EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

What’s the story behind the story? We’ll find out on Dropping In. Our guests are today’s original thinkers. Conversations that spark new ways of seeing what’s going on. We bring it all to the table. Diverse perspectives, controversy, loving and singular voices. Magically stories reveal the common threads that link us. Experience the joys, the fist pumps, the detours and the hard-won truths of those who blaze the trail so that we might do the same and now here’s your host Diane Dewey.

Diane: Welcome to Dropping In everyone. It’s the 8th of October. The number 8 being a symbol of infinity with its two interlacing circles in Payal Doshi new book Rea and the Blood of the Nectar. There are seemingly endless worlds of wonder and magic. We meet Rea, a 12 year old girl living a simple if boring life on the tea plantations of Darjeeling, India. Without warning Rea’s life gets turned on its head when her twin brother Rowan goes missing. Determined to save him Rea embarks on a secret adventure by portaling into the enchanted world of Astranthia. Well to find out what happens you must read the book but here to talk about it is its author Payal Doshi. Welcome Payal. Great to have you with us.

Payal: Hi Dianne. Thanks so much for having me. I’m very excited to be here.

Diane: That’s lovely. I found this to be an empowering story. I thought we’d get right into a couple of questions about Rea being age 12 and then in Astranthia the age of ascendancy to the throne is 12. I wonder if you could speak to us a bit about what is it about the magical age of 12. What’s happening to us then and why did you choose it for Rea?

Payal: Absolutely. For me whenever I think back to my memories, my childhood memories I don’t remember what I was like as a five-year-old or six-year-old. No personal memories of that time in my life except what my parents have told me but what I remember vividly are my middle school years starting 11, 12. I feel that that time in our life is such a foundational period because I find that we are transitioning from being children into mini adult making.

Suddenly in this time in our life we become hyper aware of the world around us. In school when you’re an 11 year old and a 12 year old and you’re suddenly aware of what’s going on around you, how you look, how others perceive you, what’s happening at home, why your parents are fighting, who you want to be friends with, who you want, what you want to do in life, what you don’t like to do, what you want to change, why someone is bullying you. You understand little bits of racism going on. There’s so many things that happen to us at that time in our lives where we start realizing that the world is much greater than the little sheltered bubble that we were used to.

I find that it just makes for an incredible age to explore and tell stories by because you also get the benefit of still there is an innocence in 11 and 12 year old. There is wonder. They’re still not jaded by the world. They think outside the box. If you lead them on a magical adventure they’re happy to follow you, suspend disbelief. I find that in this age group I can explore the inner child in me and take readers on this incredible, fun, fantastical adventure but at the same time I can dig deep into emotional subjects.

Rea for example is battling, she’s insecure. She’s an introvert. She comes from atypical family situation wherein her dad passed away when she and her twin brother were just babies but nobody in her family talks about him. Whenever she asked her Amma, who’s her mom or Bajai, who’s her grandmom. They are very tight-lipped about it. She knows that there are some secrets there and nobody’s telling her. Her mother is very aloof. She seems to be battling her own demons. She isn’t a very loving mother. She’s going through that as well.

Because of all of these different things she struggles to fit in. She has no friends. Her brother, her twin brothers is completely different as often twins are or siblings even. He’s extroverted. He has kind of moved on. He’s understood that he’s not going to know more about his dad. He has accepted that and he’s now moving on with his life. He’s made friends. He’s doing well in school. There’s all these things happening. It’s just such a prime age to dive deep into these deep topics as well as have them go on an adventure.

As to your other point as to Astranthia why the age of ascension is 12 I mean to be honest one point was definitely just to address the plot because I was telling the story of a 12 year old. It needed to tie in but 12 is also symbolic age in terms of like again moving from being just children into growing to be adults. It’s the time many girls undergo puberty as do boys. It’s that formative time. It seemed right to use that age in Astranthia as well.

In Astranthia what happens is when the heir to the throne turns 12 they have to sacrifice just a drop of blood on their sacred flower that fuels this entire realm and the magic in the realm. The reason being 12 is the symbolic beginning of youth and all of the strength and rightness of youth that blossoms within. That felt apt to use 12 as that symbolic age in both these narratives.

