Oooooh I wanna go on a quest and banter! ( A Crown of Wishes). Um, hello, please make me an Underworld queen a la Persephone? ( Star-Touched Queen). I think all of my books have some degree of wish fulfilment. It was joyous and hard and uncomfortable. I had to write from the perspective: “Okaaaay…so…what do you wanna do now? Where do you wanna go?” Which is a dangerous thing to ask your seventh grade self because they will inevitably land you into trouble, make enemies, get derailed by pangs of hunger, and, ultimately, drag you to hell if they can. With Aru, I knew who she was before I even figured out the plot. I loved the atmosphere and walking alongside the character as they discovered the labyrinths I built for them. My first two books started world first, and I loved writing them. I had to build Aru’s world around her character, and that wasn’t something I sought out to do with my first two books. Obviously, I couldn’t just throw all that angst on the page and call it a book. Writing Aru required tapping into an amused and constantly panicked part of myself. I don’t think we’re capable of shrugging off who we were in middle school. Seventh grade was the year I gave myself bangs (ugh), used Nair for the first time and left it on too long (hello chemical Groucho Marx moustache burns), got dumped over AIM (NO!) and also laughed so hard and so often that my face constantly hurt and I’m pretty I sprained my ribs at lunch every day. In this case, Aru demanded my experience as a seventh grader. Writing middle grade was neither easier nor harder, but it demanded different parts of myself. As I read this, I dearly hope that doesn’t say something about me. In my second novel, A Crown of Wishes, I put my humor and general lamentations about the nature of quests in … a … talking … corpse … character. In my debut, The Star-Touched Queen, my most autobiographical character was the flesh eating demon horse. I’m not that great about putting myself into my main characters. Without further ado, please give it up to Roshani! Aru Shah and the End of Time is the first book in the hilarious, action-packed Pandava quartet based on Hindu mythology and coming out from the Disney-Hyperion new imprint Rick Riordan Presents on March 27.

Welcome all! Today we are delighted to welcome Roshani Chokshi back to The Book Smugglers to talk about her experience writing her new Middle Grade novel Aru Shah and the End of Time.

Roshani chokshi aru shah