servant and has no clue about the corporate world whatsoever. But what she understands is Ownership – something she has displayed beautifully in keeping our home together and happy. So when I take this theme as the central topic for my novel rather than corporate shenanigans, I immediately connect to her and other such audiences. She was in for a surprise when she read my book – she found ownership also happens to be the primal force in the corporate sector and the share market exemplifies this. The shareholders are the first among equals of all the stakeholders and thus call the shots in strategic and financial decision making in a firm. So the theme of the book is ownership and the share market is only a stage to bring this out.

I suspect it is ownership that makes everything flow – it moves the world (the King of Bhutan took ownership to deliver democracy to the people) or the lack of it makes the world rot (as in when we don’t take ownership of common spaces).

2. The titled, “A Flawed God” says much and yet doesn’t. How did the title come to you and why?

Slowly and inexorably, the world is getting corporatized. Its coming now to India but many countries in the west are more or less run like and by corporations. In India too its becoming obvious that corporates are getting increasingly involved in our lives, if not taking them over entirely. At the individual level the coporates decide how we live, what choices we make, what we consume, and thus what values we hold, what motivates us and who we relate to. At the societal level, corporates increasingly determine macro economic policies, media policy and programming, environmental health, and even cultural mores. Politicians, bearaucrats, educators, dev sector activists, bollywood folks, sports fraternity and even the religious fraternity are genuflecting to the new high priests. And whose the new God on the block? The Share Market of course which is the temple of all corporate activity and intrigue.

Now to take up the second part: why do i call this God flawed? On two counts. First, it has created a breed of owners who have no ownership. Shareholders are mostly punters, or to be more politically correct, investors who will never set foot in the company they own. Like absentee landlords, they are interested in returns from the land and not in nurturing it. Now if that isn’t a flawed algorithm what is. They also have limited liability which means they can make the company bankrupt, pollute the environment, mess up the lives of many and face no consequences for it personally. Imagine that – you do what you want but no one can harm you as an individual. Sounds draconian to me and against the natural principles bequeathed to the human race by evolution.

Second flaw is that, as you know price is a key signal, which is supposed to give the buyer and the seller clear signals for action but in the case of the share market the way price is fixed itself is a joke. The prices go up and down like a yo yo on the flimsiest of triggers. Only a tenuous link with the company’s performance exists. The macro intangibles and internal intangibles of a company shroud the price determination in this market. For outsiders, mostly decisions to buy or sell are a gamble and for the insiders – I won’t go into that, there’s too much already been said about insider trading scams.

3. A lot of people can almost relate to Sancho’s character. Why do you think that is happening? Did you write the book
with that intent?

Sancho is a kind of anti hero and I suppose I created a character like him because there are more of us anti heroes around. Actually if you take a systemic viewpoint, there are too many elements in a system to allow any one person to emerge as a super hero in reality who can impact and control every element. That’s why super heroes only happen in stories and folklore. After they pass on they are turned into legends. In his own lifetime Gandhi was at most a legend in progress.

Some people have asked whether Sancho is autobiographical. My reply has been that since he is a character constructed in my head, he would naturally have been born out of the experiences I store in my head and so there are autobiographical elements to him. But at the same time I also identify with Pause his lover, since she too was born of the same soil.

4. Arjun the reader…

I am a voracious reader of course but also being involved in many real world ventures, I end up having a wish list longer than my read list at times, like many others I presume. I took to fiction early in my college life and in those days devoured everything by Milan Kundera, Franz Kafka, Doestovsky, Marquez. Now i have taken an added liking to Canadian authors like Alice Monroe, Robertson Davies. Of the Indian subcontinent authors i love Amitava Ghosh, Arundhati Roy, Mohsin Ahmed. Non fiction has been an acquired love that came late. Books in that genre that have affected me have been about linguistics and the co-evolution of language and the brain – authors like Terence Deacon, Frijtof Capra, Russel Martin etc.. Finally, I must mention that my highest brow reading providing me with the greatest insights has been Calvin and Hobbes, Asterix, and my daughter’s essays.

Regrettably my read list doesn’t include too many non english writers (except Kabir and Pash who i have read avidly) but for that I blame the context I grew up in. I have been trying to correct the imbalance of late…

5. Arjun the writer…

To be honest, it would be a stretch to call me a writer. I am more of a collector of moments – in fact, like other people collect photographs of their children – I have two diaries full of anecdotes of my 10 year old daughter Saanjh. Writing a book just happened to me. It seemed the best way to reflect and gain insights into my experiences in the corporate sector after i had withdrawn from it somewhat.

6. A Flawed God almost seems idyllic in its approach and content. Do you think we will ever get there from a corporate perspective and its workings?

Stories, I believe, are supposed to be idyllic. The flaws lie in the experience. The real world is messy and words have been given to us to sort it out in our heads in an idyllic way and so be able to cope with the seeming chaos out there. Now the thing with the corporate juggernaut is that it seems to be telling us that there is only one way. I don’t believe in single narratives, that’s why I decided to write about an alternative reality that doesn’t stretch the imagination too much and can easily be believed that it could be true. I wanted to offer an alternative. I wanted to remind the juggernaut of its origins. I wanted to make the juggernaut aware of itself. I wanted the juggernaut to reflect. And once it begins to reflect, it will not remain the juggernaut it is today.