Diane: We don’t want to give away the whole story but it is a momentous time when it seems as though there’s a switch that gets turned on. Suddenly we are aware of a world out there. I think in your book there are two worlds. Rea is having an arc of transformation. She starts out as being bitter about her standing as the twin of a brother who’s let’s face it. He’s met girls. He plays cricket. So does Rea and she happens to be very good at it. That comes in handy later on in the book as well that she’s good at two things cricket and puzzle solving.

Those are the two things that act in her favor. She’s I think analytic and she is in some ways physically unafraid. She starts out being bitter. She’s got her mother and her grandmother their favorite is her brother Rohan. She’s a loner who’s built some walls around her. Throughout the story she evolves into a more accepting, more humble, more open-hearted girl. I wondered if you characterize this as an emotional journey as much as it was an adventure, thriller, metaphysical journey.

Payal: Absolutely, 100%. That’s what makes a story relatable. That’s what makes you connect with the character. It was very important that I make Rea, a character that kids can connect to. Back in India and as goes the stereotype with a lot of south Asian and Asian families across the world that our parents just want us to be doctors and lawyers and engineers. They put so much pressure on getting good grades and just being excellent at school.

To a degree that’s pretty accurate and it’s not true for most of us. Not everybody gets the top marks in schools. Rea was a mix of so many things. I wrote her to be a character that was specifically not book smart in the sense that she aces all of her subjects. She faces that comparison with her brother who is better at school than her and constantly is being deemed the dumber twin just because she doesn’t score as well in school. This is something that I grew up with when I was back in India. I grew up in Mumbai. our schooling was I had a great schooling experience but the biggest thing was just at the end of the day if you spoke to any older person it was just about what were your grades, what were your grades.

Sometimes they weren’t very good and that affected you as a 12 year old and a 13 year old because it just defined you. It’s very important for me to write a character in which Rea was not book smart but to show that you don’t have to just get good grades to be intelligent. You can have so many different qualities. You can be curious. You can be like her she loves solving puzzles. She is athletically inclined. She can think analytically. She can think logically. She can think out of the box. She’s brave and courageous. All of these things feed into who we become as individuals as opposed to just one thing. That was very, very important for me to include in the story.

Then also her movement and her transition to the story and her growth was so important because we’re all trying to be better versions of ourselves. That starts even when we’re as young as 10, 11, 12. Rea does start off as bitter and she’s a loner and she feels like all of the injustices in the world are happening to herself. She comes from a very small family. She just lives with her mother, her grandmother and her brother. In India we have these big joint families where we live with grandparents and oftentimes uncles and aunts. To her like her neighbor Leela who then later in the book accompanies her through this adventure comes from one such family like that. Through Rea’s eyes everybody’s life is great. Rea lives in this big family and she’s happy and she’s great. Her brother is having a great time. Everyone in school is good.

You do become pretty inward in your thinking at that age because you feel these big emotions and I wanted to validate that those emotions are real. If there’s a 12 year old there who’s reading this book and feeling something similar to what Rea’s going through. I wanted to say yes, that’s valid because even I as an adult sometimes look at a 10 year old, 11 year old and go oh they’re children. They’re fine. I mean what problem could you possibly have. Wait till you turn 20 kind of a thing but that’s not true. I wanted her to go through these insecurities part of which are her own, she has created in herself in which she has separated herself from friends and making friends and decided that she’s just better off being alone but that stems from the fact that she feels a bit abandoned.

Her brother who she was so close to and sort of joined at the hip while they were kids is now going off and living his own life. Her mother has never really given her that emotional and loving support. She wants to know more of her dad and she doesn’t know so she just feels alone. She feels like she rather not invite anyone into her life lest they leave. She feels abandoned again and so she just creates these walls. Through the book it was really important for me to show readers that sometimes the world is bigger than who we are that her mother does have don’t want to give too many too many things away but there are reasons for her mother’s behavior. Understanding that if you let people in friendship and family are such beautiful things to have. Sometimes that it’s not all just about you. Her emotional journey, her metaphysical journey was an equally if not even more important part of the plot line.

Diane: We can be 12 and we can be 42 and find out that we feel lost in a particular day and particularly friendless on a particular day or invisible because we don’t feel as though our performance metrics are measuring up to our peers or you’re 32 but you found somebody to love. You decide to sort of shut down on that. I find these kind of characteristics, these moments of feeling abandoned to be quite universal at almost any age. I mean your book and your website it talks about and it’s a wonderful website PayalDoshiAuthor.com, middle grade author.

