Forever Young

In a couple of weeks, hordes of zombies will descend onto the streets of New Delhi, wreaking bloody havoc and laying waste to the world as we know it. At any rate, Zombiestan’s Indian edition will hit bookshelves courtesy the fine folks at Duckbill. It’s always fun to be part of something new, and I am very excited to be the first author on Duckbill’s list, and the hordes of zombies, and my partnership with Duckbill, will further grow in the months to come.

This blog is not about zombies per se (though I do spend more time thinking about them than is perhaps good for any sane person) but about some thoughts this launch triggered. I remember well a conversation with Sayoni at Duckbill when I was first approached for Zombiestan rights about how Duckbill was looking at it as part of their ‘Young Adult’ list. To be honest, I never thought about Zombiestan as a YA novel. I wrote it the way it made sense to me, and in a way that I thought was fun, but I clearly saw how it could appeal to younger readers. And to readers with an appetite for suspension of disbelief, larger than life adventure, and a healthy dose of mayhem. Readers like me.

When I was asked to write this guest blog, I thought back to what I was doing when I was myself a ‘Young Adult’. To be clear, I still am and will always be young till I kick the bucket, it’s the ‘adult’ part that’s occasionally called into question. Rewind the tape to the summer of 1985. I’m an eleven-year old living at the time in Ottawa, Canada, juggling soccer practice, homework, mowing the lawn and a crush on a pair of twin sisters (pretty complex, as you may imagine). As I think back to those days, what stands out is how much of who I have become was influenced by what I read. Two major influences acted upon me that summer: an epic written by a master storyteller of the past, and a sentence in an interview by a modern master storyteller. That was the summer I read the entire Lord of the Rings series over the holidays and read an interview by Stephen King in which he said that the moment someone paid you even a cent for your writing, you were a professional writer.

The dream was born (perhaps it had always been there, but now it got a concrete shape and direction) of being a writer. I wanted to create worlds, characters and adventures like Tolkien. I wanted to throw a motley group of adventurers into a fantastic quest and decide their fate. I wanted to hold readers in thrall of what came next the way I had been. Tolkien showed me the dream, and King showed me how to act on it.

I had a bunch of poems written that I had hidden away in my room. I took those poems, stapled them together with solutions to the next term’s Maths textbook (having guessed correctly that few people would pay me to read my poems alone), got my older brother to make me a cover on his computer and sold my first ever ‘book’ to my classmates at 50 cents a copy. My first ‘royalty’ was $12.50, which I spent on ice creams and comics, and when I came home, I remember telling my mother that I had become a professional writer. She told me that I indeed had, and that she looked forward to the day we would walk into a bookstore together and see my book there. Tolkien and King gave my dream a start, my mother took it to the next level. When, seven years later, we did walk into a Delhi bookshop and my mother proudly told the shopkeeper that I was the author of the book he had on his shelves, she reminded me of my antics in the summer of ’85 (you see, I lived my dream of ‘publishing’ my first book, but my mother had to deal with the aftermath- no pun intended- of the Maths teacher complaining about how the kids all had ready made solutions to the next term’s work), and told me something I will always remember. She said never stop dreaming, and never stop thinking of making your dreams bigger. She’s no longer here, but every time I publish a new book, I imagine her up there, pointing proudly down to what her son is up to next.

So, if you’re one of the YA readers who happens to pick up Zombiestan, never underestimate where a bit of inspiration can take you. Never underestimate how powerful books and words can be in shaping what you become. That’s one big reason I am such a fan of Duckbill- because they are committed to get young readers to see new dreams, to experience new worlds, and to once again, discover joy and inspiration in the written word. And if you’re the parent of a young reader, please help them discover the love of books. Let them see new dreams, inspire them to act on them, and who knows, their dreams, like mine, may remain forever young.

(This appeared as a guest blog for my Indian publishers of Zombiestan, Duckbill. Do check out their site at www.duckbill.in)

From Son to Father....Part I

William James once said that, "The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it". Over the years people have tried to create monuments that were their effort at cheating their own mortality and time- building giant statues, fancy palaces, and in more contemporary times, leaving huge estates and bank balances. Whenever I see and hear of these material tributes, I am always reminded of a favourite poem of my childhood, Ozymandias by Shelley where a traveller encounters the broken remains of a long-forgotten king's tribute to his own vanity.