But will we ever get there? To be honest, I discovered later that Charles Handy, the famous thinker and corporate guru, had already uttered my moderately heretical hypothesis way back in 1990. Let me quote from his book Beyond Uncertainty.

1. Profits are a necessary but not sufficient condition of success…
2. Owner with limited liability will never be owners, so don’t expect too much from them…
3. Owning people is wrong. Companies are collections of people these days, they are communities not property.
4. The law does not recognize this, it should.

Did anything change by his utterances? Well no, but look what has happened to the West. Reports about the decay are serious and anybody who is not listening to them are being ostriches – something like when we all believed the Marlboro man was the epitome of manhood and puffed away without a care till he died of lung cancer in the late 90′s. Of course, so many don’t quit but that’s because now they are addicted. In a similar way the world is full of addicts of the corporate way of life. Even so its becoming clear that this way has taken its toll on society when you look at it holistically. Just like smoking does to us. On the face of it we still look healthy…right uptill the time we take to the bed irrevocably.

I’m sorry for these dire warnings and people will blame me for spoiling the party. But i’m kind of addicted to reality myself and I report what I see as real. Yet my book is a happy book – the alternative is clearly spelt out – it isn’t just about berating the corporate sector, it’s about reform in it.

I feel if we instill ownership into the employees for the organization and its outputs, into citizens for common spaces, and into government for the people then the party will really start. From a regime of limited liability, I hope we move to a regime of full viability of the community.

7. Arjun’s next venture…

I presume you refer to a writing venture here. Well, I want to clarify that i am not a professional writer and never will be. Though, I won’t deny that I the hat fits as of now and I am enjoying wearing it. What I would prefer to do is let my experiences tease out words from me. So maybe my writing/ interpreting life will be sporadic, interspersed with bouts of living. But since I came to writing books late, meanwhile i had already accumulated enough experiences to tease out two more full length novels. While going through the long rigamarole of getting A Flawed God published, I wrote them down. So in a sense A Flawed God is really practise for the next one – End of Story. This one is set in the electronic media world. I use their own device – the story – to “expose” the real world of these word merchants that are shaping our consciousness these days. Instead of representing reality to us, i find their words are manufacturing our experiences…of course the messaging and the ‘exposing’ is merely a subtle sub text. The story is a racy, humorous, even more suspenseful thriller than A Flawed God.

8. I was fascinated by Pause Daniels’ character and the role she played in the book. Did you sketch the character from someone you know in real-life?

There is a colleague and friend from my early days in the corporate sector who was my muse for this character and I have told him so. Yes, it was a man. In fact, he was the first to read an early draft of this book and encouraged me to get it published. He was…is, a super high performer and a beautiful human being rolled into one. A super hero you might ask? I wouldn’t say so and Vinod Kala himself would laugh at the idea. I would just call him a sincere person who takes ownership of spaces like i have never seen anyone do before or since.

9. How did writing happen to you?

I think I answered that before. As humans we all hoard stuff, we are the ultimate magpies storing away for a rainy day. People collect money, fame, power, stamps and photos. I gather moments. I felt that capturing an experience with all its context is not possible in a camera. I was forced to take up the pen by the collector in me.

Ah I forgot, another inspiration was Pravah, an NGO i founded with my wife and a friend, since 1993, that builds social responsibility and leadership in young people. It was actually, those early funding proposals that brought out the writer in me. While on the topic of Pravah let me come back to your earlier question about my next venture. Another book being cooked up by a small group of authors within Pravah is called Ocean in a Drop, a kind of proposal to society to change the lens with which they have been viewing young people. Most likely, Sage will be publishing it and it should be out by early next year.

An Interview with Lisa Napoli – Radio Shangri-La!!

So after reading Radio Shangri-La, and reviewing it, I found the perfect opportunity to ask Ms. Napoli the questions I wanted to about the book. I wanted to know more about her and the process of writing this wonderful book. So here goes the interview:

Why write about Bhutan? What led you to it?

I knew next to nothing about Bhutan when I met a handsome man at a party who got me invited there to help with a new youth-oriented radio station. I was a radio journalist at the time and I had no intentions of writing a book. I just wanted to get off my daily treadmill…but nine months after I returned, I realized going there had changed my outlook on life, and that in mid-life, everyone gets to that point where they feel trapped, regardless their circumstances.

Your thoughts on life – The one thing that it takes to live it.

Be kind. (Be open, too, to new things, but in way these two things are very much tied together.)

What do you think of Bhutan as a country basis your experience? What did you think of it before visiting and writing this book?

I knew it didn’t have TV until ten years ago, and I knew the people were very religious (Buddhist.) Those were very appealing to me, as I see television as a very problematic force (for all the good it has offered, it’s like candy–you can’t exist on a steady diet of it.) And I was feeling a serious lack of spirituality in my life.

American vs. Bhutanese culture

In the end, everyone wants love, clean water and food, and good shelter. Beyond that, the trappings and how they manifest are variant.

The favourite and least favourite part of Bhutan according to you

The landscape is my favorite, followed a close second by the mythology. The least: the issues with Nepali citizens forced out of the country.

How difficult was it for you to adjust to Bhutanese Cuisine? You did mention that most dishes were too hot to be tried.

Super-hot spice is a big essential part of the Bhutanese diet. I’m a leafy green, fresh vegetable sort of person and that wasn’t a typical part of the diet. But having my own kitchen helped.

