The love plot thickens

Bestselling author Preeti Shenoy on why her books have youngsters by their hearts

Preeti Shenoy

Preeti Shenoy is part of a select club of bestselling authors that includes Amish, Ravinder Singh and Durjoy Datta – those practitioners of the extremely popular genre of pop-Indian fiction. These stories have many fans and the writers rule the bestseller charts. The reason? The stories are highly relatable providing the ‘authentic reading experience’, Preeti’s term for the phenomenon.

“Rather than read about some foreigner in some faraway foreign land, youngsters are reading about people they can relate to and understand. If through these works, they are encouraged to discover the pleasure of reading then how is it a bad thing?” she asks.

Her first piece of fiction, the game-changer,

Life Is What You Make It is number one on Amazon.in’s bestseller list in the Indian Writing category, giving her company are the gentlemen - Amish, Ravinder and Durjoy. She is one of the very few women when it comes to bestseller lists such as these – “I am willing to work as hard as the guys when it comes to promoting my books.” Once done with writing, “the most important aspect” then it is time to “don the marketing hat and promote the book.”

Promotion may help but it can only do so much, she agrees. And this is where the merit of the story comes in.

In town to promote her latest piece of non-fiction Why We Love The Way We Do , derived from her columns and the FAQs she encounters, she talks about it and the other works in her oeuvre. The latest is a ready reckoner on relationships, a textbook of sorts. It is divided into seven sections, each dealing with contemporary aspects of the modern relationship. In the short essay format the book is an easy read especially for those looking for relationship help. The book, out in November 2015, has been received well.

The others

34 Bubblegums and Candies ,

Tea for Two and a Piece of Cake ,

The Secret Wishlist ,

The One You Cannot Have and

It Happens for a Reason – find resonance in readers. They, like she says, relate to the stories. It is theirs or the story of someone they know. The many stories are the result of a keen interest and curiosity about the people around her.

Ten years ago, in 2006, she started out as a blogger, to deal with grief after her father’s death. The very popular blog led her to newspaper columns then to contributing to the Chicken Soup series to poetry to her first novel. A piece of creative non-fiction based on her newspaper columns, 34 Bubblegums… was the first to be published. Her next, Life is What You Make It (2011) changed everything for her as writer. The novel, a love story, centered around young Ankita Sharma, an MBA aspirant and her travails as she finds her way through love. Extremely popular, it has been translated into several languages including Turkish.

Relationships lie at the heart of her stories – man-woman, love triangles, heartbreak, and finding love again – “these are different from saccharine romances, slices of real life, which have an emotional connect.” That could be the X factor that has these and other books in this genre flying off shelves. Thematically relationship-driven, her works explore other aspects of real life such as mental disease or other issues within that frame. The connect of her books is real – the response has been humbling. “People write in saying I changed their lives or how my writing helped them. But the most humbling was when someone told me ‘your writing saved my life’ That is big.”

The Bangalore-based ‘closet geek’ confesses to being compulsive when it comes to getting her facts right and keeping her words simple and real. While on the reach of her works, which have been translated into many languages among which Malayalam doesn’t figure, she says, “Talks are on. No one had approached me earlier; a couple of people have approached me let’s see what happens. I am certain my books will do well here.” By the way she has Kochi connection. Not only does her mother have roots in the city, she did her XI and XII at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Girinagar and did graduation in Commerce from St. Teresa’s College.

Blogger, novelist, columnist…which role does she enjoy the most? “Writing…I love writing – emails, blog, books…”