This is the middle grades but I would say it’s not limited at all to that. I wonder if you know whether your audience is in fact a young audience or whether there are those of us who kind of pick up this book and say wow, this is exactly the place I feel at this dreary Monday. I’m not sure really where I am in the world right now because I haven’t had enough contact with my support network or I haven’t reached out to anyone. Why is that? I’ve created my own little world. Do you know how it relates to people in the audience?

Payal: Yes. It’s so funny that you asked that because obviously when I wrote this book it’s a children’s book and that’s how I approached it and I wrote it. Then when the book was out in the world most of my initial reviews were from adults. It’s so funny that you mentioned that just giving the example of a 40 year old. I actually have a review from a 40 year old woman. She’s written such a lovely review and she said that she was so happy to have read the book and read about a character like Rea who is so introverted and who finds it so difficult to make friends but still is validated in those feelings and is not knocked down for it. She’s like for the first time she said she felt seen in a book.

This is a 40 year old woman from I suspect the united states is connecting with a 12 year old fictional character, girl from India, from a small little town in Darjeeling. That just shows the beauty of books and literature. This middle grade age range I often say it’s for ages eight to 99 because honestly this book can be enjoyed by anybody. It’s not just a “children’s book”. It has so many layers and depth.

I remember when even just I announced the cover way back in September of 2019, sorry in 2020, September 2020 when I launched the cover. The number of DMs I received from girls and mothers saying that A, they were so happy to see a girl like themselves, a brown kid portrayed on the cover of a book because they’ve never seen that before. They’ve never seen them having magic. It was just so great. I remember one girl sent me a message saying that she was so happy to see Rea specifically because that’s how she wrote her name as well. There are different spellings with Rea. You can have R-H-E-A, R-I-E-A, R-E-A-H. She was like mine is spelled R-E-A. I’m so happy. I sent it to everybody I know.

At that moment it opened up something inside. I’m like I didn’t realize this would have such a profound impact on anybody in and especially an adult and just in seeing even the cover and seeing how important it is to have that representation that you could be 30 years old and see this cover for essentially a kid reader and just instantly feel connected to it because you remember this time in your life. All of us can look back into our middle school years and remember how we felt like. For so many of us who are white, born in the east and I speak for myself but I know so many others like me who grew up loving reading and devoured books and ended up reading. Obviously most of the children’s books out there were all western countries.

Diane: Payal, we have to break now for a commercial. I’m sorry to interrupt you but it is incredible, the unassuming heroes that can emerge. I think that this is one of them. When we come back from the break we’re going to learn about sweven, the act of swerving and weaving in traffic but also getting certain messages encoded like puzzles in the form of dreams. Don’t go away. We’ll be right back on Dropping In with Payal Doshi.

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Diane: Welcome back everybody. We’re here with Payal Doshi. She is the author of Rea and the Blood of the Nectar. In the book there are beautiful maps of this world and the other. Astranthia is the other world. It’s a kind of a magical world, a supernatural world and then there’s the more mundane world in the tea plantations where Rea is picking tea with her mother in Maruk, Darjeeling. The two maps couldn’t be more different from one another. One’s very prosaic and commonplace the green hills, English school, the post office, police station, the railway station.

Then the other one has in Astranthia we have the Valley of the Fallen, the Whispering Wall, the Leafless Forest and the Royal Palace and the village of the dead which by the way comes very, very much to life, the Desert of the Perpetual Dusk is right next door. These are beautiful graphic accounts of the two worlds. They do interact from time to time. One of the ways that they interact is this idea of sweven. Sweven is a dream vision that Rea gets in her sleep, messages that are in the form of coded secrets like puzzles but sweven is also don’t be sweven in traffic. You’ll get us all killed. Talk to us a little bit Payal about sweven and about the idea that there are two worlds. Maybe one subconscious where we’re working things out and the other is the more, the “real world”. Do those ideas resonate with these two worlds for you?

Payal: Yes, absolutely. It’s funny you mentioned sweven because truth be told when I was writing this book, when I was drafting I didn’t even know that such a word existed but we don’t know all of the words of the vocabulary of the English language but writing is rewriting. Writing a book is basically rewriting a book a million times over and just polishing every scene to get it to the best that you can as the writer. I remember I really wanted to make Rea was going because she was getting these vivid nightmares every night ever since her brother disappeared.

