‘I WRITE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT’S NEXT’

Author Ravi Subramanian is mostly clueless when he is writing his new thriller. He says his chapters are never planned and he is “as clueless about the conclusion” as his reader. “Most writers, when they start writing, know what every chapter is going to have. But in my case, it is different, I know the backdrop,” he says.

He certainly knew the backdrop for his new book, In the Name Of God, based on the backdrop of Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerela where untold treasures were discovered in secret vaults in 2011, and one special trove is still to be opened.

The book is a work of fiction that revolves around a dead body found on the premises. He writes his first chapter, and then moves on, he says.

“So when you are reading my book you also know what I knew at that point of time,” says Subramanian, a bankercumbest-selling-author.

And Subramanian has a rather strange superstition, he buys a new laptop for his every new book.

This has been his mantra ever since he wrote his bestselling banking thriller If God Was a Banker (2007). “I wrote my latest book (published by Penguin Random House) on an i-Pad,” he adds. Otherwise an early bird, the author turns nocturnal when he is writing, and his muse works best late at night.“When I am writing and I am in a good flow then it will go on till 2 or 3 in the morning, starting at 9. ,” he says.

Since I don’t plot the stories the way many authors do, the flow is very critical to me. And when it is there I don’t want to stop RAVI SUBRAMANIAM, AUTHOR