Your literary influences

I love the complete works of Sinclair Lewis, an American author not as widely read any more as I feel he should be. While I was writing Radio Shangri-La, I slept for a while with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt under my pillow. I thought if I could write something even a fraction as good as that, I’d be happy.

Lisa the writer…

I love being holed up in a room for days and hours, thinking and writing. And then walking or swimming and thinking some more about it. I don’t believe there’s a thing called writer’s block–you just sometimes need to go for a walk. Or take a protracted break.

Lisa the reader (her favourite writers and books)

See above. I also love the southern US writers, Flannery O’Connor, James Agee, Eudora Welty. Truman Capote, too. And Donna Tartt’s A Secret History has to be still one of the most fantastically terrifying books I’ve ever read. Finally, Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying is, to me, a masterpiece.

Then there’s ee cummings and Roald Dahl and, and….

Has Lisa the person changed after Bhutan? If yes, then how?

I’m not sure if changed is right as much as evolved. I hope I’m more empathetic, and I’m definitely more giving. The only reason I’d like to make a lot of money is to have a lot to give away. I’m also definitely far more religious. And thankfully, I’m no longer stuck in that treadmill of a job.

Finally, what next after Radio Shangri-La?

I’m working with some friends to help build a library in Bhutan by raising money through READGlobal.org And I’m working on two books, one about the parties I have every Friday night at my apartment, and the other the memoirs of an American-born Buddhist monk I study with in Los Angeles.

And here is where you can know more about the book and about Lisa:

On her website: http://www.lisanapoli.com

To read an excerpt from the book, please go here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/47547372/Radio-Shangri-La-by-Lisa-Napoli-Excerpt

You can also see her speak about the book here:

An Interview with Matthias Politycki

Here is an interview with Matthias Politycki, the author of Next World Novella. It was a pleasure interviewing him. Here goes:

1. Why the topic of marriage? What drove you to write about a couple?

Well, I AM married. And the longer I am, the more I am afraid that some future day I won’t any longer – at the latest when one of us will die. Isn’t that the ultimate horror, to find the beloved person dead, as the protagonist of „Next World Novella“ does? Maybe it was nothing else but worries that made me write.

2. When did you first decide to become a writer and why?

At about 15. And why? Because I was in love with a girl that definitely wasn’t in love with me. Writing poems helped, reading them to friends and getting their response seemed to help even more.

3. What inspired you to write Next World Novella?

A nightmare, including all the shimmering light, the floating colours, even the smell described on the very first pages of book, and all that and more in precise details. I was so overwhelmed by the dream that I could only get rid of it by inventing more horror to top the initial one.

4. Your literary influences…

Kafka, Eichendorff, Brentano, Laurence Sterne, Diderot, Hofmannsthal, Nietzsche, Benn, Hemingway … only to name a few. The more you think about influences, the more you accept having been influenced – one way or another – by nearly every book. Even the bad ones make you think, don’t they, make you think WHAT makes you feel so bad while having read them. Maybe you can learn more about writing when NOT being pleased by a book?

5. Matthias as a writer…

I don’t have a daily writing routine; to be honest I love days, weeks, months without writing at all. What makes me write is … if nothing else helps, in order to get rid of an experience, a thought, a certain emotion, phantasy, whatsoever. Writing to me is not a job to be done, but the only means to get back to those happy days when there is no need at all to write.

6. Matthias the reader…

If I only could read again as I did when I was a child, when I was at school, at university! But I can’t, some 20 years ago writing started to be a profession and reading, sad to say, changed to be nothing but part of the job. If I could concentrate on the plot, while reading, and on nothing else but the plot! But I can’t, have to concentrate on the set of tools the author shows or tries to hide, have to concentrate on the way he/she puts his words etc. pp – I can’t help it.

7. Did you get involved in the translation process yourself?

Well, you shouldn’t bother a genius at work, should you? I am so pleased Anthea Bell is my translator. When I first looked at the translation I felt a bit sad, because some of my beloved long sentences had been cut into pieces. But that all changed after my first reading in English, when everybody told me how good the text sounded. Thank you, Anthea.

8. Your next venture…

… has already been gone through und just these days been published in German: „London for Heroes. The Ale Trail – an Ale Tale“, a long poem about pubs, ales, regulars & irregulars. As I had the opportunity to spend some months in London’s East End, you can picture me there, the German, being brought up with Bavarian beer, and now sipping and supping that strange „real ale“ that tastes like … (better read the book). I love London, the Londoners, even love the slogans about their beers, the claims of the brewing companies, the poetry of the tasting notes, the names of the ales; but … Well, it was high time to make fun of it. Cheers, mate!

You can read the review here

An Interview with Tara L. Masih

Hi everyone….for those you enjoyed my review of “Where the Dog Star Never Glows” by Tara L. Masih, here is a short interview I managed to conduct with her via mail. You can alternatively also visit her website on : http://www.taramasih.com/ or read my review of the book here

For now here is the interview:

Most of the stories in the collection seem to speak of the condition of loneliness. Was this intentional when you started off writing the stories? Why the consistent pangs of loneliness running through the book? 

I’m attracted to writing about loners, characters on the fringe of society. I think their situations make all their emotions, not just ones of loneliness, more enhanced. And while I don’t specifically tackle the issue of loneliness, I think most of the struggle of humanity is to find some connection to the outside world and to find something that fills the open hole inside that we all have as separate human beings. People find all sorts of intriguing ways to fill the hole, and that’s often what fascinates me, whether or not it’s successful on the part of the character. 

