RADIUS 200 - BLURB:
What if a nuclear powered
neighboring nation was to ‘steal’ an entire river from under our eyes?
What if a top-ranking
Indian General was to take a unilateral decision to strike back, thereby
triggering a cataclysmic reaction?
What if, in the aftermath
of the nuclear attack, India was left with a devastated Exclusion Zone, 200
kilometers in radius?
And what if your love was
stranded inside the Exclusion Zone…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
RADIUS
200 is Veena Nagpal’s fourth novel.
The
previous novels were The Uncommon Memories of Zeenat Qureishi (Tara), Karmayogi
(Jaico) and Compulsion (Sterling).
She
has also written four books for children.
A
passionate environmentalist, she has conducted more than five hundred
environment workshops for school children in the NCR region.
She
loves travelling. “Must have inherited gypsy blood from somewhere,” she laughs.
She is also an avid photographer and dabbles in oil painting.
QUESTIONNAIRE :
1) WHEN DID YOU FIRST REALIZE YOU
WANTED TO BE A WRITER?
Some things you are just born with
– I think I was born with a fascination for words. It’s an
addiction perhaps. Like people do drugs, I need to have my tryst with that
magical dance of twenty-six alphabets and a fistful of punctuation marks.
My
first novel ‘Karmayogi’ was published by Jaico Publishers way back in 1972 when
I was thirty. Unfortunately for a long time in between I gave up writing to
take up a full time job – one of those things one doesn’t want to do but life
forces on you anyway!
That
long gap in my writing career, I will always regret.
That
the act of creation sometimes takes over and sidelines you, the writer,
totally!
Characters
start taking charge of their own life, talking and walking in ways that you may
have never envisaged for them, triggering events you had not anticipated.
You,
the writer, become just an instrument through whom the story happens to be
flowing on to the paper – or the laptop.
Four
novels: Radius 200; The Uncommon Memories of Zeenat Qureishi; Compusion and
Karmayogi.
Four
books for children: Tenderella and the FoFs; Garbie Garbyhog: The Worm that
Wanted to Fly; Smuggler’s Isle and Adventures in Space and Time Travelers.
No favorites – it’s like asking a mother to
name her favorite child.
5)
DO YOU HAVE ANY SUGGESTIONS TO HELP ANY BUDDING WRITER BECOME A BETTER WRITER?
IF SO WHAT ARE THEY?
A
writer’s journey is long, lonely and arduous. It certainly isn’t for the faint
hearted.
The
best advice a writer can follow is summed up in one word – write! Write, write
and write. Until you have spent 10,000 hours writing, don’t even let the
suggestion enter your mind that you are a writer.
Write what fascinates you, keeps you awake. Write
what you need to figure out. Don’t
wait for inspiration. Inspiration has to find you at your desk before it can
make its way to you.
In the meantime read,
read and read. Start with RADIUS 200!!
Oh,
very often and thank God for that! Without reader feedback a book is just a
block of paper. As Samuel Johnson once said, “A writer only begins a book, a
reader finishes it.”
Unfortunately
I hear more from readers who want to tell me how they ‘loved’ my book, how
‘wonderful’ it was. I would love to hear from readers about what they don’t
like about my writing. It would help me to improve!
7)
TELL US SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR NEWLY RELEASED NOVEL?
Radius 200 is perhaps the first Cli-fi
(Climate Fiction) Military Thriller written by an Indian woman. The book is a celebration of the capacity of the human spirit to
survive all possible odds.
A
genre-bending page-turner, it is the story of a fragile love, helplessly caught
between two nuclear nations clashing for command and control over limited water
resources.
Placed in the years 2040 and 2060, it
was written after long
years of painstaking research.
8)
WHAT DO YOU THINK MAKES A GOOD STORY?
A story that tugs at
your heartstrings makes you pause and think in a soul satisfying way, a story
that you want to talk to your friends about – that is what I would call a good
story.
Irrespective of the
genre – and many good stories actually transcend genre compartmentalization – a
good story would have ‘grey’ characters one can care about, caught in a
conflict situation important enough to add to one’s understanding of life’s
mysteries.
It would be a lean
story simply told in a unique voice.
LINKS:
CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK:
VIEW BOOK TRAILER AT:
MEET
THE AUTHOR AT:
Amazon Author page: amazon.com/author/veenanagpal
Twitter: @veenanagpal
INTERVIEWED BY:
MR. SUMAN PANDA
TEAM BOOK RACKOON
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