So when it comes to doing something that acts both as a tribute from son to father and symbolizes how I think my father would have liked his legacy to be kept alive, I tend to shun these material and temporal tributes. Instead, I want to focus on something that bound us- a belief in the power of ideas and the power of the written word.

So Phase I of my tribute is over. In one stroke, it makes my father's words and ideas accessible to hundreds of millions of readers worldwide, and has two major parts.

The first part is digitizing and making available on the Amazon Kindle store some of my father's books. I have started with three books which I know he enjoyed the most, and will over time get to others.

The first is of course, his highest selling and most controversial book- Open Secrets. The #1 Indian non-fiction bestseller which is regarded as a seminal work in security matters is now available to readers worldwide. My father used to tell me with a chuckle that Open Secrets had earned him four death threats and six threatened court cases.

Accompanying it is Operation XXX, which I know my father always smiled about because while it was fiction, it held more than a kernel of truth in it. Third up is Fulcrum of Evil- a prescient treatise about how what the West takes to be its allies in the War on Terror are sometimes its worst enemies.

The second part has been collating some of his essays into a series. The first four volumes in this series, titled `I, Spy' are now up on the Kindle store- dealing with topical security issues, all dealt with in the same penetrating and no-BS style my father was famous for. The first two of these, Warriors of Allah and Talibanized Pakistan are already online, while Volumes 3 (China at Sea) and 4 (Whither Kashmir) will be up in a day.

Phase II is going to be finishing the unfinished manuscript that he left on his hard drive- but between a move to Singapore for my family and a new assignment, I'll get around to that in a couple of months. It's a story about human trafficking in the Indian subcontinent, and knowing how my father never shied away from showing the true nature of many of the people and institutions we trust, it'll take a courageous publisher to pick it up.

Ever since I was a child, I dreamed of being a writer, and have been blessed with the opportunity to be that, but this first experience as a publisher is perhaps even more satisfying as it allows me to start living up to my promise of keeping my father's legacy alive in my own small way.

My Father Maloy

On the 19^th of May at 5:10PM, Maloy Krishna Dhar, bestselling author, widely regarded strategic expert and commentator, highly decorated police and intelligence officer, and yes, my father, passed away after a month long battle that began with a stroke and was compounded by renal and multi-organ failure. I was with him through all those days and at the end. It is perhaps the way of the world that we spread our wings and go far from our roots, but the one comfort I have is that I was able to be with him, to talk to him, to remind him of all he has done for us, and to thank him for all he has taught me. Most of all, I was able to tell him what I had never told him- of just how remarkable his journey in life has been, and of just how proud I feel to be his son. 

Many people take such occasions to mourn and cry. I feel the pain, having now lost both my parents, but Maloy Krishna Dhar is not a man to be mourned and cried over. His life is one to be celebrated and learned from. Dying is a biological inevitability, but what matters is what one does with the time one is allotted. On that count, my father led a life so full and so eventful that his life itself could make for a bestselling book like the ones he authored.

He began his life on July 13, 1939 in Mymensingh, now in Bangladesh, and had very happy memories of his childhood. Those were however soon clouded when his father passed away when he was but a child, and the Partition of the Indian subcontinent rent apart the world he knew. In his book Train to India, he recounts how he and his mother had come to India on a train amidst the communal carnage, him carrying a small pocketknife in his attempt to protect his mother from the marauding mobs. He saw the worst of man, saw people being killed in front of him at such a tender age, and arrived in India without much to his name. Many people in his position could have, and indeed did, settle for what they assumed to be their lot- harbouring hatred from the bloodshed they saw, and settling for whatever meager opportunities came their way. That was not the path Maloy chose. He escaped his harsh surroundings, not physically at first, but through his quest for knowledge, realizing that an education was the way he could create a better life for himself and his mother. His love for learning and letters was apparent in what he chose to learn- he studied Comparative Literature in College, and would later tell me that reading classics from other lands opened his mind and inspired him to raise his own game. He started his working life as a journalist, and could certainly have had a comfortable life compared to his childhood, but once again, Maloy made the leap that very few others in his position would have. He appeared for the elite Indian Civil Services Examination and was selected into the Indian Police Service in 1964.

