Book Launch at PILF19 with Javed Akhtar

My thriller "The Hawa Mahal Murders" was launched at PILF19 with Javed Akhtar. Here he is holding my book! An honour I was lucky to receive because The Hawa Mahal Murders was a PILF contest winner!

So, the prize winner (The Hawa Mahal Murders) was launched at the inauguration of PILF. A surreal experience for me. Other eminent people were present on the stage with me including Manjiri Prabhu, a popular mystery writer, Sidharth Jain the ceo of StoryInk, Mr Vishal Soni, ceo of Vishwakarma Publications and Mrs Agarwal, from the founding family of Vishwakarma.

An extra-large poster of my book can be seen below.

Sales of my book at the venue were brisk. Looking forward to some reviews now!

It was an exhilarating moment! More about my experiences at the PILF later!

Why Buy My Book?

There is a session called "Why Buy My Book?" on the 20th of September at PILF19, the first day of the Pune International Literary Festival. I have about 8 minutes to tell people why my book, The Hawa Mahal Murders, is worth a buy.

It's always a challenge to convince people to buy one's book because one has to be absolutely clear about one's target audience. Once I finish the session I will post my talk here. But one thing I must mention, something I feel I should have done before the first edition was published. I should have had a blurb at the back saying that this was a "winner at the PILF18." Why didn't I think of it? In the second edition, I shall say this and more. "Launched at PILF19." Yes, that's being very hopeful, that there will be a second edition. But there will be. I want to think positive.

Here is the schedule for

PILF 2018 - Pune International Literature Festival

This was a wonderfully organised lit fest (by Vishwakarma Publications, MIT and Manjiri Prabhu and other partners) which was held at Yashada, in Pune. As a Punekar, it made me proud. This is the sixth one, but the first one which I attended as I was not in Pune when the previous festivals were held.

Listening to authors like Shobha De, Gurcharan Das, Isak Bagvan and a myriad of other authors and poets was invigorating.

It was also quite interesting to hear owners of bookshops speak out on the shrinking shelf space, which according to them is not really shrinking! According to them running a bookshop is all about the passion. If it is run like a business the chances are that it will fail. Today,