Author Nandini Gupta has been in the news for her debut novel “Daughter Of The Night” since earlier this month and now, here’s her first and exclusive interview coming to you on Author Times.
Here are the excerpts from the interview:

1. Your book is already loved by people, so What does literary success look like to
you?
Literary success, to me, is transporting my readers into a new world and making
them see things in a new light from my characters’ perspectives. It’s making them
feel something when they read my work and feel empathy towards my characters,
even if they don’t necessarily relate to them or even like them. It’s giving them the
satisfaction of a good read; that when they shut the book, they feel a sense of
contentment. No matter how many people read my book, it’s important to me
that the ones who do fall in love with reading, because as a generation, we might
not be the best at keeping up with our reading habits.

2. How do you select the names of your characters?
It’s weird, whenever I have to think of character names, they either just randomly
pop into my head or I Google a list of names and read them out loud. Whichever
ones I like the sound of and feel like the name suits the nature of my character, I
choose that one.

3. Do you read your book reviews? How do you deal with bad or good ones?
Yes, I look at all of them. I obviously feel good when someone says something
nice, but if there’s something not particularly pleasing, I don’t let it affect me
severely. Being a content creator on YouTube and Instagram has made me quite
thick-skinned because at the end of the day everyone has their own opinion and
you cannot please everyone. But I do find that in criticism, there are a lot of times things I can improve on. I take note of that and hopefully in my future works, I’ll
be able to implement those changes.

4. Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
People who know me personally will definitely see things in the novel that my
other readers won’t. Certain character traits of Laila, for example, are a carbon
copy of who I am as a person. Certain dialogues and character interactions are
interactions I’ve had in real life with different people. Those people would be able
to recognize them!

5. If Gulab had not left Pakistan for India, were there chances that all these things
wouldn’t have happened?
That’s an interesting question! I guess the likelihood of the chain of events that
took place would be reduced, but there’s still no guarantee. Maybe this story
would take place in Pakistan instead of India. Because this is a fictional story, I
could’ve molded it anyway I want. It just depends on how I imagine and structure
the final story.

6. Lastly, do you plan a sequel to this book?
A lot of people have asked me this same question and to be honest, I never
planned on having a sequel to this book. I could think of something, but I don’t
have any ideas at least as of now. It could be fun to see how I could change things
further because the novel is sort of left on a cliffhanger where literally anything
could happen and nothing is guaranteed. But I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

Follow her on Instagram: @nandinig26


Book: Daughter of The Night
Price: 295
Format: Paperback
Pages: 160


 

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