His early years, spent in Naxal infested areas in East India (an issue we grapple with today, and on which he had very insightful views) brought out many aspects of his remarkable character. One, he was absolutely fearless. Many people try and judge what position or point of view will bring them advantage. Maloy had a simple inner compass of right and wrong, and would be guided by it, no matter the consequences. My late maternal grandfather, himself a senior Police officer, would tell me stories of how he saw the early career of his to be son-in-law with a mixture of dread and undisguised admiration. Maloy was the kind of man who once got into a jeep with a driver, and went after a man-eating tiger that had come loose in the plantations. He once cornered and shot a dreaded outlaw whom other officers would not touch because of his political connections. When asked by others whether he realized what he had done, he said, `I shot the bastard.’ That is the kind of man Maloy was. Second, for all his hard and uncompromising exterior, he was a man of deep perception. Despite his mandate being to stamp out Naxalites, he took the time to understand their root causes and understood and empathized with why many of them chose the route they did.

The next stage of his career took him into an arena where he was to excel for almost 30 years. He was appointed to the Intelligence Bureau, the Indian equivalent of the American FBI, though with some of the external mandates the CIA has. His early years there, with a newly married wife and young kids were in the troubled North-East of India, including Nagaland, where I was born. That region at that time was seeing a violent insurgency against Indian rule, and Maloy faced the challenge as he did every other challenge in his life- with no fear, and with the greatest of empathy. That combination made him life-long friends among those who could have been enemies. He did not talk much about his work, but growing up in Delhi, I would meet visitors from Nagaland and Manipur who would tell me that Maloy was the first and perhaps only government officer they trusted. He would always play it straight, never try and manipulate them and what endeared him to them was the fact that he was utterly without fear. I remember a story of how he once supposedly went into a village known to harbor insurgents, alone and with only his personal sidearm, and drank the local brew with the headman, trying to understand why they were supporting them, and how he could help act as a bridge to end the violence.

As I was growing up, my father’s work often played at the center stage of some of the most turbulent times in India’s history, though often I was too young at that time to realize what was happening. He handled the terrorism desk for years, handling the Khalistan separatist movement, and later the Pakistan sponsored terror in Kashmir and beyond. Again, it is amazing the respect he garnered through his approach to work and life. As he lay critically ill, one of the calls I got was from a man who was once a Khalistani separatist and later joined the mainstream political process. He told me about how many people in Punjab would miss him terribly, because in the midst of a terrible crisis with excesses committed on both sides, he was a rare officer. A man who was willing to listen and empathize without shooting first, yet also a man without fear. One story of my father’s from this period, which he recounted later in one of his books, was of the terror siege at the Golden Temple that came to known as Operation Black Thunder. He pleaded to not deploy crushing force that would have led to high collateral damage but instead had trusted men on the inside whom he wanted to supply. As a senior IPS officer, he could have delegated the terribly dangerous task, but he dressed up as a fruit seller, with a basket of fruit on his head concealing weapons and walked into a complex with hundreds of heavily armed terrorists to get the weapons to his men.

The twilight of his career was mirrored by personal tragedy as my mother, Sunanda, was diagnosed with Cancer and passed away in 2001 after a five-year battle. Maloy stood by her, shared her pain and her triumphs. He had once told me that my mother had been his first and only love. He perhaps never really recovered from her loss and today; my one consolation is that the two of them are reunited. For a man whom many saw as a hard-nosed officer, he kept every single letter my mother wrote to him and left them for me in a large bundle, with instructions to burn with him at his cremation. He loved as he lived, fully and sparing nothing of himself.

In his final days in service, his inner compass and values were tested as perhaps never before. In investigating the espionage case affecting India’s Space Programme, he had leads pointing in uncomfortable directions for the powers that be. He was under huge pressure to ignore the evidence, and since I was grown up, he explained the situation to me along with my mother, and told me that `Son, I may suffer and you and your mother may also have some inconvenience, but I cannot do what is not right.’ He persisted, faced a lot of pressure and retired one step shy of the top job in the Intelligence Bureau, but never buckled under the pressure he faced or recanted the evidence he had. A lot of it he later wrote about in his books. Interestingly enough, nobody has come forth to challenge those facts.

