Jeffrey, Lord Archer really needs no introduction. I had the privilege of meeting him when he was in Bangalore recently for the launch of his new book ” Only Time Will Tell”. There was a huge crowd at Reliance TimeOut that evening. This is part of his whirlwind tour that takes him to 16 cities in 5 countries in 4 weeks.
Tag: Authors
As a new writer, be ready to be offered tons of advice. From a host of well-meaning friends, family and even others who don’t know you from Adam. The moment they come to know that you are a new writer, they are liable to say “Oh, have you tried this…..” or ” Really, I think you should spend more time on that…”
Project 3 is the name I have given for my as yet unnamed book project. My debut novel “It Can’t Be You” was published in November 2010. It is a psychological thriller. The second book I am working on is called “Lucky For Some, Thirteen”. I hope to have this published towards the end of 2011.
I find it quite fascinating that writing is a common passion for people with diverse backgrounds. It’s not essential for you to be a graduate in English Literature to foray into the world of writing. Take for example a few of the books I picked up recently. Their authors have as diverse a background as you can imagine.
Some excellent advice from A J Humpage who has been writing fiction for more than twenty years. She writes on how reading helps writers improve their writing! The best part of the article I thought was the “Questions to ask” after you have read a novel. For me, this process of seeing a novel through these questions, came as a new and interesting input. I am sure we would gain from the valuable feedback the answers to these questions would provide:
Every author dreams of writing what becomes a best seller! The New York Times list of best sellers is in a sense a hallmark of having “got there”. Here is the list of Top Ten Books for 2010 from the New York Times. I was happy to find that amongst them was a book about cancer from an oncologist, Dr. Siddarth Mukherjee’s “The Emperor Of All Maladies”.
The best part of the internet is that it connects you to a wide range of fascinating people you would probably never have come across. I was very interested to read about Wessel Ebersohn the South African writer of thrillers. Here are his Rules for Thriller Writing
I have read all of Ian Fleming’s books being a huge fan. I can never forget that my school chum, Pratap Pothen, who went on to become a well-known actor, once gifted me with the entire set of James Bond books. Years after reading them I still remember ” Dr. No” and “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service”. You can imagine my delight then when I chanced upon Ian Fleming himself had to say about writing a thriller. This was written by Fleming way back in 1962 and is from Cabbages and Kings, a blog by P J Parrish.
In the old days, a chapter was a kind of milestone or guidepost, if you will, in the novel. It sort of led you from one major point to another, often depicting sequential events in time or points of view of different characters in the story. They were fairly long and usually of varying length. Recently, I came across a very different treatment of what I imagined chapters would be in James Patterson’s “Cross Country”
Have you made up your mind about NaNoWriMo? Are you in for it this year? You need to decide soon because November 1 fast approaches. I am sure people do NaNo for their own reasons. All of us may be keen on writing but all of us have different lives to lead, different responsibilities and consequently different kinds of schedules.
Prem Rao : Stories from a Story Teller 