( Valerie Laws and I are Facebook friends. We got chatting about publishing and literature. The result was she wrote a guest post for my blog and I did for her blogging collective — Authors Electric. Mine is on epublishing in India, to be published on 30 Oct 2013.) 

Hello, I’m Valerie Laws, a writer from the North East coast of England. I’ve had twelve books published (novels, poetry, drama, language…), twelve plays commissioned for stage and BBC Radio, and I create science-based audio-visual poetry installations for exhibitions worldwide. Some of these are electronic, one of them, QUANTUM SHEEP, made me world-infamous for spray-painting a new form of poetry onto live sheep, to celebrate quantum theory. I love new discoveries, hence I’ve been researching the brain with neuroscientists and the science of dying with pathologists as Writer in Residence, and I love learning new stuff.

Lately I feel like I’ve begun to discover new things about India, although I’ve still not been to your wonderful country (I’d love to, I perform my work all over the world). Thanks to the internet, I’ve discovered Indian News Media, and been entranced with the beautiful English much of it employs, which puts our tabloid press to shame. I’ve discovered, to my own shame for not being aware before, the extent to which English is spoken and written in India, and I’ve discovered Amazon.in, and all from my study chair! I think many people in the UK are still unaware of all this.

Now that Amazon India is fully online, we should be able to discover each others’ authors so much more easily, assuming we have Kindles or Kindle apps on our computers or phones. No more shipping or waiting, and no more being restricted to the classics or mega-best-sellers.

So this is a greeting from an English author. I write crime fiction, comedy fiction, poetry etc, and hope to find readers in India, as I hope to find new Indian authors to read in various genres. Since I have your attention (I hope), perhaps I can ask for comments or answers – are there many Indian readers who enjoy new British or US crime fiction? Are readers happy to read books with strong regional detail or even bits of dialect? I have two crime novels out, THE OPERATOR and THE ROTTING SPOT which are based where I live. I also have a comedy novel, LYDIA BENNET’S BLOG which is a parody of Austen’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’ from Lydia’s point of view, written in modern Teen language but set in Regency times. Do Indian teens use this language like US and UK teens do? I also write poems about pathology, death, sex and dating.

I am also a member of a blogging collective called Authors Electric, each of us blogs once a month (my blogs are on the first of every month) about epublishing and writing ebooks. We exchange information, stories and experiences. We are keen to get to know other parts of the world and their authors now the internet has made this so much easier. Is there a Young Adult or horror novel market in India for UK and US writers?

I’m delighted that Jaya has agreed to do a guest blog for us (October 30th), so do please visit us any day you like and follow authors’ links and blogs. I look forward to discovering some new writers of ebooks from India.

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Website (about to be refurbished) www.valerielaws.co.uk