Indie Spotlight: Building a community by writing - How my memoir about divorce connected people from around the world during the pandemic

Indie Spotlight is a column by WWII historical fiction author Alexa Kang. The column regularly features hot new releases and noteworthy indie-published books, and popular authors who have found success in the new creative world of independent publishing. 

 

One of the advantages of indie publishing is the freedom to bring our work to readers without adhering to the traditional model of book production. The freedom to share our work in progress with readers can help a writer determine whether her work resonates with the audience, and helps the writer improve her skills along the way by readers’ feedback. Today, I have the pleasure of introducing to you author Ranjani Rao. During the year of pandemic, when we were all stuck at home, Ranjani wrote a memoir on her divorce experience. While writing, she began sharing her progress via a subscription letter. Occasionally, her subscribers would receive sneak peaks of excerpts of her book. Through sharing, she not only built her readership, but created an entire community for people with marital problems who were looking for someone to articulate their feelings. 

As an indie author myself, I can say for certain that knowing our work touches the lives of our readers, and that our writing gave them emotional release, is one of our biggest rewards for our hard work and efforts.  And now, over to Ranjani to tell you her amazing journey. . .  

Contemporary Voices: Elaine Chiew Chats with Jenny Bhatt, Author of Each of Us Killers

 

Photo Credit: Praveen Ahuja

Bio:

Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, book critic, and the host of the Desi Books podcast. Her debut story collection, Each of Us Killers, was out Sep 2020 with 7.13 Books. Her literary translation, Ratno Dholi: The Best Stories of Dhumketu, was out Oct 2020 with HarperCollins India. She lives in the Dallas, Texas area and teaches fiction at Writing Workshops Dallas.

Synopsis:

Stories woven at the intersection of labor and our emotional lives. Set in the American Midwest, England, and India, the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. Whether they are chasing money, power, recognition, love, or simply trying to make a decent living, their hunger is as intense as any grand love affair. Straddling the fault lines of class, caste, gender, nationality, globalization, and more, they go against sociocultural norms despite challenges and indignities until singular moments of quiet devastation turn the worlds of these characters—auto-wallah, housemaid, street vendor, journalist, architect, baker, engineer, saree shop employee, professor, yoga instructor, bartender, and more—upside down.

Cover design: Harshad Marathe

Shreya Sen-Handley Talks the Strange and Unexpected in her Short Stories with Elaine Chiew

Credit Stephen Handley

Bio: Former television journalist and producer Shreya Sen-Handley is the author of two books with HarperCollins, the recently published short story collection Strange and the award-winning Memoirs of My Body. She is also a columnist for the international media, writing for the National Geographic, CNN and The Guardian amongst others, a creative writing teacher, illustrator, and a librettist for the Welsh National Opera. She is currently writing her third book for HarperCollins, The Accidental Tourist, a travelogue, alongside her monthly column for top Indian newspapers, the Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle. The opera she has co-written, ‘Migrations’, will tour the UK in 2021. 

EC: Welcome to Asian Books Blog, Shreya. Congratulations on your short story collection, Strange (HarperCollins India, 2019). How long was it in the making, and tell us what your short story collection is about. 

SSH: Thank you Elaine. “What’s your next book?” asked my editors at HarperCollins the minute my first book ‘Memoirs of My Body’ was published in 2017. I said I was considering writing more short stories. I had written a handful in the 3 years my first book, Memoirs of My Body, had been brewing and each had gone on to be published, broadcast or shortlisted in competitions in Australia, UK and India, and thought readers might want a few more. I certainly enjoyed writing them and was eager to write more. My editors loved the idea, and noticed something I hadn’t really consciously wrought- an unexpected turn to most of my stories, and so this collection of ‘profoundly unsettling and unusual’ short stories was conceived. There were in the end, appropriately, 13 stories in all, and they covered a variety of genres – romance, comedy, science fiction, dystopia, horror, supernatural, crime, etc. There was no attempt to write on the same subject every time, or restrict myself to a genre. Instead the idea was to focus on the unexpected in every aspect of our everyday lives, and uncover, as a result, the strangeness that lies beneath the seemingly ordinary. 

Courtesy HarpeCollins India