With Alka Joshi
Alka Joshi was inspired by the richness of Indian culture and her own Indian heritage for her writing. Her book The Henna Artist is a beautiful homage to the women of India who fought for suffrage by fighting for their own dignity and personal freedom. In this interview we talk about how much her mother impacted the story behind her trilogy, the impact of India on America, why she pivoted to writing fiction and so much more. You can find The Henna Artist trilogy and more information about Alka Joshi on her website here.
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Kat (00:14)
Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast, a weekly podcast for writers. Grab a cup of coffee, perhaps some paper and pen, and enjoy an interview with an author, a chat with a writing tool creator, perhaps a conversation with an editor or other publishing experts, as well as Kat’s thoughts on writing in her own creative journey. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry. Well, hopefully not actually cry, but you will probably learn something. And I hope you’ll be inspired to write because as I always say, you have a story. You should write it down. This is Pencils and Lipstick. Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Pencils and Lipstick Podcast. I’m Kat Caldwell. And today it is May 26, 2022. And this episode will be going out the very last week of May on Memorial Day. I always wonder if it’s a good idea to put something out on Memorial Day, but Monday is our day to drop, so there you have it. Before we get into the show, I have a wonderful guest for you. I’m so excited. I have Alka Joshi with me. I’m really, really excited for you guys to hear her interview. She wrote The Henna Artist, among some other books. I’m excited for her to tell you guys about how she started writing and how she got the idea for The Henna Artist. And she mentioned something in there that we’ll get into it in just a second. I’m very excited, as you can tell. I do want to let you guys know that because I will be going to Spain, as I do every summer with my kids, for them to hang out with their grandma. These little intros where we get to chat and I get to catch up with you on what’s going on in my life will be on hold for the month of July, so I won’t be able to drag all of my recording stuff over there. They are very strict these days on your luggage. They’re making everyone pay extra, which really irks me. They should just put it in my already very expensive ticket. But that’s okay. We won’t complain about that anymore. So all of July, the episodes will just have a sort of pre-recorded intro for you all. And if you want to see pictures of Spain or my life over there with my second family, my lovely Spanish family, you should follow me on Instagram because that’s where I post most of my pictures and I love posting my travel pictures. Somebody told me that I should have a whole different Instagram for that, and that’s just a lot. So you can follow me @katcaldwell.author, on Instagram, and that is probably it. You should follow @pencilsandlipstick, all spelled out on Instagram as well. To know what you’ve missed, to answer my questions that I put out there, just follow me. Follow the podcast. Support the podcast, but if you want to see the pictures, they will be @katcaldwell.author but until then, through the month of June, I will be letting you guys know what is going on. So before we could do that, if you could like and subscribe to the podcast, share it with anybody that you know likes writing or likes to listen to writers talk about their writing. If you know another creative who might like the podcast, it really helps. If you like the show, if you put a review in there, you never know. I might highlight the review on my Instagram or on Twitter. I really appreciate you all listening. It’s amazing to see what countries you guys come from. I would love to visit all of them one day, but this year all I have planned for the rest of the year is visiting family in Spain. We have a new baby coming in Spain so we’ll probably get two visits in. I would love to see a new country every year, but might not happen this year. I don’t know. Now that I’m talking about it and thinking about it, maybe I should figure something out. Anyway, what is writing coming to these days? I am two thirds of the way done with this book and to be honest with you all, it’s the end of school. We all know that the news and the world is a mess. And besides that, my own small world is full of testing and end of the year projects and, you know, realizing that we have to get things ready for traveling and all this little stuff. My husband is very busy at his job. The dog is limping and there’s always something going on. And while there’s always something going on, the changes in seasons are always what gets me. I spent some time sitting back and realizing when is it that I get mostly overwhelmed and it’s when there’s like this change and shift within the family. And sometimes that can come with travel, sometimes that can come with school shifting. It’s not necessarily the season shift. It’s like all the things, the seasons of stuff, you know, finishing dance and tennis and volleyball and getting all those things in the social things that we have to do as my kids get older. And it really drains me of creativity because it overwhelms me. I’m always checking my calendar to make sure we’re not missing something. My email. Did I miss something? I mean, the other day I missed the email that there was no tennis, so we showed up and nobody’s there. Completely my fault. I always feel kind of on edge and just busy and that really does a number on my creativity. It really does a number on like, where am I going with this? Where is the story going? And what happens is instead of just relaxing into the story, I start overanalyzing and overthinking it. Whether it’s the book or the short story that I’m trying to work on, I honestly haven’t been able to work on a short story. I lost my journal. I did find it, but just like all these little things seemed to be sucking the creativity out of me. And so I picked up Steal Like an Artist the other day and read it within a day. It’s not a difficult book at all, but it’s a fun little book and it infuses you again with what creativity is. It sort of brings you back to the beginning, right. And it’s not things that are new to us. It’s not anything that we don’t know, but I think that we can get caught up in the, let’s get this done, I need to move on to the next thing. To be honest and fair to ourselves as writers, it’s a business, and it’s something that we want to see grow in a business sort of way. And that means sales of books, which means money. That’s just kind of how we measure things these days. So if you don’t get the next book out, then of course, you only have so many books to be telling people about. And as we all know, this theory of you start making $50,000 at twenty books. That’s a lot for you to constantly be thinking about. And I do know that I can write faster. I need to write faster, but I also need to focus in order to write faster. And man, this book is really giving me some trouble and what’s interesting is I know the second book so well, I know the next character so well, and I really want to write it, but I’m trying to really stay focused. I’m also making notes for the historical and thinking a lot about that. I did get a little bit stuck because I need information for the historical one. So I’m just plotting forward and I’m at 66,000 words. So it’s not like I’m not almost done, but it hasn’t been an easy last week. So what I did was after I read Steal Like an Artist. And I know I’ve been telling you guys, take a walk, mostly for our physical well-being and our mental well-being. That’s important. But Steal Like an Artist reminded me that sitting in front of the computer is not where you get your creativity from. And I know that is not even new. It’s not new, but we have to remind ourselves of these things because when we’re in that moment of I’ve got to get this done. I can’t believe it’s already May, I wanted to get this done and then move on to the next one, and then I wanted to get the other book done. I really had a goal this year of four books, although now that I say that I can’t remember what the fourth book was, I have three in my head. Oh, okay. Now I remember. