Ghosts and Cows galore in C.G.Salamander's latest mystery books

 C.G.Salamander aka Andrew David is out with two mystery chapter books for young readers in the 6-10 years. While Yamini and the 7PM Ghosts is published by Scholastic India, Moodunnit is from Duckbill(Penguin Random House).Andrew shared a bit of information for his readers about his new releases.

1. You seem to be on a mystery book writing spree. Passing phase? Or just testing to your writing abilities in this genre?

I am, and it's so much fun! I just sent out a middle grade mystery the other day, and I have a chapter book mystery that I'm editing at the moment. So, I don't think it's a passing phase, I've always enjoyed writing mystery and I think I'm going to continue to enjoy it. You are right about the exploring my writing abilities bit though, and more so when I write across age groups. For really young readers, I write like I'm rooting for them to solve the mystery, I'm sneaky with middle grade books, and with YA, I genuinely want to make a monkey of my readers.   

2. Did you weave Janaagraha into  Yamini and the 7PM Ghosts a or was it the other way around?

Janaagraha came first. Sahitya Rani and I were commissioned by Janaagraha to make Yamini, and it was such a great collaboration because we had complete creative freedom with our story, and only had to touch on active citizenship subtly. At the heart of it, Yamini and the 7 PM Ghosts is a story about a few kids who solve a mystery. The active citizenship angle helped, because it only fuelled their call to action and later their quest. Looking back, we lucked out on the collaboration, both with Janaagraha and later with Scholastic.

3. What was your relationship with ghosts in your childhood? Scared? Curious?  Any spooky experiences in your childhood?

 

As a child, there was nothing I feared more than ghosts. And yes, a handful of scary experiences, the tiles in my room once shuffled out of the floor like a deck of cards, which was incredibly scary; I've witnessed at least a couple of exorcisms at church camp back in the early 2000s, which is something that definitely needs exploring now that I'm say it out loud. And recently I found footprints on my cupboard, although there's a logical reason behind this mystery. But more about this in question 6.  

4. Have you reaped the benefits of Janaagraha to solve civic issues in your neighbourhood?

 

I haven't personally, although I have fired off a few angry tweets at BESCOM, if that counts. But I did another project with Janaagraha early this year, and it involved going through a list of active citizenship projects that children from across India took part in, and some of them were really remarkable, where the children had brought in actual change (getting their schools to ban the use of plastic plates and cups, park clean ups, filling up potholes, so on and so forth). I for one was blown away and reaffirmed of the fact that children end up doing a lot more than we adults.

5. What inspired Moodunnit? Have you delved into the world of gardening?

 

My girlfriend, Alannah! It was all her from start to finish, and she more or less handed the story to me on a platter, after she started cracking up over the premise of the book playing out in front of her in real time. To say anything more would be to give the plot away. And no, I'm terrible at gardening. Allannah and my father-in-law, however, farm their own food, and it's a lot of fun to watch their garden take shape, and of course eat up all their hard work.

  6.With Puu and Yamini and the 7 pm ghosts social issues have  found a way into your books. Is that a conscious decision to spread awareness among kids?

Puu and Yamini and the 7 PM Ghosts are my only two books that touch on social issues, to be honest. I think I have about 14 children's books to my name, three of them bestsellers with about 10,000 copies of sales each, and yet it's the ones that touch on social issues that get recognized. The answer to your question is both a yes and a no. It's a yes with anything manual scavenging related, because I believe this is something kids need to be sensitised to, and I believe that people need to keep talking about it till it's eradicated. Samidha and I are currently working on a nonfiction comic on manual scavenging at the moment, it's for adults though, and it's partly funded by a grant, and this is something we've been working on for a while. So yes, manual scavenging is the only social issue that I would consciously write about. With everything else, it's because it's a commission or because I used it as a tool to further the plot or build up a character, or both. If I'm being absolutely honest here, I'm not the biggest fan of children's books with social issues attached to them, more so when the story cannot stand on its own. I think it speaks to our hang up overlooking for meaning or morals in our stories, and I would prefer to read and write books that don't delve on social issues.

7. Have you ever put your detective skills to use in your childhood/adulthood? Successful/ failure?

 

As a child, I was always on the other side of the law. I knew exactly where to hide my report cards (inside the sofa cushion); I knew precisely how to forge them, and I also got kicked out of school at one point, and could find out who snitched, so I guess that counts. But back to the footprints on my cupboard, and how I solved that mystery as an adult. Long story short, I found footprints on my cupboard one day, and they appeared to be walking upwards. But that wasn't even the weirdest part. The strangest thing about the footprints was that they were quite small, like they belonged to a child. And I know this because I tried placing my feet next to the footprint on the cupboard, just to see if I'd unwittingly made them. Of course, this creeped me out for quite a while, but then I sort of deduced that the carpenter probably had a daughter who stood on the cupboard before it was put up (I was the first person to move into the house). Needless to say, I asked my landlord about this, and he confirmed it. Mystery solved. He did however go on about how she was very ill and succumbed to pneumonia, and then there are the footprints that keep coming back regardless of how many times I clean them off the cupboard. And that's not counting nightmares, and the sound of a child's anklet coming from within the walls. But I'm sure there's a logical explanation to all of that...

 

8. How has your engineering background affected your writing process?

 

Not all that much, actually. It's made me more disciplined, I guess, because I treat my writing like a job (I clock in and I clock out). But apart from that, I guess the only advantage it's given me is that bit of science I carry around in my back pocket. It helps me when I'm editing STEM or when someone commissions me to write something STEM related.

 

9. Any childhood experiences which made you realise that stories had power and you could write them?

Tons of them, but it was never about writing them, it was always about who could tell the better lie, who could finish the ending of a cartoon. A bit of context, growing up, Dragonball Z would play on Cartoon Network, and once it reached a particular point, they would replay it right from the very beginning. The same was true of shows on Pogo and Animax, and whoever pretended to know what happened next and could make up a convincing enough story, reigned supreme. That and cooking up a convincing enough story to get out of trouble.

10.What is the most difficult part of your writing process?

I love the writing process. I love entering this zone where I stop noticing anything that happens around me, and I get really annoyed when someone disturbs me while in said zone. I enjoy everything about it really, from the first draft to the rewrites, and the tight deadlines. I think the most difficult part for me would be the editing. I can't edit a story right away, and need to wait a month before I can revisit it and edit it after I'm done. And if I like the story a lot, and feel that I can make it much better, then I obsess over it, and I keep revisiting in spans of two to six months, and it's just so annoying because I go into rewrites if I'm not happy with something, and if I'm still not happy with it, I shelf it and return to it after a year. Although, thankfully only about 10% of my books fall into this category, and weirdly enough the books that end up in this category turn out being my best and worst books.

 To buy a copy of Yamini and 7 PM Ghosts click here.

To buy a copy of Moodunnit click here