In this episode, I had a chat with author Nikesh Shukla. You may have heard him in Season 1 where the two of us looked at a listener’s first page. If you’re not familiar with his work he’s written three novels so far: Coconut Unlimited which was nominated for the Costa, Meatspace and his latest, The One Who Wrote Destiny. He’s got a fourth, a YA title, called Run, Riot coming out in June of this year. He also edited a collection of essays called The Good Immigrant which, after a successful Unbound funding campaign, went on to huge critical acclaim, sold a bunch of copies and won a Readers’ Choice Award.

As Nikesh mentions at the beginning, we’re both sleep-deprived dads so, it takes us a little while to get to the punch but I think you’re going to get a lot out of this talk. He’s modest and self-deprecating but we talk about craft and finding what a story’s really about and the story of his latest book is a journey that’s taken nearly 20 years. Really inspiring.

This is a great episode to listen to if you want to know:
– what are different ways I can approach a character’s ‘voice’?
– how can I decide what to write about?
– what’s the best way to approach a writing routine?
– who should I be writing for?

If you’d like to read some of Nikesh’s work and support me and the podcast then I would be churlish indeed to decry your clicking one of these links and buying some:
THE ONE WHO WROTE DESTINY.
MEATSPACE.
COCONUT UNLIMITED.
THE GOOD IMMIGRANT.
THE ART OF THE NOVEL.

And of course you can get my novel, THE HONOURS.