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. That goal I knew was a lofty goal, but it still comes back at me and again. I’m saying drafts, like publishing four books right now. The way that my books are set up, probably not going to happen. But I get overwhelmed with that idea, kind of being a little bit too hard on myself. And so I remember that it is not a waste of time to sit down and color or paint or cut up some colored paper and glue it together. I don’t know. Journal with different colored pens, garden, go out for a walk and not just do it for the physical exercise, but to listen to the birds or to look at the flowers, maybe collect some flowers and press them. I remember doing that. They were always like, stacks of books around my room and my mom would get really annoyed. So I started weeding our driveway the other day. My back is feeling a lot better, still not 100%, but it’s a lot better, like I could weed. So I’m pulling these weeds and clumps of grass out of my gravel driveway, thinking it would be a heck of a lot easier if I just sprayed everything. Of course, that only kills it. It doesn’t pull it up. We have these crazy tall stocks of something, too. That shows you how much I know of my gardening. I don’t know anything. They’re like 3ft high. So I’m pulling them out and making sure that things look a little bit cleaner. And I was reminded again how when you focus on sort of this menial physical work, it’s kind of minor physical work, but your brain is just sort of in the back thinking, okay, grab that one. Okay, grab that one. That one popped off. Try to get the root you know, what you’re doing. It doesn’t cost you a lot of thought power, right? And Interestingly enough, you can then just allow your brain to sort of simmer in that area of the story you’re working on. And what would happen? What if I bring the sister in? What if I have him actually be talking to the mom more? What if I have the twin come back sooner? And I’m not writing. I’m just thinking, just thinking, okay, what if that were to happen? Okay. I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about that. What if this was to happen? I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about that now. Where is Tread now? What is he doing? What does he want right now? What does his mom want? What does his twin brother want? Should I bring the dad back in? What would that do? Just asking all these questions and instead of just sitting and feeling like I should go start writing this now. Because for some reason I feel like I should always be writing, now I’m doing something productive. I’m weeding the garden. I’m weeding the garden. And I’m listening to the thoughts in my head, listening to the characters, listening to what’s going on, what could be happening. So, I just want to remind you guys about that we tend to sit down, I think, especially after COVID in front of the computer and really expect a lot out of our brains. But the creativity doesn’t come from staring at the computer. And it’s great when you’re in the moment of you know exactly what you’re doing, you know exactly where this is going, and you don’t have any bumps in the creativity road. So yeah, sit down and start typing. But, when you are having some creativity road bumps or when you’re just really busy, things just keep coming at you. Like I was trying to write yesterday and my child started choking on a lifesaver. Oh my gosh, you know, she’s fine. We got it out. But that really just made me jittery at that point and I just couldn’t concentrate enough to write. Like the weirdest things will happen in your life, right? Just allow yourself the time to go out in silence and just let your brain wander because you’ll be surprised what will come. It’s just very interesting how much our creativity needs to be fed by something else. So color with your kids or your nieces or nephews. Paint some rocks. Go searching for a beautiful rock. Go find some leaves to color. Do that paper crayon thing with, whatever that is. Press some flowers. I don’t know, find that thing that as you were a kid that you would have taken the time to do. And it doesn’t have to be a long time, but just allow yourself to sort of leave the world. We know a lot of what’s happening in the world all the time, and yet our power to change things is still what it would have been had we not known for bigger picture, whatever. Sure, you could vote. You can do maybe a few things, but your day to day is your small world. That’s where you affect the most change. That’s where you can do the most good, right? And so in order to do the most good for others, you need to do the most good for yourself. Your creativity needs to be filled up. Your body needs to be strong. Don’t take away from that if you have this restless energy, if you’re being overwhelmed, please take a moment. Find something fun to do. Find something that you haven’t done in a while. Find something that your kids like to do. I think as an Americans, we can tend to think that rest comes in front of the television and that’s just another screen. So I encourage you to do something analog, something with your hands, something that you don’t really have to think too much while doing and therefore it can allow your brain to go into the recesses of the story or listen to some music you haven’t in a while. Music, too, can sometimes bring thoughts and ideas for the story. But do something with your hands and just have some fun and see where the creativity goes. Okay, so maybe I’ll use Instagram to post some creative things that I decide to do or at Twitter. A young man who’s helping me out with the podcast, has let me know that I’m telling you guys the wrong Twitter handle. It is PencilsLipstick, @PencilsLipstick. On Twitter, it is @pencilsandlipstick all spelled out on Instagram. Why I decided to do that, I can’t tell you I have no idea. I have no idea why I did that. But if you want to know about what’s going on, I’m not super active on Twitter, but sometimes I post. If you want to, just tell me things that you are doing to keep up with your creativity. Twitter is a great place to do that. And it’s @PencilsLipstick. So you can also do that on Instagram as well. So today we have a wonderful guest. Wonderful, wonderful. If you haven’t read The Henna Artist, I highly recommend it. I think I say it like a hundred times in this interview because I really did like it. We have a couple of other authors coming in soon trying to get some well-known names for you guys. And let me know what you guys like to read and what author you would like to have interviewed. I will ask them. The worst they can say is no, lady. I don’t want to be on your podcast. I have no problem asking them. So if you have somebody you want on the show, please let me know. On Twitter @PencilsLipstick or on Instagram @pencilsandlipstick. Yeah. Tell me who you want on the show. And if you want to support the show, you absolutely can. You can head on over to Patreon.com with your support of the show. If you are an author, I will read a short blurb about your book, the title and your name, of course, as a thank you for supporting the show, you could also buy me a coffee and all those links are in the show notes. As usual, all the links for Alka Joshi, our guest today will be in the show notes as well. And you can also find my newsletter links in the show notes too. So without further ado, let’s get in and talk to Alka Joshi about her book, The Henna Artist. Born in Jabur, Rajasthan, India, Alka has lived in the US since the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She ran her own advertising and PR agency for 30 years. The Henna Artist was her first novel. Currently she is working on the third book of the trilogy and a screen adaptation of The Hen Hardest. You can find out more about Alka at alkadjoshi.com or thehennaartist.com. Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Pencils and Lipstick. I am very excited for my guest this evening. Her name is Alka Joshi, and she is an author of the book called The Henna Artist, The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. And she has another one coming out. I’m very excited to have you on. Thank you for coming, Alka.
Alka (20:43)
I am delighted to be here. Kat, thank you so much for having me.