I wanted to make it “realistic”. I wanted there to be a reason for that to be happening. I was researching trying to find out if these things happened in folklore. People do get nightmares and then I chance upon this word sweven. I just fell in love with it. I’m such a word nerd. I used to be a kid who would carry a pocket dictionary with me wherever I went and eagerly look up a word that I didn’t know. I was so excited when I found the word sweven and I’m like I have to put this in. It’s really cool that you picked up on it. Nobody has ever asked me a question in all of these months about sweven.

When I read about it and how these can be messages from the beyond. Funny enough it came to women and then of course in historical accounts sweven they also sort of brush it off as women just being weaker dispositions and getting this but I was like no, no, no. Not my characters. I incorporated that in and I thought it fit really well to tie both the worlds, the world of Darjeeling and Astranthia. I think our mind is even in a metaphysical sense so much of what we do is led by intuition and our analysis of things and our deeper thoughts of things. It offered me a really wonderful way to connect the real and the fantastical especially when Rea transitions. I feel like it offers a good explanation as to how she leaves our realistic world and go in portals into this fantastical land. For sure I think there’s all of those different worlds sort of playing together in the book.

Diane: Like chambers, chambers of our mind but to be portaling into a fantasy world. Who doesn’t want that? I mean it’s obviously and right now in particular we’d really like to portal into a fantasy world pretty much every day just to get away from the pandemic and the things that are far too much with us.

In the portal and in the going to Astranthia this is a place where Rea, she really does face her demons. I think this idea of the true self coming into play that she learns about her jealousies of her brother and where was that at when after he disappeared she was like oh really. Did I have to be so small-minded about him or her lack of friends? It was because she didn’t want to risk anything. She finally allows Leela into her world. Much to her benefit I mean there’s a lot of softening of Rea’s personality. I wondered if this arc of self-discovery was one that you also experienced in childhood or merely wished that you had as many of us do in reflecting in the attitudes we carried then.

Payal: Yes and no. I think Rea is an amalgamation of me and a few other people that I know very closely. I do remember being a bit selfish in school. I unlike Rea, I identify more with Rohan in that sense and in the personality type. I’m more extroverted. I always have friends. My sister and a couple of other friends that I have were very close to me have been more introverted but I also went through that phase of being a bit self-centered to be honest. Then coming out just growing up and as you grow older you realize how sometimes that it was detrimental to others, it’s detrimental to yourself. That letting people in, I know that my, one of the most fondest memories I have of my childhood and especially my schooling is I made some of my best friends when I was 12 years old that are my best friends to this day.

I wanted to include that value and that incredible support system that female friendships can bring to one’s life especially young girls. I wanted to show which I also find sometimes we don’t see enough in children’s books is the genesis of a friendship. We oftentimes meet characters who already are best friends. We go on that journey which is fantastic too but I remember having friends when I was like 9, 10 but still never really felt so closely connected to anyone. Then as I grew and once I was 12 and 13 I found my people so to speak.

Diane: Yes, your tribe.

Payal: Your tribe, exactly and it takes time. It wasn’t that I met them and it was like oh instant connection, we are best friends for life. No but we went through so much. We just got to know each other better. Then once we hit that sweet spot it was you’re my ride or die. I kind of want to show that for Rea for being someone who was a bit selfish and self-centered and again, you’re always thinking about yourself which is kind of I would say true for many 12 year olds who are trying to figure themselves out in this in their own little space in life and in their world. To show how the importance of letting people in and that it’s okay if you do get hurt even that sometimes it is worth the risk.

We’re better when we are with surrounded with friends and family and people who support us that we don’t always have to feel alone even though we might feel alone. We don’t have to let that just be our narrative. Then show the importance of friendship and show how like with Rea and Leela too if anyone reads the book it wasn’t smooth sailing. Definitely not. Rea definitely overthought so many of the things but eventually realized and found her person in Leela which is just such a sweet and wonderful thing. I wanted to bring that importance of female friendships because I deeply felt that and I think that it was because of my friends that I softened up as a person. You just become so much more tolerant and happy and wonderful. Definitely that came from my experiences.

