A poet within us -Martian

Friends I feel honored to interview one of my blogger friend who is known as the Martian Poet. Besides being a blogger he is also a poet. As a Sunday treat he has agreed to spend few precious moments with us.

When did you decide to become a writer?
I became interested writing a short story and directed my siblings to act on that, and this happened when I was a 10 years old. Then I started writing poems, and  got prizes in school and I remember I wrote a poem on science which  got me the  first price in school.
2.I know that you are a blogger as well so what do you like blogging about?
I like to blog about anything that comes to my mind, I don’t have anything in specific or any constraint to write about. But I care or I’m interested in writing more on Peace, God,Nature, Women,Poverty,Life,Love,Romance

3.Do you write part time or full time?
I do write  part time or whenever I feel like  writing, and I don’t write  full time since I got  a full time job already 🙂 I will take writing as.my  full time job after few years.

4.What are you working on currently?
I am planning to publish another ebook of poems and have a plan to finish a sci-fi fantasy novel,and  hopefully will finish it by the end of the  year .The poetry book might be published in few months.Also I am in conversation with publishers to have a hard copy printed.

5.What genre are your books and what draws you to it?
Mostly I write Poems, sometimes Fantasy short stories ( not much on blog), and Essays.

6.How do you develop your plots and characters?
I choose from the real life, all of my poems or anything that I pen down are  a result of an emotional outcome from the surrounding, that makes me cry, makes  me sad or  angry.
If I write a poem on beauty of a girl it does mean there is someone behind it. If I write a poem on God it means something has happened at that moment.

7.We all need a hero! Tell us about your protagonist character ?
Was there a real life inspiration behind him or her?
Hmm, well this is an  interesting question. I had many, not one. Though being  an avid Engineering student I did liked Einstein , I liked Keats as well , I liked tamil poets who live 2000 years ago, and we call the period they lived as “Sangam Literature”.Among them Thiruvalluvar who wrote”Thirukkural “( a collection of couplet poems on ethics), Kambar ( who wrote Ramayana in Tamil language). I have never seen any such book in any country’s  literature ( I am not a literature student though, every word you wonder). If you can read Ramayana in Tamil, that’s enough to become a poet and you will be amazed the handling of the metaphor.And in real life there are close friends who inspire everyday, many fellow bloggers are the real ones who made me  write for past  4 years on my blog
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8.Which was your debut novel?
I don’t have any debut novel but I have a collection of poems called ” Sonnet of a Saint”. This is available in Kindle store but I am planning to shove off soon, because I am planning to  publish it  as hard copy.

9. Do you go for self publishing or the traditional wayof publishing?
I like to publish myself but I still feel people are not much interested in ebooks. It’s quite difficult to sell off book ourselves, it’s very hard to market the book, I  still feel the traditional publishing is the best way to reach out your audience, and without spending anything you can’t get  anything. So self publishing might look interesting but from my experience I think  tradtional publising is the best way to start and then you can come to self publishing.when you are a proved writer, you can go and publish yourself, this is what I feel but still I believe in self publishing if friends can do some part of marketing for our words.

10. Were the sales upto your expectations?
Not at all , not  even 1% of my expectations were fulfilled . I am happy though.Maybe ,I could not reach out the people, but I can’t stop writing :).

11.Is there a message in your novel that you hope your readers will grasp?
I have not written any novel so far, but every poem I compose,  I try to put a feeling on it.

12.How much research do you do before writing?
I like this question so much, because I do some research before writing anything. One of my poem in my blog about Lion took me a week, to know about them and when I read about them and watched videos, I knew  why they are called as King of Forest/ animals, and  they truly deserve it.This inspired me to write more on them. I wanted to write a poem hence I read about them.It depends on the feeling and the message I want to convey in each poem.

13.Name any 4 of your favorite books.
Ok, here they are: -Einstein: His Life and Universe By Walter Isaacson How to Win Friends and Influence People By  Dale CarnegieThe Chronicles of Narnia By C. S. LewisTheAlchemist By  Paulo CoelhoAnd I have read most of the books of these authors and I have many more. I don’t read the most popular authors, instead  I  like to explore the unknown authors.

14 .What do you think makes a good story?

I feel the few things very  important for have a good story are , few characters, few plots and narrative style of writing rather keeping as mystery.

Thank you for the questions and have a happy blogging.All the best for your future works.

My thanks are towards Martian for this interview.
If you want to visit his blog you can do it from here.

©Paramita