The Tales Pensieve

I met Adite through the blogging world. Her book The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal was about to be out and she was feeling the jitters of an author debutante. But once I read her book I had a strong feeling that this book is not only for the Indian readers but also should be distributed in the International market. While her story had all the ingredients of a Bollywood-ish Masala, the way she portrayed India and the thoughts of the characters tells us clearly that we readers and writers are now ready to portray India as it should be portrayed – Young, dashing  and Rich. 

Adite Banerjie has been writing professionally ever since she graduated from college. After an exciting and fulfilling career as a business journalist she turned to freelance writing, crunched numbers and wrote reports about consumer behaviour and social development issues. Somewhere along the way she got on to the screenwriting bandwagon. One of her movie scripts is currently in pre-production. When she penned her first romantic short story she won the 2012 Harlequin Mills & Boon Aspiring Authors Contest. Her debut novel, based on the winning short story entry, The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal, released in India in September 2013 and will be available as an e-book on amazon.com soon. She lives in a suburb of New Delhi with her husband, mother and an Irish Setter who is the uncrowned king of all doggy beggars.

I got inKonversation with Adite Banerjie about Krish & Maya, Mills&Boon and Bollywood. Read on:

Hi Adite. Let me first congratulate you on the publication of your debut novel, The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal. Tell us something about your story.

Thanks, Rubina! It’s been an exciting time and I am so gratified at the response I have been getting from readers for my book.
The story is about a young landscape designer, Maya, who lives in New Delhi and wants revenge against the man who destroyed her family, a tycoon who goes by the name of Kamalkant Dev (or KD). But even as she plots her vengeance against KD, she falls in love with Krish, KD’s son.  Now her dilemma is this—how will she reconcile her promise to her father to bring KD down with her love for Krish?

How did Krish and Maya come into your life?

It all happened when I decided to write a short story for the Harlequin India Passions Aspiring Authors Contest 2012.  As soon as I came up with the idea for the cute meet scene between Krish and Maya, I knew that whether or not I won the contest, their story needed to be told. Or they wouldn’t let me rest in peace! 🙂

The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal has a steamy aspect when compared to the other Mills and Boon released in India. Did you have to work extra hard on those scenes?

It wasn’t as if I had decided beforehand that it would be steamier than the other books that are being written by Indian authors.  It just so happened that it turned out that way. I lay the blame for that entirely on Krish and Maya. 😉  And surprisingly enough, I really didn’t have to work extra hard on the love scenes.

Do you feel that your background as a journalist and a screenwriter helped you in preparing the manuscript? 

Yes, indeed.  The journalist in me surfaces every time I start thinking of a story. I love to research my stories to death! You won’t believe it but I have a ton of files and links in my computer about how lavender roses are grown (which are a small but vital element of the story). And, as a screenwriter, my effort is to try and make the scenes as visual as possible. So that came in very handy for the descriptions.

Do you feel formal training is necessary to be a writer?

I have always believed that training helps you to get a grasp of the basics.  Especially when you’re writing fiction, you do need to keep in mind things like pacing of the story, structure, subtext, etc. The idea is not to follow any kind of template, but if you do know the rules, then it’s up to you how much you can tweak those rules—or even break them—to suit your story requirements.

Would you like to venture out in the other genres or is Romance the one for you? 

For now, I am sticking to romance but I definitely would like to explore sub-genres like romantic thriller, romantic comedy and historical romance.

Are you a planned writer? Do you plan the characterizations, backgrounds and flow of the story?

Yes, I pretty much like to plan the outline, do a detailed sketch of the main characters and the important plot points of the story. But once I start writing, things tend to change. And then it’s a judgement call on whether to divert from the plan and chart out on a different route or to stick to the basic plan with a few diversions. That is perhaps the most exciting part of writing fiction! 🙂

If you have to change one thing in your book what would it be?

I would have loved to go into the motivations of KD—Maya’s enemy—and why he is the way he is. It would have perhaps added another layer to the story.

Was there any moment in your journey for this novel when you wanted to put your pen down or close your laptop?

Oh yes, plenty of times. It’s often said that writers tend to get bogged down as they hit the middle section of their story.  Sure enough, it happened to me as well. And I had to struggle to get back into the flow, work out the kinks and make the story flow more smoothly.

On a lighter note, if your book is made into a Bollywood movie what would be the title of the movie and which actors would you cast in the roles of Krish and Maya?

Title of the movie? That’s a tough one and I’m totally clueless…but please nothing with badla in it! That’s so 70’s and so outdated.  As for actors….all through the writing of this story I visualised Hrithik Roshan as Krish and Katrina Kaif as Maya and I would be in seventh heaven if that were to really happen. I guess even a romance author is entitled to her dreams, right? 🙂

Your words of wisdom for newbie writers.

Only three words: read, read, read!  And a few words more: Not just in the genre that you’re writing but across all genres.  Happy writing! 🙂

Indian residents WIN a copy of The Indian Tycoon’s Marriage Deal HERE 

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