With his career ending on a bitter-sweet note, and devastated by the death of my mother, Maloy could have settled for the retirement that most other senior officers do. Evenings at clubs, meet old friends, try and wrangle for some government junket. Instead he went back to his original love of literature and continued his fight for what he believed in by reinventing himself as a writer. His first novel, Bitter Harvest, chronicled the tough times he saw in Punjab during the insurgency and was highly praised for the sensitive portrayal of what common people went through, often tormented by policemen and terrorists alike. His biggest bestseller came in the from of Open Secrets- a first of its kind- a no-holds barred chronicle of his career as an Intelligence Officer, laying bare the political machinations that often prevent our forces from doing what is right. It sparked intense debate with its plea to free our intelligence services from their political masters and to truly empower them to serve and protect the people, not the politicians in power. It was as fearless a salvo, if not more, than the one he fired as a young officer to fell the politically connected outlaw. He laid out what he believed in, not hesitating to name names, and challenged those who disputed the facts to engage in debate. Suffice to say, nobody took him up on it. Open Secrets remained the #1 Non-Fiction bestseller in India for many months and still is regarded as a seminal work, the first of its kind in India. His later work covered other aspects of his work, some in fictional garb like Operation XXX, the story of a deep cover agent, We The People, a brutal expose of our electoral politics, and some that will act as a guidebook for future intelligence operatives such as his work on Intelligence Tradecraft.

He started his website, maloykrishnadhar.com, which I will maintain and continue, where he posted typically brutally incisive views on the state of our nation and politics. A man like him got respect from everyone, admiration from many, and brickbats from some who didn’t like his direct and uncompromising approach. He shrugged off all those brickbats and just kept doing and writing what he believed to be right and just. His expertise and views were widely sought after and we used to often joke about his celebrity status with news channels vying to interview him.

In his last years, his writing turned more introspective and he wrote Train to India, published by Penguin India, where he chronicled his early life and through the eyes of a young boy, the cataclysmic changes Bengal saw during and after Partition. He has an unfinished book on his computer, which I have promised that I will see through, an expose of the human trafficking that plagues the subcontinent, often with the active connivance of people in positions of power. Till he was conscious in hospital, his mind was sharp and active. He would ask me to send updates to his friends on Facebook, asking me if he could Facetime with Aadi (oh yes, that was another aspect of his reinvention- he was more tech savvy than most people a third his age) or Twitter. He was perhaps not the most demonstrative of men, but in his final days, as we often chatted, he told me that he was proud of the man I had become. Coming from my father, I needed no fancy prose or declarations of love- that was the ultimate accolade I could have ever hoped to earn- to be a fraction of the man he was.

73 years cannot be summed up in one note, and a man like my father cannot be reduced to one eulogy, but as a writer, perhaps this is the best tribute I can pay to him. When a man like him passes, I don’t want legions of crying and babbling people (no matter how good their intentions). In many ways, Maloy was a man born in the wrong century. His courage, his strict code of honour, his sense of what was right and wrong and acting on that irrespective of the cost or risk, would have made him right at home in the company of legendary warriors of yore like the Norsemen or Mongols. When one of their mighty warriors passed, people did not cry, but they celebrated their life, their battles won, and their legend lived on in song and in the hearts of future generations. I was lucky to have been a part of his journey and his legend will live on in my heart and my words and in what I in turn pass on to my son.

Maloy Krishna Dhar wore many hats- journalist, policeman, spy, author, husband, father- but the simple summation of my father Maloy was that he was a real man- the sort we should all be lucky enough to have in our lives.

Goodbye, Baba. You are now with the love of your life, but your spirit and values continue to burn in me, and I will in my own way ensure that your legend lives on.

CREATIVE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: 7 LESSONS I LEARNED IN THE SEVENTH GRADE

Every writer (and indeed anyone who creates something new- a game, a software, a painting, an app) has their own journey, but one thing binds us all- the joy we feel in creating something new and then forming connections with others through our work. As I became a professional writer I learnt that creating something is not enough- you need to be able to reach potential readers and have them discover you. That was a lesson also cemented in my day job in the corporate world as a marketer. Often people scoff at creative folks talking about the business side of it, but the way I look at, creativity and entrepreneurship are two sides of the same coin. No great idea can get anywhere without the drive, passion and initiative to put it in front of potential users. That’s what makes the difference between creating something purely for the pleasure of creating it and creating something that actually connects with and makes a difference to potential readers and users.

