Ronit J

“I’m a published author.” I’ve been dying to say this phrase for a little over 18 years now. And I’ve finally done it!

I can’t believe this day has finally arrived.

So, on this day, I’m going to tell you all a story. The story of how I decided I wanted to be a fantasy writer.

My First Brush With Fantasy

As was the case with a lot of children from my generation, I reading journey started with Harry Potter. But, I didn’t know they were books at first.

In 2001, everyone was talking about the movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Naturally, I wanted to jump in on the hype, but I wasn’t able to. My family isn’t too big on movies, and I only watched my first movie in the theatre in 2002 (when I was 8 years old). That film was Spider-Man, but we’re not here to talk about that.

The same year, Chamber of Secrets came out, and everyone was hyped about it. I was already a movie too late in this Harry dude’s films, so I was hellbent on catching up. And yet again, I missed it. But this time, someone from my class informed me that the movie was adapted from a book series. Now, my parents might have not cared about movies, but they would certain care for books, right?

Long story short, my dad got a boxset of the first 4 Harry Potter books. My mom was so pissed at him, because she thought he had overspent on something I might never even read. Luckily for my dad, I devoured those books in less than a few months.

As I read through Harry Potter (twice), I started discovering other books through the Scholastic book fair. Some honorable mentions include Narnia, Famous Five, Secret Seven, and the usual. But, the most important book of my childhood hadn’t come to me yet.

The Book That Made Me Want to Write Books And Be A Published Author

Well, this part of the story also begins with a movie. I happened to see this trailer that I found really cool. I watched the movie and was absolutely spellbound.

Coincidentally, I had seen the book this movie was based on a few times in our Scholastic Book Fairs. A week after I watched the movie, I spotted the book on a roadside bookseller. I begged my parents to buy it, and this one was a chunky book.

I devoured it in about a week or two, and by the end of the book I realised how poorly the film had adapted the book. The book was absolutely majestic. Rich in imagination, a somewhat harder magic system than Harry Potter, more defined character arcs and plots that didn’t really rely on magical deus ex machinas like Harry Potter did (of course, all this I only learned much later, but you can see why I found this book better, right?)

The book in question, is Eragon!

Now, I am aware that Eragon gets some flak for borrowing heavily from Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, but to be fair… I hadn’t watched or read any of those before. So, Eragon was my introduction to epic fantasy.

And in Paolini’s defence, to be able to craft a world like that and write a story like that at 15 was absolutely inspiring. The fact that he became a published author at 19 was equally motivating. Especially to 11-year-old me.

If there’s one author who impacted my life the most, it has to be Christopher Paolini. If you’re reading this, Mr Paolini, I am eternally grateful that you wrote and published Eragon.

My First Unpublished Manuscript

My very first post on this website actually talks about this, but let me elaborate better.

I was 11 when I finished reading Eragon. I don’t know about you, but I was a fairly hopeful kid at 11. The urge to write and become a published author was strong. The want to get published before 15 was stronger.

Plus, a lot of scenes of Eragon kept playing in my head like a movie. Slowly, those scenes morphed into original stories that my mind started cooking. Before I knew it, I had an inciting incident, a mystery, and a fantasy world full of elves, dwarves, and dragons!

I wrote about 100 pages of that story on Adobe Pagemaker… before my hard drive crashed. I lost all that hard work, and I learned a very valuable lesson that day – Always backup your documents.

A few years later —after I was done reading Lord of the Rings, A Song of Ice and Fire, and more mature books—I revisited my original manuscript and started rewriting it from scratch. But even that felt inadequate. However, I could see my growth as a writer. I knew I could do this.

At 19, I finally started rewriting this story for the third and final time. I finished writing a 246,000-word manuscript. I was ready to be a published author. Or so I thought.

In retrospect, that manuscript is positively amateur at best, and horribly weak at worst. It’s a pale LOTR/Eragon imitation that fails to light a candle to either work. Was I upset? Yes. Did I learn from this 8-9 year old ordeal? Hell yeah!

Finally going to be a Published Author!

After that failed manuscript, I started researching about writing. Fantasy writing in particular. I wrote 2 more complete novels, several short stories, and made several short films too. [Remember how both my childhood reading milestones started with films? That seems to have had a larger impact on me than I realised before writing this blog post]

Over the past decade, I’ve written and directed on countless short films, written and directed 2 indie features, written 3 unpublished manuscripts, wrote several short stories, 2 of which were published in anthologies and magazines.

Now, I’m ready to finally self-publish my debut novel. I wrote it for Camp NaNoWriMo April 2023, and December 1st 2023 is the day I am releasing it.

I was 11 years old when I decided I want to be a fantasy author. At 29, I can finally say “I am a published author!”

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OUT NOW! Help! My Dog Is The Chosen One!
is available for purchase!

Word Count: ~70,000

Description: 

Kunal is forced to adventure…
Because his dog is the Chosen One! 

Kunal is just your average guy living on rent, working from home, and suffering from anxiety. His world is turned upside down when his girlfriend asks him to foster a rescued a street dog. Despite his qualms, Kunal agrees because, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

That’s when the extra-dimensional dark lord attacks.

The dog is the only one who can stop the dark lord, but he can’t do it without Kunal’s help. Can Kunal overcome his many anxieties or will our world suffer for eternity?

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