Kat (20:47)
So I don’t always read everyone’s book before I interview them. I will be honest, but I specifically sought you out because I read your book. In fact, I listened to the audio, which I would highly recommend.
Alka (21:01)
It’s phenomenal. It’s phenomenal.
Kat (21:04)
It’s very good. I really enjoyed it because I could hear the Indian names. I liked the accent, the way that things were said, the words. I really like that. So I’m a linguist. I love hearing it in sort of like the native accent. But before we get into the Henna Artist, you can tell I’m already very excited about it. Would you tell people a little bit about yourself as just Alka?
Alka (21:32)
Yeah. I am 64 years old. I spend a lot of time either reading or writing or riding my bike. I live on the Monterey Peninsula and with my husband and our two little dogs. And we have this wonderful atmosphere around here with lots of greenery, lots of birds and whales and seals and otters. Yeah. It’s a style that’s very conducive to writing. There’s a lot of people here who are just relaxed. And I think that in order to write, like I need to be relaxed. I need to be feeling as if I don’t have 5000 things to do as I am writing. When I write, I am focused on writing.
Kat (22:22)
That is nice. I am on the complete opposite in DC, so everyone is tense here. They need to go where you are. So as a writer, did you always write? Is that something that you always aspired to or how did you get into becoming a novelist?
Alka (22:43)
I never once thought, oh, I’m going to be a writer someday. It wasn’t some childhood dream. I’m not somebody who was always writing little stories and reading aloud to my parents or anything like that. I really wanted to be an artist. I wanted to draw and paint. And I thought, oh, I’m going to be like Andy Warhol and do graphic design or I’m going to be like Cézanne and I’m going to do impressionist painting. But as it turned out, I eventually made my way into advertising as a way of making a living and paying all my bills. And it allowed me to be creative and to come up with stories and scenarios because that’s what advertising is all about. Whether you’re doing it for TV or for radio. You’re also creating dialogue between characters. And I had no idea that as I was in advertising, I was actually writing tiny, tiny little stories. And instead of reading them aloud to my parents, I was making them for an audience who was going to buy a product or a service. So it was great training grounds to become a novelist.
Kat (23:51)
And you got, like almost instant feedback then whether people bought the product or didn’t buy the product. You can go back.
Alka (23:58)
Yes. And you got a lot of comments back from your clients as well. Why did you do it this way? Oh, no, we’re not doing that again. Or yeah, that was so fantastic. We sold everything.
Kat (24:10)
So was this sort of trial and error, or was storytelling really a part of learning sales, or did you just realize that that is what you were learning as you were going through it?
Alka (24:22)
I didn’t even realize I was learning it until my husband kept reminding me. He said, you know, you’re really good at telling stories. You know how to tell stories. And you are really good at writing stories. And I would say, well, all I do is write ads. I’m not a literary writer. I’m not the kind of writer that I’m reading. I’m reading Michael and Dodgy. I’m reading Ann Tyler. I’m reading Tracy Chevalier. And he said, no, I really think that you could do that. You just need to learn how to write a novel, how to write instead of a 1-minute commercial, how to write a 400-page story. He said, what you might want to do is start with some evening classes because there’s a lot of people who will teach you how to write in the evening. And maybe if you like those, then see if you want to go into an MFA program. Oh, wow. And the weird thing was that’s kind of how it happened. So I did take a couple of evening classes while I was working. And by that time in my fifties, I was already running my own advertising and marketing agency. And so what was happening was there was this big recession coming along, and that was the mortgage crisis.
Kat (25:39)
Right.
Alka (25:40)
So when that came along, I was sitting there twiddling my thumbs, and I knew I would be for about two years while the crisis abated. And so I thought, okay, what can I do for two years? Oh, my gosh. Perfect timing to go into an MFA program, as Brad has been telling me to do. So that’s what yeah. And I looked into a couple of different programs. I knew I didn’t want to travel because we were well settled into San Francisco by that time. And it wasn’t like I could just pick up routes and go anywhere. And so I thought, I just want to be local. I don’t want to travel really far to get to the program. And so there was a program just about a mile or two from my house. It was the California College of Arts. And they had a couple of authors teaching there whose books I have really liked. And so I said, oh, I’ll apply here. And of course I got in. And I say, of course just because it was like a newish program, and I think they were looking for people to join.
Kat (26:42)
What was that process like? Did you have to submit writing?
Alka (26:46)
Yeah. And so I’ve taken those couple of evening classes. So I submitted a few pieces that I had written. And then, of course, a lot of it was just sort of like, what kind of a person are you and why do you want to write and why do you think it’s a good time for you to write right now? So those are just questions I have to answer. So I get into this program, and then at the same time, my mother wants to travel to India. So it kind of worked out perfectly. I would start a semester. I would take my mother to India, leave her there, come back and finish up the semester and go back and get her at the end. And then we would take her to doctor’s appointments and so on. And then we start the process all over again, like the following spring or the following summer. And so I ended up taking her about four or five times during my MFA program. And we would have these long breaks for winter, spring. So it allowed me a lot of leeway in which to take my mom. And what had happened is that my younger brother had bought a condo there in Jaipur.
Alka (27:54)
And of course, when you have a place to stay, you can stay as long as you want. So that’s what we were doing. There was a cook there. He had housekeepers, and he didn’t live there himself. He lives in LA, but he was like, I know mom and dad are getting older and nostalgic, and I want to provide them a place where they can go and hang out with friends and family. And most of our extended family is in Jaipur. So that worked out well.
Kat (28:20)
Nice. Were you able to travel there quite often as a child, or was this more as an adult that you went back?
Alka (28:28)
No, it was as an adult in my 50s while I was going through the MFA program
Kat (28:32)
So that was the first time that you had gone back to Jaipur?
Alka (28:36)
No. Let’s see. I had been back when I was 16, so we came to the United States when I was 9. And then when I was 16, my parents decided that they wanted to do a big European tour and end up in India and then come back. And they asked my brothers and me would we like to go? And my brother said, no, don’t want to go. But I want to go Europe. I ended up going to Europe with them, and that was my first time in Europe, and it was really fun. And then we ended up in India and saw a lot of relatives and then came back home. But I had not been back since that trip when I was 16.
Kat (29:16)
Flying is easier now, but that’s a long trip, even from California. That’s a really long trip.
Alka (29:23)
Yeah, it sure is.