Tara the writer… 

…deep, thoughtful, empathic, sensual, and still learning. 

Tara the reader… 

…fascinated, curious, searching, looking to get lost for a time.

 Why short stories to begin with? Was there a specific reason? 

I didn’t set out to write short stories. I only was exposed to writing them in high school when I took creative writing. And in English, we were introduced to Herman Melville, Flannery O’Connor, and J. D. Salinger. This was the beginning of discovering a form that could do what a novel did in a compressed space. It was more achievable to students, as well. Much easier to complete in a term and to critique in class. After this exposure, I was hooked.

Tara’s all-time favourite short stories… 

Way too many to list. But the ones that had the most impact and have lingered over the years include Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” and “A Good Man Is Hard to Find,” Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” Jayne Anne Phillips’s “Country,” Rick Bass’s “The Watch,” and Anthony Doerr’s “The Shell Collector.” But there are hundreds.

Your personal favourite story from the collection and why? 

“The Dark Sun.” It’s one of those stories that seemed almost magically to write itself. I wish more stories came to me as easily as this one did. It was a gift.

Do you take a lot of time to structure and write a story? What is the entire process like for you?

No, I’m pretty instinctive and just start writing when I have a voice. I let the character take me where she or he wants to go. There are times when I know how the story will end, but still, I write to find my way to that end.

Was any story autobiographical/experience first-hand in nature? Does art often imitate life in your works?

Many of the stories are based on firsthand experiences at the geographic locations. I’ve traveled to most of the states or countries where the stories are set, and some of the travel experiences–in terms of sites and sounds and smells–come directly from these places. For instance, I did go snorkeling at the Champagne Springs in Dominica, and I did visit a ghost town in Montana. But the stories themselves are complete fiction. Does art imitate life in my stories? I hope so; I think all writers strive for that, not necessarily to imitate their own lives but to capture the lives of others. However, I think it’s for the reader to decide what’s within the stories. After I publish a story, in some ways it’s no longer mine.

An Interview with Shehryar Fazli

When I first read Invitation, I was mindblown by the writing. I got in touch with the publicity representative and she in turn got me in touch with the author and here is the interview for you readers. Hope you enjoy it. You can read the review of the book here

1. Could you tell me a little more about the inception of the title for the book?

 

The novel went through several working titles, but none of them actually worked. It was quite tedious. But ‘Invitation’ was the title of one of the sections, and when it came time to decide on a final title when the manuscript was going out, I thought about ‘Invitation’ and asked myself if this title captured some essence of the book. I decided that it did.

2. Invitation is a book with many layers. Did you start off by ideating so many layers for the book?

You know, in fact, the challenge throughout was actually getting rid of several layers. This may be something that first-time novelists are especially vulnerable to – the urge to fill the book with everything, as if this is the only chance you have. Throughout, I realized that I was writing many parallel stories that may have worked individually, but not within the architecture of this novel – there were some major characters, who I loved, who I eventually had to give the boot. Hopefully I can resurrect them in later work. There was also a lot more about Shahbaz’s past in Paris. Now you see his past selectively, through a filter, and I think that works much better in this case since this is not your big bildungsroman. So, yes, I was always writing a big book, because it’s big books that have influenced me. It remains, as you say, multi-layered, but I actually see it as far tighter than it was in earlier drafts.

3. With so many Pakistani writers in the limelight, how difficult or easy was it for you to make your presence felt or your voice heard?

On the one hand, Pakistani writers are getting unprecedented attention, which of course is productive and allows someone like me to reach a large audience. On the other hand, it’s a little awkward as well. I have a few friends from the U.S. and elsewhere trying to get their work published, and they often tease me and say, “You’re lucky you’re a Pakistani writer.” The suggestion is that you owe your success as much to this interest in the phenomenon of ‘Pakistani writing’ as to individual talent. This sounds unfair, and yet there may be some truth to it. A mild concern I have is that the attention sometimes shifts from a discussion of the individual book, towards this phenomenon of ‘Pakistani writing’ so that we’re talking about a historical or cultural event rather than the novels themselves. But, ultimately, if your book is strong, it will be the story, the characters, and the language that people will remember long after their interest in this little ‘boom’ subsides.

4. Why is this presumption that Pakistani writers will churn out “a certain kind of story, “the certain kind of novel”? When do you think this will stop?

Well, the most welcome aspect of this whole Pakistani boom or renaissance, or whatever you want to call it, is that the work is so different. Kamila Shamsie’s work is very different to Daniyal Mueenuddin’s, which is very different to Nadeem Aslam’s, which is very different to Mohammad Hanif’s, which is very different to H.M. Naqvi’s… I could keep going. I think you’re right in that there seems to be an expectation that a Pakistani writer will address the major concerns like terrorism, gender inequality, tradition and custom, but I think there are similar expectations for writers everywhere. If you’re writing about New York, for example, you’d have to make a very conscious decision not to address the events of 9/11. If you were a German writer writing after World War II, you couldn’t not address the Nazi experience in some way. So, yes, people will expect to see this theme or that theme in the literature coming out of a particular time or place, but it’s important for writers not to bother about that, not to service those expectations. So far, it’s refreshing to see such varied work out of the Pakistani experience.

