The 74th session of An Author’s Afternoon with Christopher C Doyle opened up a world of fantasy and mythology which forms the core of his novels. A large number of young guests in the audience lapped it up.
Tracing his journey of coming of age as a writer, Christopher reminisced of his salad days when he started writing bedtime stories for his three-year-old daughter. As he evolved as a writer, he began to delve into mysteries, fantasy, mythologies and added his unique narrative style which clicked with the readers, but not before scores of his manuscripts were rejected by the publishers.
He was guided by an insanely burning desire to become a bestseller. After many popular novels he matured as researcher with a keen and deep interest in the past and often forgotten worlds.
Dealing with Indian mythologies is no easy task, so the Author took help of two seasoned scholars with Doctorate in Sanskrit to get at the facts. With a research team to help him, he started visiting places which find a mention his work. “I try to go to these places and take note of the minutest of details and relate it in my novels,” he said.
His initiative -Quest Club – is like a virtual club where like-minded readers come together to interact with the author and among themselves on topics in which they have an abiding interest. They often get a free copy of Doyle’s book. Some of talented readers have charted out their own journeys and have become established authors in their own right.
The gist of the discussion veered around the fact that how different civilisations, separated in time and geography, have had a commonality of thoughts, myths and folklores. The author alluded to the fact that some of these old long-lost civilisations were perhaps technically very advanced.
Some among the young enthusiastic audience raised pertinent thought-provoking questions about our past civilisations which the author agreed was not easy to answer.