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Showing posts from 2015

[Independence Day Special][Short Story] Pis-Aller

  "He that studieth revenge keepeth his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well"-John Milton He was in his nineties now, slow, fragile and nearing death. Still, every day he used to wake up at 6 in the morning and stare outside the window, blankly. They said when he was young, he was agile, healthy and quick, no one knew what his profession was, but he did retire rich at the age of fifty-five. His only son used to visit the old rooms twice a day, 'Baba, I request you again. Come with us to the big house. What is there in this dump?' his son used to question. 'I can't leave now, there is one final task left son,' he used to smile, 'One final task.' Baba had sent all the furniture from the room to the new house but kept himself a bed and the jewel beaded box. 'No one has ever removed the box from under the diwan since last 20 years, baba,' the daughter-in-law use to question, 'Don't let the servants, but please let me

A Complete Guide to Writing Fiction using Evernote

If you know me in my other life, I proudly boast of myself as the Monk Who Sold His Computer for the Cloud. I do not own a computer, apart from video editing, and invest a lot of time trying to replace my computer with cloud services . One of the most important problem faced by me in this period was how do I move novel writing services to the cloud? Can an internet based service be used for Novel writing? The service should be such that it can be used to sync on the phone, iPad as well as Web. With NaNoWriMo around, I decided to put on the thinking cap and setup my workspace in Evernote. If you are new to this world, Evernote is a note-taking tool that helps capture text-based-notes, picture based notes, Web-Links (Clips) and even voice based notes. So let's get to work.  Evernote lets you create Notebooks that can store your notes together. The notebooks can further be grouped together in something they call ' Stack'. For the purpose of the blog, I am going to delve first

The Bio of Professor Shastri

Born: 14 January 1978 Hair: Curly, partially bald Profession: Founder-  'Takshashila institute of Advanced research' Anyone who met Professor Sampakta Shastri always had an undeniable urge to punch him hard in his face. Prof Shastri was a self-proclaimed expert on everything under the Sun. His theories and ideas were famous around the world. He was also known to have an outburst of information about everything in the world. He used to share it in random conversations with no moral obligations of any kind. He liked to give prolonged lectures, which he was fond of giving, at any unfortunate moment. Sometimes, irrespective of whether anyone was willing to listen to him or not. Professor Shastri was in his late thirties and had a round face and a big belly. From a distance he looked like a giant panda with short and curly hair, dark brown complexion and no facial hair. Depending on who you believe in, he was either a modern day Einstein or a lunatic devil worshipper. There was n

Meet the Main Characters from Ragnarok

What makes us believe in something - The idea behind Ragnarok

The idea behind Ragnarok, my upcoming science fiction satire, came exactly three years ago when I was talking to a friend. This friend of mine (who has explicitly asked me not to name him) was harping on and on about how religion is necessary for faith and belief. That put the idea of God in my head. For as long as I remember, I was an agnostic about the concept of God. I never faced any crisis that would make me look for a higher power or ask for forgiveness. But my friend put the idea that there has to be someone out there looking out for us. That was the definitive moment when the idea popped into my head. See, here is the thing, we all want to believe that someone out there is looking out for us. Everyone, even an atheist, at one point in time want to look up and say, hey this is not my problem, this is yours. Here is the idea, if everyone (or most of us) talk to someone all powerful to solve their problem, what kind of pressure are we putting on that one person? And what if, he is

Ragnarok: the video teaser

Why did I choose the name: Ragnarok?

I stand on the eve of a monumental achievement. After a long effort of four years, I finished my first novel- Ragnarok. It is a science fiction satire based in a fictional world just like us. There were a lot of questions around Ragnarok and I chose to answer some of them. The most common one was, why Ragnarok? Those who know me, know about my obsession with Hindu Mythology but still for the first novel, I chose a title with Norse Mythology. To those wondering, my Ragnarok is not about mythology. It is a science fiction satire based in a modern world. The only thing related to the old mythology is the title of the book and the chartered name of the secret society planning on world domination. Just as a disclaimer, it has nothing to do with the Marvel movie. Ragnarok literally means The End of Gods in Norse mythology. Ragnarok is described as a decisive battle between Gods and Titan to determine the successor for the throne of Odin. The following is a poem that is roughly translated in

Meet the Ragnarok Characters- Have you met Annie?

Lessons learnt from a Year of Writing

The past year was something of a golden period for writing for me. For those who came in late (or not following me on  Facebook page ), I had a big writing year.  I finished the most epic science fiction book this year titled Ragnarok . The book will be released this August or September. A graphic novel titled  Agatya is set to release immediately after that. Agatya is a book about the last line of defence between Heaven and Hell. That's two fictional releases back to back. There is one more technical book coming out soon (no release planned). And finally a short film based on a Short Story from this blog. (Read  Original Ginger Chai  if you are in that sort of thing) I am writing a lot in the past year and that was a shameless marketing plug for my  Facebook page . With all these books and releases I had a big writing year behind me since last May. I was writing and editing most of the time. And as with any normal human experience, you learn things. Here are some of things I learn

Building a Multiverse around Hindu Mythology

For those who are aware (and many of those who are not, don't fret awareness is just temporary) I am currently busy building a multiverse. A lot of questions were asked around my multiverse and I had to answer them at one point or the other. So here is a compilation of my thoughts (and a little bit of progress) around my multiverse. It might be a tiny bit of long post BUT towards the end I am leaving you with a bonus sneak peak of my Universe, don't miss it. If you do not know what a Multiverse is, Multiverse is basically a shared Universe where multiple characters live (not in harmony) and jump in and out of stories. For e.g., Incident happening in some story are refereed in another story sometimes via close related person or maybe through public medium. Designing a multiverse is a herculean task in itself for little little things matter in this universe. Like Harry Potter lives in his own Universe. It has its own Laws. The Central Theme of the Multiverse My multiverse is not

Start a New Habit Open a Blog

"Hi, I am very new to this can you tell me how to start my blog?" "I want to write a novel, do you know anyone who can publish it?""I have an idea, can you connect me with a publisher" and the list goes on. The amount of queries about first time writing increases even faster than the 'friend' request my recruiters on Linkedin. Write My advice to all the one who want to start a blog, write a book or take a career in full time writing- write. write and write. There is nothing else you can do other than do this over and over again. Write. You will start with bad English, you will start with stupid things but eventually you grow, eventually you discover the inner writer and that's when your writing takes place. Read Obviously you can't just write, as a writer you have to read a lot too. I personally don't read any specific genre but there are people who like certain genre. First step of being a good writer is being a good reader. And you do