5. What role does “the sexual” play in your book considering that it is out there and for all to read and imagine?

A basic fact about the sex in this novel is that it’s certainly not good sex. On the contrary, it’s seedy and demeaning – and by that, I mean demeaning for Shahbaz. It’s not there to titillate and it’s not gratuitous, but reveals much more about Shahbaz, a guy who hasn’t figured out how to engage with women, or how to express masculinity. You have this character who is, throughout, unable to take action, who keeps everything bottled up, who remains silent when he should speak up, who’d prefer not to know and not to reveal too much. But where he is completely naked, figuratively and often literally, is in his dealings with women, whether it’s Malika the dancer, or the many prostitutes he pays for. For him, sex provides solace, in some cases a sense of power… but above all I think the scenes reveal his contempt towards himself and his own situation.

6. How does the cover capture the essence of your book? This was one thing I was struggling to understand…

I wanted something to capture the cabaret, one of the central venues in the story. We toyed with a couple of options, all very striking, but this one also conveyed a sense of mystery, of the hidden or not-quite-revealed, that I thought was apt.

7. Shehryar’s Top 10 All-time favourite books

How about 5 (after that it gets a little tough)?

1. Herzog (Bellow); 2. Waiting for the Barbarians (Coetzee); 3. Midnight’s Children (Rushdie); 4. Remains of the Day (Ishiguro); 5. In a Free State (Naipaul)

8. So how did it feel when you finally finished writing the book?

I forget who originally said it, but he’s quoted in John Banville’s The Sea: a work of art is never finished, only abandoned. It was a great feeling to get the first draft done, in that the story now had a beginning and end. But what happens in between was always shifting, being reworked, and I don’t know how many ‘final’ drafts there were. I have to confess that I still think of it as an evolving thing, that in subsequent editions, this or that may be tweaked. I don’t know if I actually will, but the mere possibility keeps the book alive in my head. Also, even when you’ve finished work on the text, the project is still unfinished, in that now the book’s got to get out there, be read, be talked about. I go through spells of excitement and of vulnerability, because it remains a very personal work, a big part of me, that is now public property in a sense. But, overall, it’s a great feeling for the story to be a thing in the world — and an addictive one, which may be why I’m going through the torture all over again in writing a second novel.  

9. Why did you pick the 70’s as the backdrop for your book?

Originally, and for some time, this story didn’t have a specific setting, even a time period, but it did involve the narrator’s return from West to East, and about his very idiosyncratic pursuit of a sense of citizenship. At the same time – and this was when I was still in college – I was learning more about this very fascinating period in Pakistan’s history when popular protests in the late 60s were in large part responsible for the end of a military regime and the country’s first democratic transition. In a moment like that, people end up questioning the basics – what it means to be a citizen, what it means to be a nation, what one’s responsibilities are to the state and to fellow citizens, and what the state’s responsibilities are to the citizen. This was the perfect backdrop to Shahbaz’s story, and once I put him in that clutter, I decided I liked the results.  Also, I’ve always been a close reader of the State-of-the-Nation novel, and have always wanted to take on big public events in a literary way. In Pakistan, two of those events, the lessons of which still haunt us, are the country’s breakup in 1971 because of a failure to honor diversity and democracy, and the hanging of the country’s first elected prime minister, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, in 1979. In retrospect, I think it was inevitable that I would use them in my first novel.

10. Your advice to both writers and readers…

To both: keep reading. Read enormous amounts. If a book is not working for you, don’t feel obliged to finish because there are too many great books to read and there’s no time to waste on a book you’re not enjoying. But, at the risk of contradicting myself, read challenging stuff. Read books that expand your vocabulary (literal and figurative), your way of examining human life, your appetite for life, books that show you what all is possible in literature. I have similarly simple advice just for writers: write! Get the words on the page, treat it like something mechanical rather than something mystical – don’t wait for that state of grace, that inspiring moment when the words just gush. There’s no such thing. Give yourself a daily word target, and then treat it like a job, don’t get up until it’s done. Even if what comes out if drivel that you’ll later discard, the point is to enter a regular rhythm, get pages piled up, and worry about making it good later.

 You can also purchase the book here

An Interview with Peter James

In the past couple of months, I have read a lot of Peter James’ Books and been captivated by the mystery webs he weaves and embroils you in them. I had the great fortune of meeting him and interviewing him in person. He is a man to meet for sure. Funny and at the same time thoughtful. He knows what he does and what he wants from his writing. Without any further waiting, here is my interview with Peter James:

1.     Why crime fiction in particular?  

I wanted to write crime novels from the age of 11, when I read my first Sherlock Holmes story.  I was blown away  by the powers of observation of this amazing detective and decided that one day I would try to create a detective who was as clever as Holmes.  I am fascinated by human nature, why we do the things that we do and I think the best way to observe the world is through the eyes of the police.  During a career in the police force the average officer will see almost every facet of the human condition – from violence to tragedy to comedy.  From wealth to poverty.  From good people to totally evil people.  I think what is forgotten is how many of the greatest writers of the past wrote what we could today term “crime genre”,  For instance over half of Shakespeare’s plays contain trial scenes!  Look at the works of some of the greatest writers of the past.  Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment for instance is a great crime novel! Go right back to the Greeks – all those tragedies were “crime” of a sort.  The last work of Charles Dickens was a crime novel.