Kat (29:25)
But you went back five times in the course of two and a half years. You must be jet-lagged still. So your family is in Jaipur. Is that where you grew up, until you were nine?
Alka (29:42)
We grew up in so many different places. Until I was nine, we had lived in Jaipur, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Banswara. Now those are four different cities in Rajasthan. And then one year we were up north in the state of Punjab, in Chunliga.
Kat (30:00)
Okay.
Alka (30:01)
And the reason that we’ve moved around so much every couple of years is because my father was a civil engineer. He was helping rebuild India. So he was always on a project for building a road, building a dam, building a foundation of a building. That was often working with Maharajas who would be involved in investing in the infrastructure. So they wanted to be involved in some of the design work and everything. And so I just sort of grew up around that environment. So much of the environment that I write about in The Henna Artist is what I grew up.
Kat (30:40)
Okay. So when you went into the MFA, did you have an idea of the Henna artist, or did she really come around while you were traveling?
Alka (30:51)
I had an idea about I wanted to write about India. I had started getting this idea about this woman who was a Henna artist, and I realized that the reason for that is because I was hanging out with my mom a lot more as I grew older. And she was actually living with us, my husband and me at the time. And when I started writing and I was hanging out a lot with her and just asking her about her life, her early life, her early motherhood, her early wifehood, her early marriage. And she was just sharing so much with me about what she felt as a young girl, what her aspirations and hopes were, before my grandfather said, no, you’re about to get married. We found this engineer for you. And so any kind of dreams that she might have had were going to go by the wayside. And then within four years of her marriage, she has three small kids, and she’s constantly taking care of them and taking care of my dad. And then on top of that, as I said, my father’s job was always moving from place to place. So mom was always moving us from place to place.
Alka (32:09)
We’d no sooner get settled in one place, and we would be moving again. And every place that we moved to, my mom had to hire a new servant. There were cooks, there were cleaners, there were gardeners, there were nannies. So I grew up in a very privileged sort of environment.
Kat (32:29)
That’s hard, that’s lonely for her.
Alka (32:32)
Yeah. It was very lonely for my mom, that is for sure, because I know that so many times I think she was just depressed. She had nobody to talk to, wherever we happened to come into the United States. Dad came here for his doctorate, so he was busy all day long at the University. He was doing research, he was doing his thesis. And my mother was just taking care of us and sitting at home. And it was very difficult for her to find the spices that she needed to cook with, very difficult for her to find saris and blouses. This is 1967 in Iowa.
Kat (33:14)
It’d be hard in California. Iowa, that’s corn country. That must have been very different for her.
Alka (33:24)
Yes. And she told me while we were talking in one of those evenings that we were talking about her life, she told me that she never wanted to come to the United States. She loved India. She wanted to stay in India. She was scared of being in a whole different place where she didn’t know the fruits and the vegetables and where her children would be going to school. And then pretty soon after we came here, my father had always put us in an English-speaking school in India, so we knew how to speak English. But pretty soon, once we got here, we were speaking English all day long, whereas in India, we had spoken Hindi at home. Once we got home, now all of a sudden, we are constantly speaking in English. And my mother can’t always understand what we’re saying because we have changed from the British English to American English. It’s a very different thing for somebody to try to understand. Even now, when I watch British shows on television, I have to turn those subtitles on because I don’t always understand what you’re saying.
Kat (34:27)
The intonation will really throw your mind off. Honestly. You feel like you should understand, and yet you can’t. And I mean, she’s already moving. You trying to probably make friends, probably being confused that people don’t understand her with their accent. I can’t imagine middle America really being exposed to many different accents. That’s hard.
Alka (34:52)
Oh, my gosh. I remember going shopping with her, and people would just stop and stare because they had never seen a woman in a sari before. And so they would just stop and stare. And sometimes they would say, do you speak English? And I would answer for my mom, I would say, yes, we speak English. And they go, how do you speak such good English? Did you have to learn English to come here? And I’m like, no, I went to school. We had English all day long in school. And then they would say, well, what are you guys? And I would say, We’re Indian. And then they would say, what tribe? And I didn’t know what they were talking about. I said, what do you mean, what tribe? And then they would say, Where did you get your tan? Because everybody in America was obsessed with having a tan. And I would say, tan? What’s a tan? I had no idea.
Kat (35:41)
Oh, my goodness. I mean, it’s even hard today. But I can’t imagine our academic system back then, the geography and the history of other countries. It just wasn’t really there.
Alka (35:56)
The other thing happened wasn’t there was the history of a place. And so when I opened up my textbooks in America, they were all pictures. When we got to the India section, it was all pictures of starving people in India. Now, India is a complex country. It’s not just one thing or another. There is a wealthy class, there is a middle class, and then there’s a poor class. And for some reason, in the United States, all that anybody ever knew about and saw pictures of were starving people. Or they saw pictures of cows walking through the streets, and they call them sacred cows. The reason that Indians did not kill cows and eat beef is because they needed the cows for agriculture. They didn’t have the industrial pools and the tractors that America did. So they use cows to kill the land. Who’s going to kill the goose that lays so there were so many things that people assumed about India that I knew were wrong, but I couldn’t correct them because I was just a kid. I had no language to try to explain my country. And I couldn’t really understand the questions that they were asking me. Like, why does your mother wear that dot on her forehead? I had grown up seeing women with that on their forehead. That’s what it’s called. Or a Bindi. Sometimes it’s called a Bindi, but I didn’t understand why. I just knew that my mother wore one and all these other women wore them. And so I didn’t know how to explain. And so what happened is that because of this lack of knowledge in the school system about India, I became very embarrassed about where I was from. I became really ashamed of being from what everyone else thought was a poor, illiterate, dirty, hot country. And that wasn’t the India that I remembered as a kid, because I grew up in a very wonderful place. I went to a private school. I had a little blue uniform. Our nanny read us stories every night. But I have no, I don’t know how to talk about it. So I got very embarrassed. And for years, I think this is why my brothers and I did not want to go back to India. We just felt that we must have come from some hellhole.
Kat (38:29)
Right?
Alka (38:31)
Then you fast forward to a time when I’m actually studying India to write about it. And then I’m going to India, and I’m realizing, oh, my gosh, this is a very different country from what the Americans think of it or from what the Western world thinks of it.
Kat (38:48)
Yes.