I have had numerous influences and experiences that have shaped my view of what I call `Creative Entrepreneurship’ but the foundations of my core beliefs go way back- to when I was in the seventh grade.

That was when I self-published my first book. My first book was a collection of my poems bundled with solutions to problems from the coming term’s Maths textbook that I sold to my classmates. The lessons I learned then still hold true today, and while my writing journey has taken me far from that day, when as an eleven year old, I triumphantly held aloft my first book, even today I realize that the basics of what it takes to be a successful Creative Entrepreneur haven’t changed all that much.

These lessons were field tested most recently when in February 2011 I took a leap into the unknown by putting up my work on the Amazon Kindle store, self-publishing some of my backlist as ebooks to reach new readers, and gradually writing all new novels that were uploaded straight to the Kindle without even looking for a `traditional’ publisher. Till then, I had been the literary equivalent of a `salaryman’- writing for publishers in India, with predictable advances, publicity departments to help me out, editing and design resources of the publishers- and indeed, royalty checks that dutifully arrived once a year. Digital publishing was the equivalent of the Wild West for me- there was nobody to help me with covers, designs or publicity. I not only had to write, but also take care of the entire business aspect of it. And while I could get paid every month, there was no guaranteed advance and certainly no guarantee that I would see a cent of profit. To make matters worse, I was a totally unknown name to American readers, but that did not faze me. If anything, I figured that I had nothing to lose and I took the plunge. Whenever I felt any self-doubt, I’d remind myself of that cocky eleven year old who published a book, and the lessons I learned all those years back.

1. Embrace what makes you different

Often, new writers wonder whether there is a formula for success, or which genre they should write in to maximize chances of success. The short answer is- write what you are passionate about and what makes you unique. Marketing 101 says that any brand will succeed when it’s differentiated, not when it tries to ape other more successful brands. The same goes for writing or creativity- don’t rush to write stories because others have succeeded in a similar genre. Instead, embrace what makes you special and unique. I was a geek in Grade 7. I’d come first in class, but was pretty introverted. But when I self-published, I turned that to my advantage. Girls may not have been lining up to be friends with me, but when it came to solving problems in class, I was the person they’d bet on. Fast forward more than two decades- I was well-published in India by majors like Random House, but in finding an international audience, I discovered the amazing opportunity the Kindle provided and decided to self-publish my upcoming work on the Kindle. I wondered for some time whether I should try and write something that would be more `relatable’ for Western readers, but then remembered this lesson and instead of fighting what made me different, embraced it. My first break out success, Vimana, is a science-fiction thriller springboarding off Hindu mythology. There are a lot of global themes there, but the core of it is the whole idea of ancient gods in their flying machines (vimanas) as related in Indian epics, a field where I could contribute some unique ideas given my Indian background. My biggest bestseller to date, Alice in Deadland is a dystopian thriller set in New Delhi, a city I spent much of my childhood in. Ditto for Zombiestan, a bestselling zombie thriller set in India. So ask yourself what life experiences, backgrounds or ideas make you unique, and don’t be ashamed to make that the cornerstone of what makes your creativity different. Embrace your diversity and individuality, don’t try and be another member of a large herd.

2. First appearances do count.

That’s a cliché, but when it comes to books, it’s true. I still meet self-published writers who say that they will invest in a professional cover when they are more successful. To me, that’s a bit of circular logic- you will increase your chances of being successful if you have a professional cover. To be clear, for me the definition of a professional cover is not necessarily one for which you’ve paid a lot of money to someone. That is a means to the end. A professional cover is one which when put side by side with the bestselling books in your genre will not disadvantage your work in the eyes of potential readers. If you really want to be successful at self-publishing, ask yourself whether your covers can meet that benchmark, and if not- then either polish up your design skills or invest in the best cover designer you can afford. Back in Grade 7, I obviously had no money to create a cover, but I did have an older brother in High School. So I told him what I was doing, and in return for doing his share of cleaning the snow off the driveway (this was in Ottawa in the winter, so it was a significant payment!), he designed a cover for me on his computer and printed it out. When I showed my book to my classmates, their `oohs’ and `wows’ when they saw the cover told me I had made the sale. Even if you don’t write, whatever your creative field, whether you paint, write code or make new apps- the `user interface’ ie. What the user sees when he/she first is presented with your creation will determine whether they click through/pick up your offering or pass on to other options.