In addition, I find the law and the whole criminal world fascinating. There is no question in my mind that the police are the glue that holds civilised life together. 

2.     From writing for films to producing them to writing books. How has the journey been so far? 

I think I have learned a great deal from my start in life as a scriptwriter which helps me to write engaging novels.   In screenwriting there are three invisible words in the mind of the author all the way through the process.  Three very simple words:  WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?  It is almost like a mantra.  For me the biggest lessons I have learned from film and TV production are pacing and intercutting more than anything else.  I love using a technique of intercutting between different characters and converging storylines, which is a very cinematic technique and I have always loved reading novels constructed in this way.  There is a different experience between film and TV in that because the audience is captive, films can afford to start more slowly than TV dramas.   I worked for a time on a sitcom in the US and learned a big lesson from that:  In a sitcom the US rule is that you must have a laugh every 12 seconds, because they figure otherwise they will lose their audience.  I have translated this into my crime writing – not a laugh every twelve seconds, obviously, but the realization that to keep my readers interested and hooked, I need to constantly surprise them.  Laughter and fear are very close emotions and they compliment each other. You laugh to shrug off fear.  Then when the laughing stops, the fear is even worse.  Many of the greatest crime thriller novels and films have humour in them – Silence Of The Lambs is a great example of this.  Polanski’s early film, Cul De Sac is a wonderful example of tension, terror and pure comedy.

But above all the great joy of writing a novel compared to writing a script or a screenplay is this:  With a movie or tv production you are part of a huge committee-like process, where a whole bunch of different people all lay claim to the finished product.  You have two or three producers each claiming it is their movie!  The director claims it is his.  The Director Of Photography claims it is his film because without him, it would be nothing.  Your 2/3/4 lead actors each claim that really it is their film.  The Production Designers says it is his or her film!  The editor claims it is his film.  The composer says the film would have been rubbish without the music.  And so on….   You end up with a compromise on almost every film, because creatively they are one long fight from beginning to end.   With a novel it is totally different – it is just me!  I don’t have to change one single word, if I don’t feel like it.  And I love that!

 3.     Is detective Grace modeled on someone you know?

 Having read several of my earlier thrillers, in which I had increasing amounts of police involvement, in 2001 the publishers, Macmillan approached me through my agent and asked if I would consider creating a new fictional detective character, with a view to writing a crime series for them.

I thought very hard about all the fictional detectives currently around, and there seemed to be common issues between many of them – an almost universal theme:  An alcohol problem and a broken marriage.  Yet in my experience, no detective with a drink problem would last two days24 hours in today’s modern police world.  It just would not happen.  I decided to take a completely different approach:

Fifteen years ago I had been introduced to a young Detective Inspector called David Gaylor, a rising star in Sussex CID.  I went into his office and found it full of plastic crates bulging with manila folders.  I asked him he was moving offices and he replied with a sardonic smile:  “No, these are my dead friends.”

I thought for some moment that I had met a total weirdo!  Then he explained to me that in additional to his current homicide investigation work, he had been tasked with reopening cold cases and applying new forensic developments to them.  He said something that really touched me:  “Each of theses crates contains the principal case files of an unsolved murder:  I am the last chance each of the victims has for justice, and I am the last chance each of their families have for closure.”

I loved the deeply human aspects of this man.  During his work hHe saw the most terrible sights imaginable (and unimaginable) during his work, yet he retained a calm gentle humanity – and it is this aspect thatthis aspect is one of the key characteristics of almost every homicide detective I have met:  They are calm, kind and very caring people.  In very many cases they develop a close relationship with the victim’s loved ones, and solving the crime becomes personal to them.  It is the reason why so often, even years after they have from the force, that many detectives still continue to work away on any case they could not solve during their career.

FBI founder, J Edgar Hoover, said:  “No greater honour will ever be bestowed on an officer, nor a more profound duty imposed on him, than when he or she is entrusted with the investigation of the death of a human being.”

At this first encounter with DI David Gaylor, he asked me about the novel I was then working on, and immediately started coming up with creative suggestions involving the policing aspects – and other aspects too.  I realized that to be a good homicide investigator you had to have not only a very analytical mind, but also a very creative one.  This is because the solving of every major crime is a massive puzzle, usually with a key bit missing.  

From that day onwards, I would discuss the plots of my next novels in advance with him .  At the time Macmillan approached me to create a fictional detective, David had risen to become Detective Chief Superintendent in Sussex Police, in charge of Major Crime Reviews.  I asked him how he would feel about becoming a fictional character – and he loved the idea!  He now reads every hundred pages as I am writing, and gives me his view on how a real detective in Roy Grace’s position would think. 

However, there are two more key aspects to Roy Grace’s character:  The first is his missing wife, Sandy:  Twelve years ago I attended a Police open day at the Missing Person’s Helpline offices in London, and learned a staggering 230,000 people are reported missing in the UK every year.  Most turn up again within a few days, but if they have not reappeared within 30 days almost certainly they are gone for good.  There are currently 11,500 people classified as permanently missing in the UK.  So where are they?  Some have run off with lovers; some have faked their disappearances and reinvented themselves elsewhere, often in another country.  Some have had accidents or committed suicide and their bodies have never been found.  But some, for sure, some have been abducted, and either murdered, or being held captive somewhere – such as in a crazed Austrian’s cellar.   Whatever the mystery, there is one common denominator:  The loved ones they leave behind are left without closure.

