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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 1:08

Anatomy of a Thriller - Girish Dutt Shukla, Author of 'Cold-blooded Love' in Conversation.

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Hello, everyone. Today in the author interview series on the Rupa publications Swell cast, I am joined by author Girish Dutt Shukla. Girish is a computer engineer by education and a digital marketer by profession. His latest book, cold blooded Love, is a mindbending psychological thriller that blurs the line between love and deceit and makes you question the very idea of being in a perfect marriage

#askanauthor #authorinterview #thriller #writing #booklovers

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@Girish_Shukla
Girish Shukla
@Girish_Shukla · 2:27
And I think the reason for that is the idea of a dark and twisted mind and the thrill of solving a mystery and the fear of the unknown is what makes psychological thriller so compelling as far as Cold Blooded Love is concerned. Because I've been reading and watching a lot of psychological sellers ever since ever since I started reading and watching movies. I think the book is a result of all those experiences of watching those movies and reading those novels
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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:45
Thank you so much for that. As a fellow aficionado of thriller as a genre, someone who has grown up on a steady diet of Agatha Christie's and Robin Cook books, I can totally relate to what you just said. So my next question is this authors of both genders have long experimented with narrators and protagonists of the opposite sex, but there's still debate as to whether they managed to actually get it right. So bringing a complex female character like Ziva to fictional life would have been quite daunting
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@Swell
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@Girish_Shukla
Girish Shukla
@Girish_Shukla · 3:12

@Ramya

And moreover, I tried to avoid I made a conscious effort to avoid stereotypes and cliches while fleshing out Ziva. I focused mainly on developing her as a complex individual with a unique set of experiences, thoughts and emotions, which is why the backstory was needed for Diva to make her character more rich and nuanced and I think which helped me add different layers of complexity which unveiled throughout slowly over the course of the novel
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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:50
I think you've absolutely managed to achieve what you set out to with Ziva's characterization. You've got it bang on. And I guess all the research helped as you fleshed out her character. Personally, I think I will remember her character for a long time to come. Haven't quite come across any character like her in a long, long time. So, yeah, thank you for that. So, moving on. Psychological thrillers are hot right now. They are nail biting addictive
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@Girish_Shukla
Girish Shukla
@Girish_Shukla · 3:55

@Ramya

A good psychological thriller should be able to keep the audience on the edge of their seats with a sense of anticipation, fear or uncertainty about what will happen next. I think that is the key and this can be achieved through clever pacing, a series of unexpected twists and turns and an atmosphere of constant tension. The second key element I feel are the characters. The more complex they are, the better because they drive the plot forward
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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:45
Thank you so much for that girish. I think I'll leave you with one final question. Cold blooded love has so many nail biting moments, twists and turns that it keeps the reader, you know, flipping the pages and never wanting to stop until they reach the last page. Was it very difficult to actually plan and pace out all these twists in the narrative? And what was the hardest part of adding in details into every twist and turn in the book?
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@Girish_Shukla
Girish Shukla
@Girish_Shukla · 2:37

@Ramya

In fact, if I'm being honest, when I started writing the second book, I had a different story in my mind. And I think around the fifth or the 6th chapter, I was having a discussion with a friend and he listened to my plot and he suggested that I could do better. Then I went back to the drawing board and rewrote all the six chapters, came up with a different collector man, and then started writing the book all over again
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@Ramya
Ramya V
@Ramya · 0:43

Cold Blooded Love https://amzn.eu/d/dEHG6JX

I'm going to be including your book's Amazon link in the description for our listeners to check out and I would love to have you back on Swell for more literary conversations. So thank you and a good day to
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