"What's your favorite book?"
Earlier this academic year, I initiated a Book Club at my kid’s elementary school. On the evening of our introductory/welcome meeting, after we’d talked about our love of books and reading, a smart 4th grader posed this question to me, “What’s your favorite book?”
For a split second, the question stumped me because over the years I’ve read, breathed, consumed multiple books, both academic and fiction. Yet, in that moment, the only name that popped up in my brain, mind, and heart was The Prisoner of Zenda. I told the group a bit about the book and why I love it so much.
I was a middle-school girl when I first discovered POZ at my maternal uncle’s home in Ahmedabad over the summer holidays. With the newly emergent teenage hormones coursing through my body, I instantly fell in love with Rudolph and Flavia. I also developed a deep, forbidden crush on the bad boy Rupert of Hentzau. At that age, I thought it was very clever of Hopkins to pen the villain in such alluring terms, the one you’d want but shouldn’t because he’s evil. He’s enticing, irresistible, but conniving.
POZ became my first love, and like the first love in my book (and also my own love story), it combines adventure, drama, action, and romance to tell a fantastically engrossing tale. I found myself pushing to write a tale that doesn’t have one boring moment. I wanted action on the page, emotional or physical. I wanted longing, the kind I look for as a reader.
After that, every year during summer break I’d look forward to revisiting it in Ahmedabad, like meeting up with an old friend. Re-reading Tom Sawyer and POZ took up all the time between playing with my cousins on the sturdy wrought iron bunk bed at my uncle’s home. These memories came flooding back as I wondered if this wasn’t the reason I write my stories the way I do. I love romance, but what’s romance without a little drama and adventure? And even though it is my chosen genre, I want myself and my readers to experience the full gamut of emotions, with my characters often flirting with that boundary between seemingly wrong and right.
More recently, two more writers have inspired me, unsurprisingly both from the mystery/thriller genre. I have enjoyed Dennis Lehane's pacing, and S. J. Rozan’s evocative writing, and yearned to write the kind of tales that evoke smells, sights, and sounds that are everyday and unique. I want to write romance like Beverly Jenkins who infuses her stories with history, truth, and an urgency for justice. Of course, I stand miles away from these stellar writers, but this is the path I have charted for my growth as a writer and I hope you will join me on this journey. Hope you will enjoy my stories today and tomorrow as I find unique voices for my characters.