‘Always wanted to write a twisted thriller’

Author Durjoy Datta’s latest book, The Girl of My Dreams, continues his tradition of writing relevant and popular romance novels. However, this one also adds a hint of the supernatural. In a quick chat with us, he talks about the state of Indian literature: usual suspects. Ruskin Bond, Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, then moved on to John Grisham, Baldacci and the like, then of course, HP, LOTR, Thomas Harris and moving on to Jhumpa Lahiri, Mistry and young adult writers David Levithan, John Green, etc.

What drew you to romance? I didn’t even know that I was writing romance till my publisher tagged it as that. I was writing a story where the protagonists happen to fall in love. I hadn’t grown up reading a lot of romance though I had read a lot of young adult books which always had romance sprinkled rather liberally.

What was the first piece of writing you remember that you’re proud of?

There’s a passage I wrote about ‘happiness’. I overshot the word count by a mile, but my English teacher was pretty impressed.

Your latest novel adds supernatural elements to romance. Why?

I have always wanted to write a twisted thriller, having grown up reading them. But the premises I used to come up with never seemed believable to me. Finally I came up with the premise of The Girl of My Dreams which I thought could be weaved into a story. writing becoming a “second career” of sorts for many, do you think commercialising literature is the way forward?

Commercialising literature is easier said than done. The last bestselling author we discovered was Amish Tripathi and that was five years ago. Word of mouth is everything. You can’t force people to like a book and buy it in droves. We spend too much time advertising authors we don’t like rather than talking about the books and authors that we do.