Alka (38:48)
This is a country that is rich in tradition, rich in color, rich in all kinds of history and science and math that they have contributed to the world. And this is a place where so much of what the world enjoys today comes from the fragrances that we wear. So many of the raw ingredients come from India. So many of the spices used today, they come from India. Christopher Columbus was looking India when he happened on America. And that is why the native people here were called Indians. Everybody seems to have forgotten that.
Kat (39:30)
It’s interesting how we assume things when we just don’t know. And I know one of the first men I met from Africa would be like, why do you all think we live in huts? We have cities. And I thought about it, and I was like, well, one, I guess I was never taught anything, like, literally nothing. I don’t think I was ever taught anything about India or Africa, or maybe a little bit about China. I think that you just see images on TV, and maybe in the it was like the world hunger, and that’s probably it. And that’s all that was happening. And what’s interesting is America has poverty. It has dirty cities, it has privileged and underprivileged. We just don’t want to see it, which is unfortunate.
Alka (40:22)
Yeah, it’s funny. I remember one time somebody asked my mother, what did you do before dry cleaning? How did you get your saris cleaned? And my mother just stared at her and she said, I don’t know. What did your mother do before dry cleaning? I don’t know.
Kat (40:40)
Wash them! That’s so funny. Oh, my goodness. The funny questions that we have. So you did choose 1950, which is more your mother’s sort of era. That would be probably when she was getting married, right?
Alka (40:56)
Yes, exactly. 1955 is the year that Henna Artist starts, and that is the year that my mother and father married.
Kat (41:05)
So what was going on in India at the time just for all of us Westerners who probably don’t know a whole lot. Politically between men and women in classes.
Alka (41:17)
So in 1947, the pressure for the British to leave India was so great because India had had enough. They had had over 200 years of British control over India, and they wanted them out. And there were lots of riots and lots of pleas from the people of India to just, British go home. And so finally, the British left in 1947. India got its independence on August 15. And ever since then, India had to start rebuilding itself because the British had done three drastic things while they were there. They had raped India of a lot of her raw materials because they had usurped them for themselves and sold them around the world as their own property. Number two, they had destroyed the textile industry in India because they had Victorian textile mills due to industrialization that they wanted to sell. They wanted their cloth and their mass manufactured clothing to be sold around the world. And so they didn’t want India’s beautiful textiles, their cotton and their silk to compete with them. So they systematically demolished all the textile factories in India. And in one case, they even broke the thumbs of the weavers so they could never weave again. Keep in mind, one of the reasons that India’s textiles were so beautiful and so fine is because they were hand-weaving, unlike what was happening in the west with industrialization they were building in factories.
Kat (42:56)
They were killing their own people with those horrible factories.
Alka (43:00)
Yeah. And it’s a lot of child labor, remember that. I mean, I think that Dickens writes a lot about what industrialization was doing to England at that time. So anyway, they destroyed the textile industry. And the third thing that they did was demoralize the people. So under British rule, tens of millions of Indians were killed, were beaten, were maimed or imprisoned just because they wanted to have a voice of their own. And the British knew, of course, that in order to rule the people, in order to control the people, you need to make sure they don’t have a voice. So the textile industry wasn’t the only industry they destroyed. They also destroyed the shipbuilding industry in India, which was huge because of the teak and the rose wood that grows in Southern India, which are really hard woods. And when you make ships out of them, they last forever. So they destroyed that industry. And then they destroyed India’s steel making industry because, remember, all the warriors carried these very sharp swords. Where do those come from? India was making that. They made this steel. They made those kinds of weapons. So much of that had happened while the British were there, that in the 1950s, post-independence, it was all about rebuilding Indians, deciding for themselves how they were going to educate their people, which industries they should bring back, which were the products that were going to influence the world in the future that they needed to become a part of. And also how are they going to rebuild the roads and the trains that the British had only built to get raw materials from factories over to the port, not so that people within India could throw each other. So they had to develop all that infrastructure. And my father, I’m very proud to say, was part of that movement to get everything going again.
Kat (45:02)
Was it a prosperous time at that point? I would assume there are lots of jobs. People are pretty excited.
Alka (45:09)
Yes. Lot of exuberance. And it was sort of like what had happened before the British came to India in the 1700s. India was a very prosperous country. That’s why the British wanted to come to India, and that’s why they considered it their jewel in the ground, because India had all these resources and minerals and jewels and everything. And so I think it felt similar to Indians as it must have before the British came. We’re a prosperous country. We are going to rebuild ourselves, and we’re going to get that stuff back, that mojo back that we used to have. And at that time, also, the IITs were started. Those are the Indian Institutes of Technology. So that today the entire world benefits from having hardware and software engineers who are Indians and who are creating all this technology around the world that we use everywhere. Today. You and I use our iPhones. Those are Indians that worked on that. You and I are Zooming today. Those are Indians that worked on that. So it’s very important to remember where a lot of that brain power is coming from. And it started in the 1960s when those IIT were founded in India.
Kat (46:22)
That’s amazing. See, all this is going on while Americans think that there’s cows running around.
Alka (46:31)
Yes. And that’s why I think my family was so astounded at the kind of ideas that people had about India when we got here, because in India there was all this flurry of building and excitement and all these things going up. And we come here and everybody’s like, oh, you’re so sad.
Kat (46:50)
Yeah. Oh, my goodness.
Alka (46:54)
I think in the 1960s, a lot of brain power went from India to the West because the West had opened up their visa program. They needed the brain power.
Kat (47:08)
Because they saw what you were doing and they were like, come over here and work please because our people aren’t going to do it.
Alka (47:14)
America needed engineers. They needed doctors. They needed the brain power. And so there was a migration of Indians in the 1960s. Once again, when the high-tech movement came in the 1980s and 90s, there was another big immigration from India. So that’s kind of whenever the United States government allows Indians to come into the United States, it’s usually because they need them for industry.
Kat (47:44)
Yes. Because we didn’t have the foresight to start something like an IIT and getting people, we’re very late to the game, which is interesting because we don’t think we are as a people. We’re very proud of ourselves until you leave the country. And you’re like, wait a minute.
Alka (48:01)
But, you know, Kat, here is something that people don’t know. Also, one of the IITs is modeled after MIT, and it was MIT professors who came to India to teach them how to teach everybody this kind of engineering. So America doesn’t even know that they actually lend that kind of training to India that is then coming back. That’s interesting.