3. Make the gatekeeper your friend.

Some self-published writers assume that not going through traditional publishers means that they have bypassed so-called `gatekeepers’ that stand between them and their readers. Here’s a dose of reality- there will always be gatekeepers. Review sites and blogs play that role, as do Amazon reader reviews. Don’t fight gatekeepers, make them your friends. Back in Grade 7, the biggest gatekeeper I had never counted on was my Maths teacher. When she learnt of what I had done, she was quite pissed off, and had a chat with me. She appreciated my aptitude and my enterprise but was worried that it would lead my classmates to take the easy way out and not study for themselves. That made sense to me. So for the next term, I asked her to share the test questions for the past couple of years, and I solved them and put out a new version which was more of a workbook- a compendium of past questions, blank spaces for students to solve them, and answers at the back. My teacher thought it would be good practice and would not come in the way of coursework, and while it meant some of my classmates seeking an easy way out didn’t buy it, it was more than compensated for by the fact that my teacher endorsed it, and even let me put up my cover on the school noticeboard. My gatekeeper had become my biggest advertiser. When I get a negative review today, I never react emotionally, but understand whether there is something I can do better. When any reader writes in, I write a response within the day. When a publisher rejects me, I never burn bridges. Even if I got a form rejection letter, I write a long, personal letter back to the editor thanking them for their time, and more than once, I have got feedback in return which has helped me strengthen my work. Now I am in the curious situation of being commissioned to write novels by publishers in India who had rejected my first novel, and a reader who had once written in with some criticism became a good pen-friend (or it’s digital equivalent) and recommended my novel onto one of his friends, who turned out to be the biggest book blogger in India, for review. It’s a small world, and those who appear to be gatekeepers may sometimes open up opportunities later- so never fight them. Learn from what they are telling you, never burn bridges, and even if you really disagree, don’t create a public spectacle.

4. Create and monetize a portfolio of work.

Writing one book is much easier than truly becoming a writer over the long term and as the cliché goes, the best marketing strategy is often to get the next book out there. However, for me, it’s not just having more books out there- but how you can use your portfolio of work deliberately to achieve more success by monetizing them. In Grade 7, I was really into writing poetry, but figured (correctly so) that not too many of my classmates would be willing to pay to read my poetry. So when I put out my first book, I bundled some of my poems with the Maths solutions. My classmates bought the book for the Maths, but inevitably many of them read my poems. And guess what, by the time I was ready with the next term’s edition, a few of them were actually requesting new poems to be included. The other lesson learnt of course was that writing poetry had its fringe benefits in impressing girls, but that’s another story for another day. Not much has changed- and I am still learning on how best to leverage my portfolio of work. I regularly `tag on’ excerpts of another book to my bestselling titles, and when Alice in Deadland was climbing the bestselling charts, a mere mention of my other titles on its Amazon home page increased their sales by a multiple of two. The key is to keep experimenting and learning- the difference between being a Creative Entrepreneur and a Salaryman is that there is no company manual, there are no `best practices’. You need to learn what works, sometimes adapting from what others have done, and sometimes trying out your own ideas. The business side comes in when I keep a running tally of every single promotion and ad I’ve run- so that I keep seeing the ROI behind them and fine tune my future plans. Contrast that to a corporate day job- I need not write any recos, I need not ask for anyone’s permission, I need not make any Power Point slides. That’s what makes it so much fun!

