Author Alka Joshi will speak in Baton Rouge at the Main Library at 10 a.m. Aug.
24. Author Alka Joshi will speak in Baton Rouge at the Main Library at 10 a.m.
Aug. 24. It was originally set to be published March 3, but they shifted it to March 10.
At that point, nobody knew the World Health Organization was going to close down the country. Fortunately, my publisher had lined up radio interviews which allowed me to do phone interviews. Then the libraries shut down and the bookstores closed.
At least Amazon was still delivering. But, if you remember, reading behaviors really changed to digital format during that time, which has continued. Then, Amazon stopped shipping out physical books.
Remember when we thought COVID could be transmitted via paper? It was a nutty time. I thought, "How can I help my publisher sell this?" I started talking on social media and telling people about the recipes and posting photos of my mother. I would talk about the jewelry and saris, both of which I love.
Through that, I started feeling connection from readers. People started responding, "We have a book club and we just learned how to use Zoom." So, I went on a huge Zoom book club tour.
Sometimes I would talk to a group with four people. Then they started getting larger. I would do a book club at 5 p.
m., 6, p.m.
7 p.m. and 8 p.
m. in one night. "The Henna Artist," released in March 2020 was Alka Joshi's debut, breakaway novel that has met with huge success in the publishing industry.
By the end of that first year, I had done 350 book clubs. When you are pushed up against a wall, you figure out ways. I didn't have an option.
It was either going to die or have a slow build. I wanted to get this story out. I wanted my mother to have this independent life.
Then, we got the best call of all. Reese Witherspoon said she loved, loved, loved the book. Reese is a game-changer.
Eventually, Amazon released its hold on paper books. Bookstores and libraries started opening. In hindsight, I think that was one of the best ways to talk about the book because I didn't have to travel.
Every single night, I felt connected to people all over the world while so many people felt isolated. Everybody was hungry for connection. They wanted to listen to an author and they had time to do so.
They wanted to ask questions. When you're talking to eight people at a time, they feel a connection to you. They asked me personal questions, like, "When was the last time I was in India? In 2019 — thank goodness I made it before the pandemic.
It was a wonderful time to be there. It was in between my book having been accepted by Harper Collins and the release date. I went there because I knew people were going to start asking me questions about the caste system and arranged marriages.
My brother organized the trip. I contacted people — history professors, art historians, the principal of the school in the book. All these people opened their doors and were so generous with their time.
Many of them remembered that period of India. It was eye-opening and gave me great information to share. "The Secret Keeper of Jaipur" is the second book in Alka Joshi's "The Jaipur Trilogy.
" I completely agree with her. I think what she is saying, is that every society, including ours in America, has a caste system. When we look at other countries, really what we are talking about is a class system and a way to divide people into socioeconomic areas.
In India, it was started as a way for people to have certain jobs — farmers, priests, merchants, etc. Over the years, it became more and more as a class. I don't agree with it, but there seems to be more flexibility than there ever was before.
For 10 years. It makes a lot of people feel better. I quit three distinct times, but when the passion to tell the story is greater than your lack of confidence, you will get back into it and make the revisions to get it to the place where it becomes a really good book.
I did 30 revisions of that book, while I was working the whole time in advertising and marketing. I remember spending all Saturday and Sunday during those times trying to make another revision happen. Persistence pays.
The little choo choo that could. She died unfortunately almost as soon as I got my MFA. I was taking her to a lot of doctor's appointments.
In eight months, she was gone. I was crying and said, "I can't keep writing this. I wrote this for her.
" That was one of the times I stopped working on it, but I got back to it. One of the things I've learned when you've been writing for 10 years about the same characters, you know those characters inside and out. You know what their future stories are going to be like.
I was instructed to write a character Bible: Who were their parents? What were the books they read? What were their favorite foods? What was their favorite color? Who were their friends? And on and on and on. When you develop a character at that level, you know what they're going to do. During the six-month lag before publishing, I started writing the next book about Malik.
It came so easily. That book was published the year after "The Henna Artist" came out. "The Perfumist of Paris" is the third book Alka Joshi's "The Jaipur Trilogy.
" Then my agent said, "What do you want to write about next?" I knew I wanted to write about Radha. She was so rebellious in The Henna Artist. She lives in a different country.
I wrote up three paragraphs and Harper Collins wrote us a contract for the third book. It becomes a lot easier to write a book when you know what not to do. You know, "This is how you start a chapter.
" "This is how you end a chapter." It's like anything else — like when you first learn to cook, you have to keep referring to the instruction manual. Huge contribution.
I didn't realize how, for all those years, that I was writing mini-stories in one-minute commercials. Novel writing is a huge expansion of those stories. My books started as a love letter to my mother, but they ended as a love letter to India.
I learned to become proud of my birth country through these books. For 40 years, I wouldn't go back to India. For so many years, I was so ashamed.
Once I started writing about it and going to India with my mom, it totally changed my perception. All the beautiful things that come from this rich culture. It's a sort of calmness and spirituality of the people that I can write about.
My next book, "Six Days in Bombay," doesn't have anything to do with The Jaipur Trilogy. It's a stand-alone book..