Diane: That’s very cool. Well, it’s easy to picture yourself as the lone ranger and you’re all by yourself out here. Nobody’s coming to your rescue and this and that. As you say the narratives we tell ourselves sometimes they’re just entirely untrue. For Rea, she also was in the predicament of wondering what had happened to her father who was absent from her life. Many girls and man boys are wondering the same thing and it can make you harden. It can make you harden and quicken and say now you’ve got a single mom and you’ve got to protect yourself. You can’t get hurt that way again.

This is something you’ve got to defend but this becomes like a sort of over defense or overcompensation, overreaction and then everybody’s sort of there’s the blame game meanwhile you don’t really have the whole picture. I think Rea in her predicament she really captured that. She really didn’t know the full story until she went to the magic land and wow what an eye-opener that was in Astranthia.

I want to just give listeners the real life short bio of Payal Doshi. You have a master’s degree in creative writing from the New School in New York, one of the most respected in the country. You’ve lived in India, the UK and the US. You noticed the lack of Indian protagonists in global children’s fiction. One day you wrote the opening paragraph to what would become this debut novel Rea and the Blood of the Nectar. You’re currently in Minneapolis, Minnesota with your husband and three-year-old daughter Nora having been raised in Mumbai.

The thing that I was struck by Payal is not so much now talking with you and realizing how much breadth and scope you have but I mean the fact that you conceived of these stories as a series. There are more. In fact the next one is Rea and the Sorcerer of Shadows. You’ve got a whole world here. I wondered first of all how did that come to you. What is it like living in an alternative world as a fiction writer? How many do we have to look forward to because this is the great adventure that Rea is on?

Payal: Thank you. It’s going to be a trilogy and I’m currently drafting the sequel. It’s funny. I mean I love, I just love reading fantasy as an adult and as a kid. Like you said it just offers you this incredible escape. I mean who doesn’t want magic. Let’s be real. I knew from the get-go when I decided to write this book that it was going to be a fantasy adventure. It was also fueled by the fact that kind of like what I mentioned in my bio is that I never grew up reading books that had Indian kids as the main characters and specifically Indian kids who were heroes, who did these amazing, phenomenal, fantastical things where they had magic and they saved realms and they rode dragons and what not. We just never saw ourselves. I wanted to change that because I wanted the kids to see themselves in books but also as empowered and heroic characters.

Even when it comes to reading I just love descriptive reading and descriptive writing. The escape into my fantastical world actually was very intuitive. I know it’s such a, it feels like a cop out but it just felt so instinctive to me but gosh, I have to say building the world was not easy. I had a very vague idea. I knew from the get-go that it was going to be a very floral land because I wanted it to be just this very immersive place. I also chose Darjeeling in India specifically for that reason. Not very many people know about it. When they think of India nobody thinks of Darjeeling.

India has a very stereotypical sort of visual to it. I wanted to kind of break that and show that there are other parts of the country that are gorgeous and underrated. I want to bring that to light. Darjeeling is lush and nestled in nature, the Himalayas at the back. It’s just beautiful. I wanted to take that thread into Astranthia. That’s basically what I knew as the foundation of my magical world. Then as I spent more and more time in it and as you know since you’ve read the book like flowers and nature play such a big theme in this book as well. Kind of my nod to nature just being that we cannot live without her as much as much as the advantage that we take of her. We disregard how important she is to our life.

In Astranthia she is intrinsically connected to the lives of the land and the people. I kind of wanted to sort of show that that we are that indebted in nature and that we need to take care of her for our very own survival. Then just spending more time in this land and as I wrote scenes and I would think about ways in which I could incorporate more magical elements, elements that from a little clump that isn’t a main character but it’s like a little stuff of grass that can walk and scurry around to a big flying beast in the air. It’s just fun to let your imagination run wild.

I actually loved creating the magical world but the funny story is when I finished writing Rea and I sold to my publisher I had written it with what they say in the publishing world with a series potential which is it closes up all the plot points in the mystery of the first book but there is a slight opening for another book should there be another book but I have never thought of the entire outline of the series because I was like I don’t know. It was a very tough process selling the first book itself. I was like I don’t know if I should even you know. Will I ever get the chance? I didn’t know but then once I sold the book. Then I had a conversation my publisher about six to eight months later and she said that she wants the whole trilogy. Oh she actually said the whole series. Then she asked me so how many books will be there. I was like oh…

Diane: Had to say something. Three sounds good.

