Adventures of a Writer

If you're an Indie author you probably can't get away from the fact that marketing plays a huge role in the success of any book. Even if you have written the most awesome books since JK Rowling's Harry Potter series! Before you work yourself up into a tizzy imagining doomsday scenarios of the thousands of bucks you're likely to spend to promote your book in order to give it a modicum of visibility in a hugely cluttered digital marketplace, here's some good news. There are enough tools out there to create stunning images for advertising your books. And these are known as Cover Mock-Ups. A cover mock-up is basically a digital presentation of your book cover. Don't you love those pretty Instagram like images? And don't you wish you could create great looking advertising quality images for your books? With Adazing.com 's mock-up generator, you can create these for your books in a jiffy. There are plenty of options to choose from and the website als

A Stone for Danny Fisher is one of those evergreen bestsellers that has wowed readers across several generations.  Why did I pick this book? For one, I remembered reading it way back when I was in college and being consumed by it! It had made a huge impact on me and I particularly recalled one scene that has remained with me all through the years -- an emotional, gut-wrenching scene involving Danny and his beloved dog, Rexie. Second, it was one of the first books that introduced me to the genre of "pulp fiction". Harold Robbins was notorious for writing 'trashy books with a lot of sex' but this is not one of them! This is one of his early books -- the depth of emotion and the motivations of Danny Fisher who lived in the times of the Great Depression could rival those of any literary fiction novel. Third, A Stone... has tremendous nostalgic value for me. I remember discussing this book with my Dad. Somehow, reading it again was like reconnecting with him and

My movie bingeing on Netflix continues. And inspired by the rush of blogging that is happening everywhere I have decided to kill two birds with one stone. So, here is my review for an offbeat Bollywood romantic comedy by the name of Qarib Qarib Singlle directed by Tanuja Chandra.  I say 'offbeat' only because it does not conform to the escapist, fantasy fare that Bollywood romances usually are. In fact, the strength of QQS is that it is rooted in reality and its characters are the average everyday people you would meet. The protagonist Jaya is a single career woman whose soldier husband is no more. She is constantly being egged on by friends to start dating and shed her single status. She finally puts up her profile on an online dating site and is inundated with lewd messages from weirdos. But one message catches her eye. From a poet named Yogi. Jaya is amused and slightly bewildered by a man who insists on telling her about his ex-girlfriends on their first date. Yogi

By Jaideep Sen Undoubtedly two of the most significant films in Salim Saab’s glorious career both as a writing duo and as a solo writer are Deewaar and Naam . The common thread that runs between both films is the Bond of Brotherhood. As I sat down to write this piece, two interviews came to my mind very vividly. The first was an interview with Salim Saab’s eldest son, Salman Khan, who had mentioned that during the days of his father’s collaboration with Javed Saab, “Dad was never the front-man, he was always behind, much like an older brother to Javed Saab”. The second was a recent interview in which Javed Saab mentioned that their partnership was not of equals as Salim Saab was an elder whom he looked up to almost as a parent. I guess the pure and unadulterated love that emitted from Salim Saab as an elder stemmed from his deep understanding of human relationships. A still from Deewaar In Deewaar a young Vijay telling his Mother that you don’t earn enough

It's been a while since I posted movie reviews on my blog. Heck, it's been a while since I watched movies! How does a movie buff who is also a screenwriter not watch movies? That's sheer sacrilege. Well, life (and deadlines) have a way of getting in the way. But let's not dwell on that. The good thing is that Netflix and Amazon Prime are just what the doctor prescribed for a screenwriter deprived of her fix of movies. Binge-watching movies is good for the soul too! Try it some time. ;) The other Big Plus about watching movies via streaming channels is that you can simply watch the first 10-15 minutes of a film and decide whether it grabs you enough to see the rest of it. So, here are the top two movies that grabbed my attention...interestingly, both are adaptations. Ittefaq Ittefaq (directed by Abhay Chopra) is a taut thriller that is an adaptation of a 1969 film of the same name starring Rajesh Khanna-Nanda. I call it an 'adaptation', rather than a

By Jaideep Sen Salim Saab was once asked in an interview what he considered to be his biggest strength in writing and he instantly said, “characterisation”. Characterisation is at the heart of the story which is evident in every film that Salim and Javed Saab have written. In Zanjeer , a child who has witnessed - and is subsequently haunted by - the killing of his parents grows up to be in Salim Saab’s own words a “high strung” character who’s extremely combustible. Having been a victim of injustice, he cannot tolerate it, especially when it happens to others. The outrage of Inspector Vijay Khanna in the hospital when Mala, the knife sharpener, refuses to identify the truck driver is testimony to the hero’s characterisation. In their latter work, Vijay became a representation of the no-nonsense crusader of justice, whether against the system in Zanjeer , or against society for the ill-treatment of his parents in Deewaar or even against his biological father for aban