Kat (48:26)
They probably should have made one or two in Iowa and maybe Nevada. They like to forget about the middle of the country. Your mom’s growing up, so she must have been teenager when the independence came in. Things were changing. But was she happy to get married? Because I have Chinese friends who still today, at least they say they are very happy to do the traditional, their parents find them a mate. Is that something that she was happy to do, or she never even questioned it was just what the tradition was?
Alka (49:12)
I asked my mother that and she said, honey, we didn’t have choices. So when my father said, you have to come home from college, now. You will not be going back to college. You will be getting married and you will be having children, she said, I didn’t question it. It wasn’t something I got to question. So I just came back home and I saw your father from across the room. I was introduced to him. And then the first time we talked, it was on our wedding night as we were walking seven times around the wedding tire. And that was it.
Kat (49:44)
Okay.
Alka (49:45)
And then immediately she starts having children without really understanding where they’re coming from.
Kat (49:53)
Yeah, so it’s the 1960s, I guess she wouldn’t even question not having kids right away because that’s what you do.
Alka (49:58)
Exactly. And I asked her, I said, were you happy to have children? She said, I think that the proudest thing I’ve ever done in my life is to have the three of you guys. And I think that one of the things I’m grateful to your father for is that he gave me three beautiful children and very smart children. So I think that she was always very proud of that fact. But for me, I think she always said, honey, the decision is up to you. However many children you want, that’s up to you. Whenever you want to get married, that’s up to you. I am not going to force you.
Kat (50:34)
Really? How did she come to that? I mean, not every woman just because you change countries, changes.
Alka (50:40)
She was very unusual. She was very unusual. And I think that what might have happened. First of all, I think that even though she did everything outwardly that was expected of her and that she was trained to do, I think inwardly she always knew that there was a bigger life that she could have if there hadn’t been such a strong patriarchy in India. And I think that she was very much into the movies. She loved the movies. She loved to go to the movies because that’s fantasy. Right? All the women in the movies get to do all kinds of things that they don’t normally get to do in real life. She loves to read, and so she would read. And these stories are all like, if you read any of Tagore’s stories from all those years ago, they’re all about young women who are unhappy in their patriarchal structure. And so they go off and do amazing things with their lives. So, I think that my mother was very much influenced by these outside forces. And then we come to America in 1969. We’re all 9, 10, 11 old. But my mom is 30, and she is looking around. She is thinking there is a sexual revolution going on in the United States. There is all of the rioting going on around stopping the Vietnam War. People have long hair, hippies are all over the place. And so there are people challenging the status quo everywhere around her. Anytime she turns on the television, there are TV shows which have half scantily clad women doing whatever they want to do in their lives. She’s watching Peyton Place where women are having affairs with their neighbors, husbands, and all of this. I think my mother’s eyes were exploding. They were like, oh, my God, what is going on here? And I think that somewhere in the back of her brain, she must have thought, I can raise my daughter so differently here. My kids can have so much more freedom here than they could back in India. And I’m going to make sure that they get it. And I think in some sort of way, that was her rebellion. We were her rebellion. We were her way of saying, there’s another way to be in this world. And I want to make sure my kids get that way. My father, had he had his way, would have raised us far more traditionally would have wanted me to marry somebody who is Indian. None of us married Indians because we were raised all around the white society. We ended up marrying white Americans.
Kat (53:14)
You married for love. That was completely different from your mother meeting your dad the day of her wedding, that’s really hard for me to imagine.
Alka (53:24)
Yeah. So I think that because she allowed us such a free life, I often would get kind of sad. And I would think my mother didn’t get to have the life that she has given me. I would love to give her that life, but I can’t turn back time. I can’t take her back to the 1950s and not allow her to get married, but let her have the education. Let her have the four years in college, have a degree, go off and have a career. She didn’t get to do any of that. But you know what? Now that I’m learning to write, why don’t I create a character who gets to do all those things? And that’s where Luxmy comes in.
Kat (54:05)
And Luxmy, she’s not exactly like your mom because she’s not of a privileged class. She’s pretty poor. Her husband is not nice. So you did change quite a little bit. But is Luxmy from the area that your mom was from?
Alka (54:22)
Yeah. Luxmy is actually from a state next to Rajasthan called Uttar Pradesh. And my mother went to school in Uttar Pradesh, but she’s also from Rajasthan, and Rajasthan is where Jaipur is. So the stories take place in both of those areas. And then we used to as a family vacation up in Shimla at the foothills of the Himalaya Mountains. And that’s why Shimla also plays a role in all.
Kat (54:53)
I love that you’ve been there. It probably helps why I can see it. I don’t know if it looks like it does in my head, but I can imagine, well, at least I have an image in my head of all the places that she is.
Alka (55:07)
Yeah, Kat. I have to be in a place in order to describe it. I cannot just conjure it in my imagination. Like I could never write fantasy books where people are imagining all of these scenarios that haven’t happened yet. But because I’ve been to all of the places I write about, I can write about them. So for book number three that I just wrote, which takes place partly in Paris, I went to Paris last fall and I found an apartment that my protagonist would live in. I wanted to find exactly the apartment that I thought they might live in. I found it, and I stayed there for three weeks as I was writing the scenes that would go into that book. So I have to be in the place. I have to either have visited the place, have been in that place, I’m going to that place in order to write about it.
Kat (56:03)
So let’s talk a little bit about the Henna Artist. I know it’s a trilogy. Now, is the third book, does it follow Luxmy or does it follow her sister? Can I ask?
Alka (56:15)
All of these books have bits and pieces of Luxmy and Malik and Radha. Yes. As you know, Malik is Luxmy’s helper, and he carries her supplies for her, he negotiates on behalf of her with vendors, and he really protects her. And in a way, she protects him. They have a very symbiotic relationship. She makes sure that he eats because he’s liable to just run around and have snacks all day long. So, she wants him to have, like, a good existence. But we don’t know very much about him in the Henna Artist where he came from, who takes care of him when Luxmy is not around? Well, all of that I wrote, but those pages got cut out of the original manuscript. 140 pages were sitting on the floor by the time it was done with the Henna Artist, over the ten years that it took to get it published. So Malik then started asking me to write his story. I know that may seem weird, but I think as authors, we all understand those characters. When we have lived with them before long, they start talking to us. So he said, write my story, you know what my background is. So in The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, I get to write a lot of Malik’s story where he came from, who took care of him in the pink city, where he goes as he gets older. And in The Henna Artist, in the end of The Henna Artist, we know that he goes to this posh boarding school in Shimbla. And so once he graduates from that boarding school, what happens to him? Does he get a job? Does he have a love interest? So we find out about all of that in The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. And in book number three, we find out about Radha’s story, all that stuff that got cut out of The Henna Artist. How did she meet Ravi? How did she start a relationship with him? How did she get pregnant? Why was she so insistent about keeping that baby? Those are all things that we find out in book number three as we find out about Radha, who is living that story in 1974. That’s the disco era. And I was in Paris in school in 1974. That was when I was 16, and I was going around with my parents to Europe. And I remember those tiny little disco stores, the dance floors. I mean, it was like just this little narrow place that you were dancing. So Radha is living in Paris. She’s married to a Parisian. She has two little girls, and she is learning how to be a master perfumer, which takes about ten years. So she is going to be designing her own signature scents. But she is going to be surprised when the baby that she had in The Henna Artist, who is now 17, shows up at her door.
