I just completed “Inside IB and RAW” by K. Sankaran Nair, the former Head of India’s external intelligence agency RAW and a former Indian High Commissioner to Singapore. I grabbed this book with eager anticipation as I love reading about spies and the like and I thought Sankaran Nair was best qualified to write about it considering the title of the book. Continue reading ““Inside IB and RAW” by K. Sankaran Nair”
Month: January 2013
A task on hand is the editing of my third thriller ,”Let The Dead Stay Dead.” As I usually do, the first 50,000 words for this came from my successful effort in NaNoWriMo 2011. Here are a few lines from the book:
I am one now myself, a published author but even before this I was fascinated by the world of authors. To tell you the truth, though I was a voracious reader since childhood I had never ever met an author in person. In the flesh, so to say. Continue reading “Interviews with Authors”
I am enjoying the process of re-discovering Goodreads! If you have read my thrillers, “It Can’t Be You” (2010) and “Lucky For Some, 13” (2012), you might like to try the quizzes that I have created. Here is the quiz for ” It Can’t Be You” and here is the one for ” The Characters From Lucky For Some, 13. Continue reading “Prem Rao in Goodreads”
Since the last couple of days I have been busy: re-discovering Goodreads! Here’s how it works.
When my debut novel, “It Can’t Be You” was published in November 2010, I had visited Goodreads. I later signed up too, but honestly didn’t explore it adequately. In retrospect, I should have. my advice to new authors in particular would be to make the best of the many features Goodreads provides you as a published author, and that too for free.
I am no expert and I am still finding my feet here. I discovered to start with that “It Can’t Be You” was attributed to “.Prem Rao”. The additional “.” that preceded my name ( God knows how it got there) prevented me from adding this book to my author list. I re-created a spot for the book. I may have lost the ratings for the book but it means more to me to have all my books in one place under my name, which is “Prem Rao.”
Having always been a voracious reader especially of books relating to the military, spy stuff as well as mystery and thrillers, I was delighted to spot some of my all-time favourite books. I have marked them as “read” but I must confess I first read many of them not recently but decades ago. I was flooded with memories as I saw the familiar titles by those familiar names. they influenced my writing, no doubt about that. Some of my favourite authors over time: John Masters, Ian Fleming, Alistair MacLean, Harold Robbins, Paul Brickhill….the list goes on and on.
Just a month ago, my second thriller, “Lucky For Some, 13” was published. As an author, I am very interested to get feedback on how my books have been received. So if you have liked my books, do rate them and leave a comment on Goodreads, as I have started doing for many of the books I have read. It could be of use to someone somewhere!
I am not really sure which of the bookstores have my books in stock. Many have them, some don’t. It’s very difficult to keep track. However, it is far easier for an author to provide links to on-line portals where the time to deliver is clearly stated. So, here goes as I try to put together all the links I came across, which you can use to order my books. Terms and conditions as also the prices do vary, but this may be useful to readers:- Continue reading “Ordering My Books”
I wrote about editing my third thriller, “Let The Dead Stay Dead” in my writing blog, ” Writing To Be Read.” Instead of repeating all that I had to say, please see this blog post as an update on what I am currently up to!
A writing project I am currently engaged in is the editing of my third thriller, “Let The Dead Stay Dead.” I found it quite fascinating to return to this manuscript which had been put on the back burner in October 2012. You may recall that I had written the first 50,000 words for “Let The Dead Stay Dead” during NaNoWriMo of 2011. Continue reading “Editing “Let The Dead Stay Dead””
“It Can’t Be You” will always be close to my heart as it was my debut novel. I was delighted to recently find that it was 520 out of 33,012 titles under Thrillers & Suspense listed in Flipkart, the popular online portal in India. Continue reading “Advice to Aspiring Writers: Two Years of “It Can’t Be You.””
Do you read one book at a time or do you, like me, read several simultaneously? I finished Juggi Bhasin’s “The Terrorist” last week. It was an excellent read. Since I love thrillers and write them myself, I found it gripping. It was full of gory detail and was gruesome but it held the reader right through, which is what a good book ought to do. Congratulations, Juggi. It was a wonderful to read “The Terrorist.”
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 