Having spent last Saturday at Bookaroo amidst books and authors, it’s hardly surprising that I came back with a decent haul of books and to-reads. Here’s a selection: Queen of Ice by Devika Rangachari Devika Rangachari can do two very interesting things—make history really fun and put away an unbelievable amount of chocolate. Her latest […]
Author: Payal
Week #47: Keeping secrets
We all have secrets—or we have had them at some point in our lives. But why do we keep secrets? What do they tell us about ourselves? More importantly, what do they tell us about the rest of the world? These are exactly the questions that Himanjali Sankar and I will be grappling with on […]
Week #46: Eat the Sky on tour in Bangalore
Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean went on a whirlwind book tour and I got the chance to join Kirsty Murray, Isobelle Carmody and Samhita Arni on the Bangalore leg. We kicked off on Sunday, 16 November, at the Oxford Bookstore, where the book was—literally—launched at our Bangalore audience. There were about a dozen children, […]
Week #45: Eating the sky, drinking the ocean
Two things arrived this week: (a) Z, because of whom I became an aunt for the second time; and (b) copies of Eat the Sky, Drink the Ocean! While is Z is busy getting used to the new world and will lie low in the nearish future, we’re having a grand old song and dance […]
Week #44: Slightly Burnt, the finished goods
Yesss, it’s here! Slightly Burnt is hot off the press and I’m told copies are going out to bookshops tomorrow! Slightly Burnt is a book about being different. About what happens when we don’t follow the rules that society has laid down for each of us. So what do you when you have a secret […]
Week #43: Catching up with other kiddy writers
The reason I’ve been late with blog posts these past weeks is that I’m in Bangalore. And whenever I’m in Bangalore, meeting up with various people is always high on the agenda, including some of my writerly friends. A few day back, some of us managed to catch up. Tea and sandwiches were consumed, publishing […]
Week #42: Thinking about language
The offspring of my sibling is awaiting a brother or sister any day now. Thus, every morning, the first question that gets asked is: “Has Zoe [the name given to the impending baby (I don’t know why!)] camed out yet?” No amount of coaxing and explaning has resulted in a grammatical correction. In fact, we’re […]
Week #41: Killing some darlings
This has been a busy week—you see, I killed some of my darlings. I’m not completely sure who this priceless bit of advice originally came from. But Stephen King probably has the best take on it with his “kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your […]
Week #40: Seven days and six books
Yep, that’s how many new books I’ve got myself over the past week. Let’s see: The Screaming Staircase (Jonathan Stroud): This has been on my list since Week #3 and I thought I already had it. Well, it turns out I didn’t (or I have a copy stashed away somewhere that I can’t see) and […]
Week #39: Discovering Anne Holt
Disovering a new author is always fun, and when their writing combines two of my favourite things—crime and Scandinavia—it’s that much more fun. Anne Holt has often been described as ‘the Val McDermid of Norway’, but I would beg to differ. Apart from the fact that they both write crime fiction, there is nothing similar […]