5. Keep practicing your craft.

In his book Outliers, Malcom Gladwell concludes that you need 10,000 hours of practice to really excel at anything. Even if you dedicate three hours a day to writing (and I know that is a lot for most people), that means you need to keep doing that non-stop for 9 years to really start mastering writing. I think there’s a way to short-circuit that- and that is to inject a bit of your passion for writing and self-publishing into everything you do. In school, even after my early experiments with self-publishing, I had been bitten by the writing and publishing bug, and would try and recreate that in everything I did. So even a minor school report became an event- with a designed color cover and neatly typed and formatted interior. I remember a teacher asking me why I was putting so much effort into it, and I told her that I imagined every report was a book I was writing. So even when I was not `writing a book’, I was practicing my craft. My day job today is in the corporate world, and how I bring the craft into my day job is to banish Power Point as much as possible. I don’t try and hide behind slide transitions and fancy pictures, but communicate everything I want in simple writing. Trainings I give take the form of a talk and a single typed sheet. That keeps me sharp in communicating what I want through the written word, and ironically, perhaps helps me do better, because what makes me unique (see lesson 1) is that I’m not just another cubicle dweller, but one who is a professional writer, and I am embracing that- so that even when I am not `writing a book’, I am writing and perfecting my ability to communicate and persuade through the written word.

6. Re-invest for future success.

Being a Creative Entrepreneur means running a business, and for any business to thrive, you need to invest in future success, not just fret about short-term sales or profits. That means re-investing some of what you gain for future growth. In Grade 7, I earned the princely sum of $12.50 from my first edition (a quarter a copy with 50 copies sold), and I spent a dollar on a big stapler, so that next time the book would be more stable and not risk falling apart as it did the first time around with small staples. Today I reinvest 25-30% of everything I earn every month from Kindle sales- into booking blog sponsorships/Facebook advertising, getting professional cover designs and so on. I have a spreadsheet where I keep a tally, and like any business, I started off not fretting about my investments in the first few months. So in Months 1-3, I actually spent more than I earned, but by looking at my sales momentum, I knew I should hang on and I recovered all my investments by the fifth month, and now every month, I am nicely profitable. So don’t give up too soon or think too short term. Treat it like any business- define your investment appetite (for me the worst case was to not be profitable at the end of year 1) and spend for future growth.

7. Enjoy the fruits of your labor.

Creating something gives an artist joy, but being a Creative Entrepreneur is never worth it unless it helps you retain that sense of joy. The biggest tragedy is when a passionate writer or creative brain becomes a pessimistic, nervous wreck when it comes to being an entrepreneur. The key to me is to enjoy the fruits of my writing, to remind myself that my writing helps me pay back into things that bring joy into my life. In Grade 7, I splurged on ice cream and comics and treated my parents to a chocolate. Today, I reframe every cent I earn in terms of what I can do for my family. Last December, my wife and I were planning a vacation for our anniversary, and when she said that the suite at the resort I was suggesting was expensive, I said that it was just four days of royalty from Kindle sales. Moments that like make me realize that my writing is not just feeding my passion or my desire to be read, but in a very real way is helping me create special moments and joy for those who matter most to me. That inspiration is what every Creative Entrepreneur needs to keep going.

In hindsight, my latest experience as a Creative Entrepreneur should not have come as any surprise to me. After all, everything I needed to know I had already learned in Grade 7, when perhaps without realizing it, I took the first steps in this journey. Some years later, while in college studying Economics, I wrote two books on Economic History. My Professors were not amused but as in Grade 7, I fully co-opted them by getting them to write endorsements for my books. I also had learned an important lesson by then- if you got good enough grades, everybody was willing to cut you some slack and let you fool around a bit (In Grade 7, while I was publishing my first book, I also went through two years of school with an imaginary friend called Freddy). The other lesson I learned, which should technically be lesson #8 (but why mess with the catchy branding of 7 lessons in 7^th Grade?) is to never seek permission to dream. If I had asked anyone whether I should publish a book in Grade 7 or a couple of books in college, I imagine a lot of people- teachers, fellow students, perhaps even relatives, would have called me nuts. The Creative Entrepreneur does not just dream about creating something and then ask for permission- he goes ahead and makes it happen. Seeking permission is for the salaryman, not the Creative Entrepreneur. Similarly, when I started my self-publishing experiment with digital books, there was a lot to dissuade me if I had bothered to ask. Most self-published authors sold no more than a handful of books, most made no money, and to top it all, in my first month, I sold a grand total of 118 ebooks. Instead of the 118 absolute number I focused on the fact that sales were growing 40% each week and soldiered on.

