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Every book is different. My first book, The Reluctant Detective, was written on a hope and a prayer and sent out to a publisher cold turkey. I was lucky, very, very lucky that the first editor I sent it out to liked it enough to sign it up. And there I was, with a book contract in hand and a book I�d dashed out in a frenetic writing spree out in print and paper. What did it feel like? Surreal. Seeing one�s name on the cover of a book is something that gobsmacks you the first time you see it. There is that moment of disbelief, then the sudden swelling of immense pride. That�s mine, I have created it. Go forth into the world and find your place on the bookshelves of the world, you tell your creation, daubing the corner of your tearful eye with a handy cotton handkerchief, or a tissue if that happens to be handier.
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My second book, like the second child, was written in the aftermath of the first, so it emerged, tremulous and uncertain, eager to be a follower of its older sibling, and looking for all sorts of reaffirmations about what it meant to be a book out in the market, and to take tips on survival and struggling to get to the top ten spot in the Amazon bestseller list from the one that went that route before it did.
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My third though, ah, this is a baby all on its own. It is written differently to begin with. It is a romance. There is humour yes, in bits and pieces, but not as all pervasive as it was with my other two books. It is set in a different location. My previous two books were set in Mumbai, this is set on a Mediterranean cruise. This is a different book, one that I had great fun writing. It makes me as nervous or as excited as the first one I wrote, because it is so different from my previous two. And perhaps, that�s what makes it precious.
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