Payal: I’m thinking but I said five. I was like oh I’m going to milk this. Let me give myself a publishing deal I’m going to milk me. Like five books and she’s like great. Send me an outline. I was like oops, okay. Now we got to get back to work. Now I got to do the work. Then I started plotting the outline and then I realized okay, there was no way I could take this into five books. A trilogy is too long.

Diane: A trilogy is poetic and might suffice to satisfy our curiosity about Rea for the time being. We’re talking with Payal Doshi and we’re going to take a short break now but when we come back we’re going to launch into I think we shouldn’t quite go into the concept of global warming and interaction with our natural world in a few short bites but when we come back we’ll tackle it and the abuse of power and where power really rests because untainted power is the only magical power. Don’t go away we’ll be right back on Dropping In.

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You are listening to Dropping In with Diane Dewey. We’d love to hear from you if you have a question or comment about the show. Send us an email to ddewey@trunordmedia.com. That’s the letter ddewey@trunordmedia.com. Now back to Dropping In.

Diane: Welcome back everyone. We’re here with Payal Doshi and we’re talking about her experience of publishing the first book which is the first of a trilogy. Thank goodness because you leave us with cliffhangers every chapter and at the end is well done Payal. This is Rea and the Blood of the Nectar. When Rea goes to Astranthia. Astranthia is a flower that grows in Central Europe and Southern Europe and into Eastern Europe. We just talked about the interaction, the interactivity of nature and man, the balance and it’s much more pronounced in the magical world which is just as it should be, the truer world if you will.

Before the break we talked about your experience with your publisher and I think we should mention that it is Mango and Marigold Press which you told me during the break is not only female but also South Asian, really for the Asian authors. Also the colors, the color of the marigold and mango. This beautiful orange like a saffron color. I really loved that they were open to you and that they embraced your world view in this trilogy. I’m thrilled about it and I can’t wait to read more. This idea of abusive power and class injustice in Astranthia.

You say, “Magic is for the good of the people. This is the way and the rest must be righted.” were you thinking about contemporary life politically or in any other way when you were addressing the theme of abusive power and class and justice?

Payal: 100% contemporary and historical. Contemporary, I mean just the state of the world today is a prime fodder for writing about abusive power and people in power abusing their role but also historically I come from India and we have grown up with the caste system and then religious politics between Hindus and Muslims just continues to persist. I definitely drew from all of those experiences. Then even as I’ve been living in the States for the last nine years now and drawing in from racial politics in the States as well and generally just the whole world honestly. Played a very important part in creating the power dynamics in Astranthia. Again children’s books can have so many layers and children are not dumb. They are really smart individuals and are sponges really that can absorb information if you give it to them well and in a way that they can understand it.

I see power on two levels micro and macro. Maybe a 12 year old does not, may not fully understand it on the macro level or have experienced some of the injustices of it on a macro level. Some might have as well but definitely on a micro level we face it. We face it as kids going to school and authoritative power from your teachers and principals and perhaps from bullies in school. It doesn’t have to be just this thing that’s happening at the world level or a national level. Parents play into power politics, siblings. I mean it’s around us constantly at your job place, your workplace. It was drawn from all of these different places.

Also the fact that Rea battles this in Darjeeling and she sees sort of a mirror image in Astranthia where when you come from lower income families you’re just carrying this burden that you’ve basically been born into. It just acts against you for no good reason, for no fault of yours rather. You have to break out of it. In Astranthia too again not giving too much away but the ruler is openly misusing her power and very little can be done about it.

Diane: That is the kind of runaway train feeling that you have with some world leaders as well. I think that you you’ve hit on a point that you’re now putting into the mind’s eye through reading of young citizens, future citizens of the world to seek social justice, to rise up rather than to ride along with the status quo. That I think is heroic in and of itself. I think that I loved also this point. This is in Astranthia where as you say the queen she’s whoa. She is really off her rocker but I mean not in a way that’s entirely unfamiliar to us and sadly but here’s the point that you make.

The royal blood flows in poor and rich alike. They need to awaken it by becoming our true selves. This is a truth that I think is extremely powerful. I wonder if you just address for us the power of stories because you’ve already allowed one of your characters Poppy to say stories are the gateway that open your mind to think differently and question what people have stopped questioning. What is your take on the meaning of stories then?

