As some of you may know, thanks to that zonking huge cover in the right sidebar there, in January this year my debut novel was published by Penguin Books India. And–touch wood, kiss wood, dry hump wood–it has been doing respectably since then. A reprint has happened. Some good reviews have come. And overall we are reasonably pleased. Yes, there was the matter of the Booker shortlist.
But I am over that now.
However this is not to say that life has been all milk and honey and single malts and paal payasam. Not at all. Writing a book itself is fraught with insecurities and doubts and fear of failure. Like any pursuit, I am sure, that is vulnerable to public criticism.
Yet I naively assumed that once the writing process was over, the book published, and the reviews dealt with, the emotional turmoil of it all would be over. I would be free of the book, and vice versa, and life would go on.
Ha ha ha. And I as I say this I am walking down a flight of stairs clapping my hands slowly in a sinister fashion.
Ha ha ha.
I was a fool.