 When we first meet Roy Grace, in Dead Simple, he is approaching his 39^th birthday and we learn that 9 years earlier on his 30^th birthday, his wife, Sandy, who he loved and adored, had suddenly vanished without trace.  Although continuing to function as an effective homicide detective, all his free time has been spent in a fruitless quest to discover what has happened to her.  Has she been kidnapped and murdered in an act of retribution by some past criminal he has encountered?  Has she had an accident?  Lost her memory?  He has had no girlfriend subsequently and his private life is at a standstill, in total limbo.  He has tried every avenue, even resorting to mediums, and at one point has come under suspicion himself.  During the series progressesRoy finally falls in love again, with the gorgeous Cleo who runs the Brighton and Hove mortuary.  As their relationship progresses progresses towards marriage, and Cleo becomes pregnant with their child, Roy decides, finally, to have Sandy declared legally dead.  But then we start to learn a different aspect of the relationship between Roy and Sandy – and that perhaps she is not dead after all, but alive and angry…

The second key aspect to Roy Grace’s character is his open-minded attitude to the paranormal.  This is not just in his searching for Sandy, but his willingness to turn to the occult when desperate on a case.  I have come to realize that being open-minded to absolutely everything is a key aspect to beingattribute of an effective  good homicide detective.  The use of mediums by police in the USA is far more openly commonplace than it is here – but I have met many UK police officers, at all levels from Chief Constables down, who are more than prepared to talk to any sensible medium who claims to have information.  As one said to me:  “If I am in a desperate situation and all else has failed, I would be derelict in my duties if I failed to listen to a medium who claimed to have information.”

4.     Where do you get your ideas from?  How do you manage to keep pace with the latest technology depicted in your books?

The starting point for any of my novels can be triggered by anything.  The first Roy Grace book, Dead Simple, was inspired by the brutal and sometimes really dangerous things that men do to each other on pre-wedding stag night parties, combined with my fascination about premature burial.   The second, Looking Good Dead, was inspired after I was asked by a police surgeon in Brighton to study a piece of footage in a video seized by the police that showed a teenage girl being stabbed to death.  He wanted to know if it was real or if she was acting.  It was real for sure, and opened my eyes to the horrific world of snuff movies.  The third, Not Dead Enough I wrote about one of the world’s fastest growing crimes – identity theft.  The fourth, Dead Man’s Footsteps combined two subjects I wanted to write about:  The dream of so many people to fake their disappearance and create a new identity and life in a different country, and the horror of New York on the day of 9-11.  The fifth, Dead Tomorrow was inspired by an approach I had with a famous documentary maker, who had been trying to make a documentary on the sinister world trade in human organs.  She discovered that in Columbia, some organized criminals were making more money from the trafficked organs of street kids they murdered, than from drugs – she sent two researchers there and they were both murdered.  She then gave me all her research material to write the story as fiction. 

The most current, Dead Like You was inspired by a really chilling rape case:   I was at a lecture four years ago given by the Senior Investigating Officer on serial rape case:  Between 1983 – 1987 a man in South Yorkshire, England, dubbed The Rotherham Shoe Rapist brutally raped a series of women in the Rotherham and Barnsley area.  He would strike late at night as they were leaving pubs or nightclubs, truss them up, and after he had finished, would take their shoes as trophies.  Suddenly, he stopped offending, and the trail went cold. 

In 2003 a woman in the Rotherham area was stopped for drink-driving and as is standard procedure, her DNA was taken.  There was a familial – partial – match with the rapist.  The police went to see her and asked her if she had a brother.  She replied that she did, James Lloyd, but he could not possible be their man as he was a very successful and respectable businessman.  When the police had gone she phoned her brother and told him about this strange visit.  That night he tried to hang himself in his garage.

James Lloyd was 47, nice looking, the manager of a large printing company, a freemason, married with two kids who adored him, and generally a pillar of his community.  When they police raided his office the next day, they found a trapdoor beneath the carpet, under which was a cache of 126 stiletto heeled shoes in cellophane.

I was captivated by this story – because I found it so chilling.  I’ve always been fascinated by how the most seemingly normal  people often are the most monstrous criminals.  The UK’s worst ever serial killer, Dr Harold Shipman, being a classic example, but there are many more.  James Lloyd fitted this mold exactly.  I was also interested to explore how attitudes in the police toward rape have change dramatically in the past decade, yet still rape has an appalling clear-up rate, large because so few victims actually report it.  The clear-up rate for murder in the UK is 98%, for rape it is just 6&.

I also realized by having two time frames in the book – now and 12 years back, I would have the opportunity to show a little more of Roy Grace’s life when he was with Sandy, before she disappeared – and also to show for the first time, a little of their live together through her eyes…

My novels tend to be very research driven as well as character driven.  I spend a average one day a week out with the police, and my original ideas get shaped by my experiences I have during the researching.  Central to each book is the main character I create, and what he or she would do in the circumstances in which they are placed.

In terms of how I keep pace with technology:  In a number of ways.  First, I am a regular visitor to the fasted grown division in Sussex CID – and in all Police forces – the High Tech Crime Unit.  Secondly I’ve always had an interest in technology, so avidly keep up to speed.  I’m a bit of a sad gadget freak, so I always have to have the latest laptop, the latest iPad, etc….and of course as a writer I’m enormously interested in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, firstly to see the new forms of communication between people, but equally importantly, new ways of communicating with my fans.

