Author Interview : MV Kasey, author of ‘Sky Fall' (Part 1)

MV Kasey

Read up, the first part of the Interview with MV Kasey, author of 'Sky Fall'. In this part of her Interview, she describes her journey of writing the book, how the characters of  Dee and Yaj came about, how she came up with the core idea and developed it, what she thought was the most challenging part of the book was, Folks...
‘Sky Fall’ happen? Could you describe the journey?

‘Sky Fall’ was an idea that had been brewing in my head for a long time. I’ve always held fascination towards time-travel/alternate universe stories and also stories based on Indian mythology.

And then one day I found myself imagining the scene from the cave where a group of friends, find a mysterious object that transports them to an unknown world.

 Books that I grew up reading like ‘Chandamama’ or ‘Amar Chitra Katha' were exciting at that time, but seem a little too black and white and not well fleshed-out.

I wanted to write a book where children would get exposure to Indian mythology in a fun and adventurous way, while also staying true to the typical teenage sensibilities.

How did the story, especially Dee’s and Yaj’s come about?

Initially, when I had written ‘Sky Fall’, it was a short story geared towards middle grade (Age 9-11) children. But then, I’ve personally always preferred reading Young Adult books with a bit of romance and tension between the main characters.

So, I had changed my story to include an underlying love story of a couple of teens, who had a little bit of history between them and were also friends at school.

Was writing on mythology, (albeit, a little differently from the

usual) a challenge for you? Especially, about Manu and the Saptarishis.

It was definitely a challenge. I know how rigid and fiercely protective certain readers can be about mythology, especially Indian mythology. They don’t like author’s imagination to take over what they term as ‘facts’ in mythology.

But then, there are so many versions of mythological stories of the same characters that obviously, at some point, our historians have used their imagination to similarly interpret the past events.

While I don’t claim my book to be along a specific version, I have tried to interpret my own take on the events that took place during the first avatar of Vishnu and with the Manu and Saptarishis.

What according to you is different about your book?

I have left most of the events and locations up to the reader’s imagination. In fact, I don’t even mention that the characters are based on earth or that they are transported to someplace on earth. I like to play around with the idea of alternate universes.

While I understand, that everyone wants to always churn out something ‘different’ from the others, in my book I’ve tried to incorporate more familiar themes, especially the lives and thought processes of typical teens who were dropped into an unknown world.

I have also tried to humanize the larger than life characters such as Manu and the Saptarishis who had to make hard decisions, based on the events happening around them.

How would you relate the lives of characters to the lives ‘today’? Any similarities?

 

I think people have always had some or other crisis during all the ages of civilizations, whether it was in a form of a war, an attack, a natural calamity, etc. They had to make hard decisions or sacrifices.

In my story, I have left it to the reader to decide on whether certain acts or decisions made by these characters were morally right or wrong or human.

You can Read the Review, right here.