Author Highlight: Samura Discusses his New Book ‘Semmaari (A Lamb’s Gamble)’ and Stories from his Life

We are back with another author interview. Today, with us, we have Samura – the author of ‘Semmaari’. In this interview, Samura talks about his writing aspirations, the route to getting his book published, and his inclination towards cultural heritage. Stay on...while we chat with him.

What motivates you to write?

Death of our beloved APJ Abdul Kalam moved me to write. I have always been keen on creative writing. I used to write small poems in whenever I feel like writing and I used to not focusing much on it. Like any Indian youth, I pursued my engineering and have completed 20 years now. But, the death of APJ stuck my inner side and questioned my existence on earth and how I wasted my creative talent. His simplicity and impactful speeches moved me and set fire inside me. I decided to do something before I die. That’s how my writer chapter has started.

How do you handle the response of this book?

I look at them as tool to sharpen my writing axe. I have received good, constructive and even bad reviews for my Semmaari Tamil version. I clearly see that my writing & thinking skills do improve significantly day by day with the constructive and bad feedbacks. Story writers generally write stories from characters’ point of view. Similarly, I read my readers’ review comments from their perspective and try to understand. Only when I read from the reader’s point of view, writer feeling doesn’t come into the picture and feedback is understood with full attention. Even I read good reviews from readers’ point of view to understand their feelings and what aspects of story excited them.

Why did you choose to write an historical novel?

I love classic stories which grandparents say. They start a story like “There was a king…” I love to hear those stories as it pushes us to imagine a new kind of environment which is different from current situation. I would love to write more stories based on historic, futuristic timelines and fantasy which is totally a different world.

What are some of your favourite novels and authors?

Believe me that I haven’t read any fictional or fantasy novel since childhood. Even after writing, I have read some portions of famous novels in Tamil to get a flavor of author’s narrative styles. I don’t have any favourite novel as I haven’t read anything fully. But, I like the narration styles of famous Tamil writers Kalki, Akilan and Sandilyan.

Occasionally, I have read non-fictional books to improve my softs kills required for my software professional. I liked ‘Wings of Fire’ which impacted deep inside me and loved its author Dr. APJ

Do you think writing a book from the comfort of bedroom is possible?

Yes. It is very much possible. All you need a calm and creative mindset.

Where do you write from? Do you go to some specific place, like beachside or into the hills?

I write my stories in my study room.  But, creative ideas come while driving car, standing in a queue, early morning when you are lying on the bed, etc.

Definitely nature helps you get calm and creative mindset environment. It indeed triggers an out of the box idea many times. Your creative mind is more productive when external environment is more peaceful.

Ideas come anytime as stories and characters keep flashing at the back of the mind. You need to be prepared to capture and take notes them before they go out of your hand forever.

What inspired you to write this book? Any tales to tell…

As I told earlier that I haven’t read novels before. When I decided, I checked with few avid readers on what kind of stories they like most and some of the world popular stories. I could nail down the most of them are game based. So, I questioned myself on why don’t I choose a story based out of our own traditional game. It will help our future generation to know about the traditional game and chances of my story becoming successful will also be high. As I am a logical thinking person, I thought game-based stories give more opportunity to me to leverage my strengths. It indeed worked well in the case of SEMMAARI.

What was your biggest learning experience throughout the publishing process?

Writing, Editing and Marketing are three distinct skills and areas. If you don’t focus and give importance to any one of the three, you are setting for failure. Also, when you are in any of the three phases, pay full attention and don’t worry about the other phase. Each phase will get its own time. Be patient and do justice to each of them. Your efforts will get rewarded.

Looking back, what did you do right that helped you break in as a writer?

Believing in my talent and kept my self-confidence high irrespective of the situation and failures. As I don’t have writing background and not even as a reader, it’s hard for me to convince myself as a writer. I leveraged the 20 years of my software professional experience in this transformation. I took pragmatic approach. I started with short story book, then into fiction and finally arrived to a fantasy book. My first book is 150 pages, 2nd book is 300 pages and 3rd book is around 400 pages. This way, I am prepared to take more failure with my smaller & initial authoring experiments and able to incorporate feedback into my relatively bigger experiments. It has helped me to stay focused and keep motivated so far.

Any best piece of writing advice from your side that we haven’t discussed?

Write as you think; edit as you read; don’t act as an editor when you write. Just write freely.  Have an established editor to read your book. He/she will give a quality shape to your story.

Something personal about you people may be surprised to know?

I am selected as one of the winners in a worldwide at a technical whitepaper at Microsoft IT when I worked at Microsoft.

Any future books that you would like to discuss now?

My next book is VASEEGARANADU is a full-fledged FANTASY novel in Tamil. It is going to be one of its kind in Indian novel. It is going to be released on Oct 15 2018 to mark respect to my inspiration Dr. APJ on his birthday. I am planning to release its English translated version sometime next year.

I have been moving from short story to fiction to fantasy so far in my 3 books. I am going to experiment mystery & crime detection in my 4th novel.

Connect with Samura:

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/samura.original

Twitter: https://twitter.com/samura_original

Website/Blog: http://samuraoriginal.blogspot.com/