And then the first Interview & Review. (Whew!)

I think the main reason I write books is to catch up with old HTA pals! 

Meeting some after 40 years...oh what joy and screams marked this event at Quill & Canvas, as we return to the scene of the crime. Same bookshop, same gang, same place, different book:-)

 Quill and Canvas, for Runaway Writers, 2016

Quill &Canvas, for Oops & Downs of Advertising, 2011

BOOK LAUNCH AT WORLD BOOK FAIR IN DELHI.

IN Conversation with the delightful Deva Priya Roy

I couldn't have asked for a more sparky charming gal than Devapriya...straight out of my book! (Famed author of Heat &Dust). A cheering family comes along to fab events lines up at Delhi. 

A fab morning's chat with the IWA gals of Chennai.

 

A presentation on How to Appear Ridiculously Well Read, 

and then  a chat with Sushi Natarajan on the Book.

The word blog, I just realised, rhymes with slog.

Having just declared “I am going to go right back to blogging again”, I can see what a lot of hard work and commitment it takes to be a regular blogger. And yet the world is full of writers, who aren’t even actual writer writers, merrily blogging on, churning out in 400-words or so, ‘Dear Diary’ entries for the whole wide world to enjoy.

I remember the first time we heard the word blog, wondering uneasily if it was some kind of monster or a form of bodily discomfort. Turns out the origins of the word ‘blog’ owes its roots to an American Jorn Barger, as way back as 1997, who came up with the word weblog—to describe ‘logging the web’ as he surfed. Then Peter Merholz  broke up the word weblog to we blog, more as a joke --rendering it at once into not just a new–age noun but a verb as well. And that was in 1999.

And then arrived handy blogging techie tools to make it all a breeze for millions of wannabe authors, closet journos, and secret scribes, making it possible for anyone to become a published writer, instantly. I have just read that there are more than 8 million blogs online, and that a new blog is created every 8 seconds. (ie in the time it took to write the last sentence, another blogger was born). And I am sure most of us can’t remember when exactly the word blogging casually entered our lives, much like googling and tweeting.

Well I now have my second book out, ‘Runaway Writers’. I was told by a friend from the digital community recently, “Now that you are launching a new book, you better start a blog site at once…” I realised with a jolt that I did in fact already have one. Just sitting there in cyberspace. (It’s much like an automatic chappati-maker we all wish to buy when we see it on TV, and then realise we already actually have one , bought several years ago, sitting quietly  in our kitchen closet).

So I am now taking my blog out of the closet where it has languished for a few years, un-up dated, un-read,  rapidly uploading a few of my earlier writings to make it alive and breathe again , and start the slog again...

 I mean blog...

Time for the official Author portrait. Who else but Rauf...

Interview- Meet Our GEMS: Indu Balachandran

Here is an interview I had done for prajnya16days with Swetha.. 

Sexism in Humour? It's No Joke

Indu Balachandran quit a cushy job in Advertising (Executive Creative Director, JWT) after 30 years, to pursue another passion, Travel Writing (free travel, free hotel stays, free food!). Travel trips also give her plenty of trip-ups to write about, and her humour columns appear regularly in The Sunday Hindu and other leading magazines. Her first book, "Don't Go Away, We'll Be Right Back: The Oops & Downs of Advertising" was on the Odyssey and Crossword best-seller lists. Her riotous rom-com novel "The Second Best Job in the World" is due for release early 2015. Indu shares in her own words why she wanted to be part of the Prajnya campaign.

Laughter can be contagious, liberating, healing (the ‘best medicine', as we’ve learnt from Reader’s Digest) but it can also be derisive and offensive. In a world where I am constantly angered by blatant attacks on my gender in such violent and shocking ways, by so called uneducated boors, there is also the clever ‘verbal poke’ directed at us women by the intelligentsia (indeed it does require a sharp intellect to make a witty joke)—that is demeaning and annoying, and needs to be talked about strongly and dealt with.

As a professional writer on light-hearted observations on life, I have lately taken a keen interest in today’s growing field of popular urban entertainment: stand up comedy.  The sexism, not to mention crude sex itself that forms much of its content –all in the form of witticisms, always leaps out at me, and Prajnya has given me a platform to talk about this issue and raise awareness.

Just as women in offices everywhere took a stand, protested, and fought back on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace, so will we increasingly hit back at snide public digs at us, and send out this message to chauvinistic humourists: no, you can’t get away with it any more.

This interview was featured on http://prajnya16days.blogspot.in/2014/12/meet-our-gems-indu-balachandran.html

And so I decided to take a Shelfie!

Runaway Writers joins the others in my Writers Block bookshelf at home. One non fiction book, and 5 anthologies.

Runaway Writers delivered!  (Its's a Girl) 

Writing a Second Book is much like having a second baby-- you are so thrilled the first one looks cute, and even moves about on its own one day, that you forget the horrific  pain and go ahead recklessly to having another one.

So here it is-- Runaway Writers!

Thank You Mala--for the perfect title. (After the working title Dear Boss, I Quit didn't work with my Publishers.)

3 gals who run away from boring jobs to find their true passion in life, in a Greek Island.

Here's the moment I saw my second baby as soon it was delivered.

It's a girl!

And the new one is delivered!

My first look at the new Book.