Payal: 100%, exactly. It was very important for me to make it very clear that magic ran in every individual regardless of caste, community, creed, race, religion, culture. That is very much an open metaphor to the world we live in today which is that each of us have in us the potential to achieve greatness and be our best self regardless of what we look like, where we come from, what people think of us, what people want to think of us that we have that power within us, each of us.

It is up to us to unlock it very much in the same way that in Astranthia everyone’s born with it but you do have to go through a series of trials and tribulations like sort of overcoming your own weaknesses and your own, opening up your own qualities of courage and selflessness and loyalty and achieving your true best self to be able to wield power. That’s what I wanted to tell kids too that even having magic is not as simple as oh I have magic. Now I have a wand. Let me say a spell and boom, I have magic. Nope, you have to work for it. You have to work hard for it. It takes determination. It will take a lot out of you but if you persist you will achieve your goals. That was the undertone with the magic system. I didn’t want it to be an easy fix for anybody.

For the queen as well you know she is uh she’s uh she’s pretty ruthless but we don’t we don’t go into a very deep backstory in book one. We have more of that in book two but you do get a sense that she too is battling her own insecurities and that there is more to her story. She’s not just being evil for the sake of being evil like there is something there. I mentioned one of the rules in Astranthia especially in terms of who ascends the throne in Astranthia it isn’t just the firstborn. It’s the one who has a child first. I specifically put that in, a little complicated twist there to show that sometimes traditions and things that we have just long accepted as is can be questioned and oftentimes should be questioned as should people in power should be questioned if they’re not following through with their promises and traditions and old customs that don’t fit with our new way of thinking should be questioned.

That may have worked well in Astranthia for all those years but the Razya, the queen is allowed to be quite upset about that rule because she is first born in but just because she didn’t have children means she isn’t rightfully heir to the throne which really does seem unfair. Kind of again so many of our if this is it was also sort of to parallely show that sometimes especially for women we have so many of these expectations put on our society, family-wise, our own selves. We have to do ABC things in that order in order to be considered successful. If you don’t have a family or a husband or a partner or a child or a great job and all of these different things you’re considered less. It’s just ridiculous is what it is.

Diane: You’ve turned that on its ear. We have just a few minutes till the close and that in and of itself is hard to believe but I think you’ve taken us really much closer to understanding maybe our own empowerment and our own latent magic as you say. Regardless of these arbitrary sort of cages that people put us in terms of yes, expectations, what we’re supposed to do. Also that you’ve allowed us to see Rea and Rea come into our own not that everything is perfect afterwards and you’ve also given us a subtle villain, the queen. She coming from a place too and so maybe understand her meshugas is probably very helpful towards developing compassion and understanding ourselves even better.

We have just a couple minutes to our close. This has been a 10-year journey for you created your own tradition of storytelling. I wonder if you have any quick words of advice for people who might want to take this journey of imagination.

Payal: Oh yes. My biggest piece of advice to anyone who wants to write a book is to start writing it. For those who are in the process of writing a book do not stop. By that I mean especially in the first draft that you’re writing it’s very tempting to go back and edit what you’ve written and revise what you’ve written to perfect it and then move on. Do not do that. First draft remember are just meant to be terrible. Keep writing until the very end no matter how horrible you think the words are on the page but it’s so important to get to that finish line because once you do you have a whole story down however messy.

Once you have that down you can then go back and mold it if you never reach that finish line in the first draft and it is one of the reasons why it took me 10 years to write it because I would go back. I would write four chapters. I would go back and revise it and spend all of that time and then I would write the next four chapters and go back and revise all the eight chapters. What ended up happening is once I finished writing the whole draft so much of what I had tediously spent revising I had to delete because it didn’t write with the storyline and it didn’t work so keep writing to the end is my advice.

Diane: Great, thank you Payal Doshi. It’s been a pleasure having you.

Payal: Thank you Dianne. This is wonderful.

Diane: It’s been great fun your social media handles Payal Doshi Author on twitter, Payal D Writes and Facebook is Payal D Writes. Look her up on payaldoshiauthor.com. Thanks to our engineers Matt Weidner and Aaron Keller, to our executive producer Robert Giolino and most of all to you our listeners. Remember to stay safe and use your untapped powers. Till next week thank you for dropping in.

Thank you so much for dropping in. Please join Diane Dewey again next Friday at 8 AM Pacific Time and 11 AM Eastern Time on the Voice America Variety Channel. We’ll see you then.