I’ve never written a blog, I don’t know how to write a blog, and I have a phobia for creating one, for various reasons….

First, I have many doubts and worries about how to create a blog. I worry about how the text will turn out in the end, how it will look on the web page, yes- the formatting! I wonder if I could add an image, or should I? I wonder if I’m allowed to edit what I wrote after posting it. I worry if I would not like what I wrote or changed my mind about something, many years later. Lastly, I also wonder if anyone would care to read it!

But alas, for all the doubts and worries, I guess I should pen down all the ideas, thoughts and the inspirations that went into every book that I wrote. I should also record the creation process because the process and context of creating every book is so different and yet so interesting. This is so that I can read it for myself many many years later when I become old. I could then read about what I wrote today when I was much younger, and marvel at how juvenile or ridiculous my works were, or how amazing and fascinating my ideas were at that time. I should also write for the friends and readers who gave me so much support and encouragement, so that they could understand what went behind the scenes in the creation of these works. It is always not the same when you read about the author’s thoughts and intentions when he created a piece of work. It gives an added dimension in the appreciation of the piece.

So here it goes, my very first blog post, which of course would be about my very first book- ‘A Very Special Cat’.

Thank you for reading.

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Very much like the cat in the story (you will understand what I mean), this book is very special to me as it was my very first published book (the second book I’ve written to be exact as the first one never even got past the publishers… a little about this another time). Fortunately, thanks to KDP, I was able to put this book out into the world.

The story, like all my stories, was inspired by people around me, primarily my family, which consists of my wife and 2 boys: a teenager-to-be and a cute little one (they look just like the boys drawn in my stories). Once, for a period of time, the conversation topic between the two boys revolved around nothing but Pokemon, and I kept hearing them talk about catching ‘Shinies’. I’ve never seen a ‘Shiny’ Pokemon and had no idea what it looked like. (I got to see one much later after I finished my book and it was far from what I imagined it to be!)

But according to the two experts, ‘Shinies’ are extremely rare and precious, and you need to be extremely lucky just to get the chance to see one, let alone catch one. So this gave rise to my idea of a shiny and rare animal, but I did not want to use the term ‘shiny’, hence I settled on the word ‘luminous’ instead. Why a cat? I have no idea, Cats are enigmatic creatures and though I don’t personally keep one, I always marvel at their stealth, grace and beauty. They have an air of aloofness, indifference and steadfastness to freedom which draws me to them!

So there I had my idea of a ‘Luminous Cat’ which was the basis for the story. A flash of inspiration also gave me the ending to the story- somehow the ‘ending’ has always been there. But I did not know how to join the beginning to the end: how the search for the precious cat unfolded and how the various characters in the family reacted to the boy’s ‘find’. It took me almost half a year to get this simple book out, with a lot of stops in between abandoning the project, picking it again and then abandoning it again. (You must be wondering why such a simple book could have taken so long to make). Guess this was the reason why this book appeared so bumpy and did not flow as well as (I guess) my other books.

Anyway, this book, done using Adobe Sketch (with only 5 layers!) on a very old Generation 2 iPad, is by no means my best (in my opinion), but it’s certainly ‘A Very Special Book’ to me.