Kat (59:12)
Oh, my goodness. I can’t wait for this. All right. Did you have this whole trilogy figured out before you start writing The Henna Artist? No, not at all.
Alka (59:25)
Not at all. I know. You know, you would think that authors have these trilogies worked out in their head. I don’t know if JK. Rowling worked out all of her sequels in her head way before it was done, but for me, it was all organic. It was just because the characters kept living in my imagination and kept bugging me to write their stories. So I knew little bits and pieces of their stories. But then I got to really flush it out in the books that really center on them. I think part of also what happens is that we fall in love with our characters. And one of the things I loved in the writing process is that I learned so much about myself, what I tolerate in people, what I think about different kinds of people. This all comes out in my writing. It all comes out through my characters. And one of the things that I think I realized also is that I have to have, for every single character, humanity. I have to have empathy for them. I cannot hate any of my characters. I have to understand how they became who they are. And even if I don’t agree with some of the things they do, I have to be able to understand why they do what they do. So, that was a huge learning experience for me because it helps to make every character three dimensional, kind of like how I was saying people need to think about countries like India. They are far more complex than you can imagine. And I think people are far more complex. Nobody is all evil or all good. We all have a little bit of everything.
Kat (01:01:11)
Yeah. One thing I really like. I mean, you can see what you just said, how you like to have humanity in your characters and you like them to be three dimensional. You can see that in the Henna Artist. I listen to it. Again, I think it’s amazing, people should listen to the Audible. But, you can see it in every character. You can tell that you understand each character, which I think is not always the case these days. Sometimes it’s more about getting more books out than really understanding the character. But you’re also very fair about how history, circumstances, good or bad, create and kind of push us towards the decisions we make, good or bad. We’re very influenced by so many different things. And without laying all of that out, you really imply it with everyone. Like, what is the name of the main character? The Man Who Lends Money?
Alka (01:02:18)
You mean Samir?
Kat (01:02:21)
You can really tell he’s a very likable character, and yet he makes some poor decisions, decisions you wouldn’t really want to agree with. But without going into all the history of all the different classes and the complexities of India, you can tell that he is what he is by how and when he grew up.
Alka (01:02:45)
Oh, brilliantly put. Brilliantly put. That is exactly what I would hope every reader gets from this. I want them to understand the complexity of the classes and the castes without my having to spell it out. And I think the only way you can do that is through the characters actions and their words. And then you just get it. You go, okay, I understand now why that person treats that person that way.
Kat (01:03:12)
Right? Yes. So how did you know how to make these complex characters without, like, holding the reader’s hand, which is really the most annoying thing? You write them in such a way that you can tell as a reader that you know them. So is that something that maybe came through advertising, where you have to get something across the people very quickly or a combination of that in your MFA? Or do you just like people-watching?
Alka (01:03:40)
No, I think it’s because you probably wouldn’t believe this now if you met me. But I was very shy as a child. I could not talk to people. My parents were always saying, Go talk to your auntie. Go say hello to that girl. Go say hello to that boy. And I wouldn’t do it. I would hide behind my mother’s skirts, and I think I was just, some people are just born shy, and so what I did instead was just watch people because I wasn’t talking. I had all this space and time to watch people. I would watch people’s expressions, and I would think, hey, they’re saying something that is not showing through on their face. And I would listen to what they weren’t saying in their words. But I could tell that by their gesture or the way they were moving their hands. That what they were saying was so different from what they were feeling. And I really started to observe. And I don’t think I knew I was consciously doing that. I remember at one time in college, somebody said to me, Will you stop watching people for a change and just participate? I was so used to doing it. It just was a natural part of me. And then I think the second thing is that, I told you I was an artist. And when you’re an artist, you learn how to observe very carefully, every little detail. Like if you are drawing, let’s say this Tim Tiffin. I know that the shadows go across like on the lines. Right. I know that I have to make this a rounded representation on a two dimensional surface. How am I going to do that? I’m going to do that with shadow. I’m going to observe how this line here is crooked. It doesn’t go flat all the way across and that’s how I will draw it. So, there are ways in which you’re an artist. You learn to observe so much in detail. And so this is why I observe people’s jewelry. I observe the clothing. I look at every which way that somebody does their hair. Is it just a little gray or is it all gray? These are just things that come very naturally to me. And I think those really helped me write in a way that is very sort of organic and that lets people know what’s happening behind the scenes without my hand to hold their hands.
Kat (01:06:10)
Well, you do it very well. And I don’t know how I found the Henna Artist, but I very much enjoyed it. All these emails I get about different books. I know it was part of Reese Witherspoon, but I’m not part of that. But anyway, I’m glad that I found it.
Alka (01:06:25)
Kat. I have at this point. Okay, so I’ve done about 737 book clubs online.
Kat (01:06:33)
Wow.
Alka (01:06:34)
On Zoom. Yeah. And I love book clubs because they’re so engaged. They are so passionate about the books that they read and they’re passionate about discussing them, and why did the character do this? And I wasn’t happy about this. And I like all of that emotion coming through because now I know I’m doing my job as a writer. And then I have heard from people all around the world, like thousands of people around the world, have written to me, either emailed me or written me a little note or something, something through my publisher. And what they’re saying is I can resonate with these characters in the Henna Artist, even though I’ve never been to India. I don’t know anything about your culture, but I love it. And then I hear from all the people in India, in Pakistan, in Bangladesh, in Sri Lanka who are reading the Henna Artist and the Secret Keeper of Jaipur, and they are telling me, oh, my God, how did you capture us? So that’s perfectly. This is brilliant. They’re like, I have lived in Jaipur or I have been in Jaipur or I live in Jaipur today, or I have family in Jaipur, and of course, I have lived in India. And I think that you have captured India in a way that I have not seen yet. You have captured us in our complexity rather than just talking about us as a slum, rather than just talking about us as people who are fighting the British. You are just capturing us in all of our different modes. And thank you so much.