As I celebrate my first anniversary of self-publishing on the Kindle, I look forward to the future with renewed confidence. In the last year, I’ve sold well over 100,000 ebooks on the Kindle (supposedly becoming one of only about thirty indie authors in the world to ever do so and according to the E-Reader Corral Blog was among the Top 20 self-published writers globally in 2011). From tentatively uploading a couple of old novels, over the last 12 months I have put up three totally original novels (Zombiestan, Alice in Deadland and Through The Looking Glass- the sequel to Alice in Deadland) without even submitting to a publisher. I say all that not to become complacent, because that’s not what I do or how I’m built. Instead I use every little stepping-stone and every little victory to gather the courage to dream bigger.

That little stapled collection of poems and Maths solutions has come a long way, and there’s much more to come. Watch this space....

(This is an updated and modified version of a guest post I had contributed to fellow author and friend David Gaughran's excellent blog, Let's Get Digital).

The Real Heroes behind the Fictional Heroine

I recently got a very perceptive message from a reader (thanks, Max Zaoui!) that got me thinking about the underlying themes and motivations behind my novel, Alice in Deadland.

He asked whether, being Indian, my view of freedom and struggle against tyranny that permeates the story owed anything to India’s own struggle for freedom against colonial occupation earlier in the 20^th century.

That probably had something to do with it, and certainly some aspects of the `rule’ of the Central Committee in Alice in Deadland eg. Using local forces who later mutiny against their foreign masters, using tactics of dividing and conquering, the economic drain of resources to the Mainland- do all owe something to the historical realities of colonial rule India experienced.

However for me, the connection to the freedom struggle waged by India is not just something to be learnt in abstract terms through history books, but something that was much more personal. My grandfather, S.C De Chowdhury, lived through those times, and his story is one that would be fitting material for any novel.

He was a brilliant student, despite being from a very modest background (often studying under streetlights at night), and being a young man at a time when the Quit India Movement was in full flow, took part in protests and agitations against British rule. He was imprisoned and wrote his university exams in prison (incidentally, standing first in the university!) and spent quite some time in and out of prison. When India did get its independence, he decided to join the government of Free India and was a member of the first batch of Indian Police Service officers of independent India, serving till he retired at a very senior level.

He passed away a few years ago, and to some extent, Alice in Deadland was a testimony to this real life hero I had known. His life brought out important themes explored in Alice in Deadland. First, the fact that no matter how young, or how poor, or how weak you seem, you are always strong enough to stand up against tyranny, for that strength has to come from within. Second, it is always a tough journey to make from being a rebel and a revolutionary to actually being part of creating a new regime and system from the inside. And as happened in India’s case, once the hard-fought freedom was won, the rebels and revolutionaries who had sacrificed much to earn that quickly got sidelined by the politicians who were basking in reflected glory. That second theme is something that I am dedicating the sequel, Through the Killing Glass, to exploring.

As an aside, an insight into the spirit that he carried well into his old age comes from a personal anecdote. It was his 80^th birthday, and the whole family had gathered in Calcutta to celebrate. I was in Business School at that time and had joined them. He pulled me and my Mom aside and said that he was really bored by all the fussing over him and what he really wanted was a beer. So as the rest of the clan did whatever people do in such large family gatherings, we sat on the roof, drank beer and he told us old war stories.

There was a second, more immediate spark for Alice in Deadland. When I had begun writing it, the first rumblings of the series of uprisings that have come to be called the Arab Spring had begun. As someone who passionately believes in individual freedom of expression and choice, it was really inspiring to see common people from all walks of life join together to overthrow long-standing tyrannies.

There were several thousand unsung heroes of this revolution, but they all brought to life many of the same struggles, and sacrifices that my own grandfather and his generation experienced in India. Each and every one of those faceless and nameless protestors was no less a hero than anything I could conjure up as a writer in my tale Alice in Deadland, for they all shared something in common with Alice- the belief that freedom was something worth fighting, and dying for.

While Alice is a heroine I hope readers admire, I do hope they realize that in this case, the real life heroes behind his heroine are perhaps much more inspiring.

Keep reading and I'll keep writing.

Mainak

By the way for the next couple of weeks, I and a few fellow authors are part of a Kindle Fire Giveaway on the Kindle Fire Department blog. Do visit this wonderful site for information on Kindle Fire apps and the latest Kindle books and stand a chance to win a new Kindle Fire.