5.     What is the most rewarding aspect of being a novelist and what is the worst?

The most rewarding thing of all is to see my books on the bestseller lists.  It was a fantastic thrill last year when I had three No 1s – the hardback and paperback of Dead Like You and my novella, The Perfect Murder No 1 on iBooks.  The worst is bad reviews.  Lots of writers will tell you they don’t read reviews, but in my experience they are lying.  We all do.  And bad ones really hur

6.     Future of E-Reading and do you think it will impact the world of physical books?

Well I guess I’ve had more experience than most authors in this terrain, because in 1994 Penguin published one of my novels, Host, on two floppy discs (as well as in print) as an experiment, billing it “The World’s First Electronic Novel.”   There has been a lot of fear about ebooks, and there is of course justification in this because of the fear of piracy and the terrible damage done to the record industry, but I think this is different with books and the culture is different.  Many people, for the forseeable future will continue to read printed books.  But for others it has opened up huge new potential for reading.  For instance one of my fans is a soldier out in Afghanistan.  Thanks to his Kindle he can take dozens of books with him out on operations in the desert, which he could never have done before as he could not have physically carried them.  I have had dozens of emails from fans who have bought my recent novels electronically, but who tell me they have also bought the hardcover version to have on their bookshelves as collector items.  Personally, although I have almost all of the e-reader gadgets, in general I much prefer to hold a printed book in my hand.

7.     Describe Roy Grace for us… 

I was once asked to sum him up in three words, and I chose Caring, Unconventional, Sharp.  Many children have “invisible” friends and I guess as an adult Roy Grace is my “invisible” friend!  He’s the kind of guy I would have for a good friend, someone I can rely on, who never panics, who is interested and curious about everything, someone gentle deeply incisive about the world and people.  He gets angry at the same things I get angry about, particularly corruption, bad planning decisions, the terrible state of Brighton’s hospital.  If I to had to be stranded on a desert island with someone, he’s the person I’d choose!   

8.     Advice to Debut Crime Writers 

I believe in a crucial trinity of character, plot and research, in all fiction, but research is especially important in crime fiction, because the world of the police is unique, they have their own culture, their own procedures and in turn their own way of looking at the world.  People read books first and foremost to find out what happens to characters they become engaged with.  That is the first step with a debut crime novel – instantly engaging characters.  Second is to put them into a situation that leaves the reader gasping, and wondering how they will get out of it.  Thirdly is to imbue the story with a veracity that can only come from good research.

  I don’t believe good writers can be taught, although I think their technique can be helped.  My most important recommendation to any person who wants to write novels of any kind is to read, read and read.  Particularly the kind of novels they would like to write – and to deconstruct them, literally – and work out what made them like this or that particular book.  How did the writer get them hooked… how did the writer make them care for the characters….  It is impossible to stress this enough.

9.     Why is crime writing so underplayed and often ignored?

I think, as I have answered above, that crime writing is the most important and powerful literary genre for all people who want to have a gripping read, and a thrilling ride, but want at the end of the book to feel they have learned something of value, about human nature, about the world we live in.  There is a lot of literary snobbism, and I’m sure in part that comes out of jealousy.  Crime fiction, combined with thrillers, cover a quarter of all fiction novels sold in the UK and in many other countries.  Writers of literary fiction, which rarely sells in remotely similar quantities tend to dismiss crime novelists as people who have sold out to the devil!  I think they are very misguided.  Crime novels sell because they are quality fiction of a kind that people want to read.

10.  Thoughts on being the #1 bestseller…

For some years my novels always got to No 2 but I could not get past certain writers, such as John Grisham and James Patterson.  My publisher used to say “I don’t like No 2” although I was pretty pleased with it!  Then I did get past them and kept both Grisham and Patterson from getting to No 1 and suddenly I understood what my publisher meant!  There is no greater feeling in the world that I could have, than to see my books on that Number 1 slot – to be on the very pinnacle – it must be what a mountaineer feels to have reached the summit of Everest!

11.  Peter as a writer

I would write even if I was never paid a penny (but please don’t tell my publishers that!!!)  It is in my blood.  I started writing when I was seven and I have never stopped.  I love to create characters, to tell stories, and to research.  I’m never happier than when I am at my desk writing – and particularly at 6pm when I have my vodka martini!!!

12.  Peter as a reader

I was lucky, because my father was an avid reader, consuming several books a week and he started taking me to libraries from a very early age.  I’m a compulsive reader – I read everything around me, even what is written on cornflake packs if there is nothing else!  I always read books but authors I don’t know that feature prominently on the bestseller lists, and some literary fiction that has been acclaimed, and of course a huge amount of non-fiction.  I am always looking for a novel which I put down at the end and think “Wow, wish I had written that!”  Among my constant companions on my desk are a wonderful research tool – a heavy tome  titled “Practical Homicide Investigation” by Vernon J Geberth.   But I have to be careful who looks at it.  Many of its hundreds of crime scene photographs are pretty grim.  I’ve seen people nearly keel over after peering into it!

Here are my reviews of Peter James’  Books:

Dead Like You
Not Dead Enough
Looking Good Dead
Dead Simple

All these books can be bought here on Flipkart