Kat (01:08:02)
That’s wonderful.
Alka (01:08:03)
I had not expected that. Yeah. But it is such a treat to hear also from South Asians who are telling me that they love the books.
Kat (01:08:10)
Yeah, I’m sure that is maybe especially because I don’t know, were you ever a little weary of like, you grew up mostly in America, how will it be received? And you’re kind of in the middle?
Alka (01:08:22)
You bet. You bet. I was really concerned that people from South Asia read my books and go, that’s not like us at all. So I think that’s why I went overboard with the research and overboard with really trying to explain how people were. And some of these characters, they remind me of my family back in Jaipur, and some of them remind me of their amalgamations of different people I have known. And so it feels very natural. And so I hoped that readers would also feel that I wasn’t forcing personalities, that they could recognize these personalities. And they all tell me, yeah, I know people like this.
Kat (01:09:09)
That’s the funny thing. People are the same, no matter really what culture. Humans make sort of the same good decisions, bad decisions. Some are helpful, some are not. I hope that would encourage anyone who also crosses cultures like you do to not be afraid to incorporate their background culture.
Alka (01:09:32)
Oh, yes. As a matter of fact, I encourage everybody who has something different in their background, whether it’s a place they grow up. Maybe they grew up in an orphanage as opposed to a nuclear family. Maybe they grew up around a lot of dogs, which most of us may not have grown up, maybe one dog or two, but maybe they grew up around a passel of dogs. Whatever it is that’s unique to them, is what they should write about, because they know that stuff. So when people say, write about what you know, that’s what they’re saying. If you write about something you are so intimately connected to, your writing is going to come through so often that people are going to say, oh, wow, I am in your world. I am now completely in your world. You have immersed me in that world. And so I encourage people to bring out their uniqueness, whatever that is, that’s special about them, that’s different about them. That is your what is it called?
Kat (01:10:30)
That’s true. And I think you hit it with the authenticity it really shows when you’re writing it because A, I think you’re passionate about it. You know about it, you’re authentic about it. So that’s a very good point. So you have the Henna Artist, which, again, everyone should listen to it as well, because it’s The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. Is that how you say it? What is the third one called? It’s coming out next year?
Alka (01:10:56)
Yes. The Perfumist of Paris will be out in March of 2023. But, you know, let me say something about the audio version. I get to select the narrator. And when I was listening on Audible to all these different books that are by South Asians, and I was listening to them and trying to find my narrator, and I found her as soon as I heard her voice, I thought, oh, my God, that’s her. That’s Luxmy. That’s Luxmy right there. And then I went back to Harper Audio, and I said, could you please have her read the passage that you’re having all of your other auditions read? And they did. And she was brilliant. And I could not believe, we spent 3 hours she and I going through all of the vocabulary, all the glossary, because she’s from a different part of India, and she pronounces differently, and she wanted to know how I would pronounce it. Yeah. So even in India, Hindi is not pronounced the same way or spelled the same way from north to south, east to west, just like here in America. Potato, potato. Exactly. And there are all these expressions that maybe the north knows, the south doesn’t know that kind of thing. So she and I spent about 3 hours on the phone just going over all of that, and she wanted to know what the characters were that I imagined in my head, what were their feelings. And so then, my gosh, when I listened to her narration of the Henna Artist, I was like, oh, she couldn’t be more brilliant. And then she took the Henna Artist all the way to the bestseller status on The New York Times.
Kat (01:12:36)
She deserves it. You both deserve it. I mean, it is really fabulous. Does she narrate a Secret Keeper of Jaipur, or did you choose a male for that one?
Alka (01:12:45)
So in The Secret Keeper of Jaipur, I decided to branch out a little bit as an author and give three points of view, three very distinct points of view. Some of the chapters are from Malik’s first person. Some of them are from Luxmy’s first person. And some of them are from Nimni, who ended up being a very strong voice in here. Nimni is a tribal woman whom Malik is in love with. And so I have three different voices for this one, three narrators. And then the next one is going to be all from Radha’s point of view, first person. So I’m going to have to choose a narrator to be Radha’s.
Kat (01:13:16)
Okay, so you’re very busy the Henna Artist is becoming a series. A television series, right. It’s very exciting. I can’t wait for that. And you have another book coming out. Do you have any more writing that you’re working on or thinking about? You don’t have to tell us everything but are you planning on coming out with more?
Alka (01:13:35)
Yes, I have a book that I have put aside in order to complete the second sequel and so I might go back to that, but I also have this idea of brewing in my head about a very contemporary American sort of TV show and I’d like to learn how to write the screenplay for that and then I think for book number three, The Perfumist of Paris, I have seen it so visually in my head that I think it could make a great movie. So I’m thinking I need to learn how to write a screenplay so that I can start writing more screenplays. I would love to do something.
Kat (01:14:14)
Look at you.You’re very ambitious. I love this. Thank you so much for coming on. I can’t gush enough about the Henna Artist, if people haven’t read it, I think that they should, absolutely read it. I think it’s a wonderful introduction if you know nothing about India to learn a little bit more and I think it’s a beautiful book and thank you so much, Alka.
Alka (01:14:36)
Thank you so much, Kat. It was lovely being here.
Kat (01:14:52)
Hey, you’re still listening. Since you are, could you do me a favor and head over to the app that you’re listening to this episode on and hit the subscribe button and then rate and review the show. It would really help the Pencils and Lipstick podcast get out into the world and if you’re enjoying the podcast, well, then there might be more people out there who would enjoy it as well. If you want to find out more about me, you can head over katcaldwell.com. I have my story over there, my books, my interactive journals, my one on one coaching information and information on my Creative Writing Community membership group. If you’re looking to write a book or you are a writer and you just want to find out more about how to write, how to publish, how to format, how to market and all the things that go into being an author these days, check out the membership group. There is a free 14-day trial that you can try it out, get into the masterminds, find out all the goodies that we are talking about in the group. I would love to see you there.