Chit Chatting with Author Ekta R. Garg

 Chit Chatting with Author Ekta R. Garg

Interviewed By:  Jill Sheets

J:  Tell us about yourself.

E: My name is Ekta Garg, and I'm a Reviewer, Editor, Author, and Dreamer of stories and books. I've been writing pretty much my whole life, but I knew at the age of 14 that I wanted to be an author. My first book, The Truth About Elves, came out in 2021, and I'm so grateful that people have read it as well as my other two books and enjoyed them all!

J: How did you get your start writing?

E: Words and stories have surrounded me for as long as I can remember. I started reading at the age of 4, and once I started there was no stopping me! My mother tells stories of how I would get assigned "homework" in preschool where the teacher would send a children's book home for the night, and apparently I would finish reading in the car even before we got home from school. I also competed in spelling bees when I was younger, so I've harbored an ongoing interest in language for its complexity, beauty, and uniqueness since then. It makes sense that at some point I would go from experiencing stories written by other people to creating my own. Also, my father loved to read, and my grandfather was a journalist in India who wrote and reported in four languages. Given that I have two journalism degrees of my own, you can definitely say a love for words and how we use them is in my blood!

J: Tell us about your book "The Witch’s Apprentice and Other Stories."

E: The Witch's Apprentice and Other Stories is a micro-collection of short stories based on the nursery rhymes and fairy tales we all know and love, and it fills in the gaps of those stories by answering very serious questions like, "Why did Jack and Jill need that pail of water in the first place?"

J:  How did you come up with the idea for the book?

E: A few years ago, I came across a writing prompt that led me to write what would eventually become the title story -- "The Witch's Apprentice." I had so much fun exploring the in-between moments of this classic tale that I did it again with the Jack and Jill nursery rhyme in the story "...To Fetch A Pail of Water..." and then again in the story based on "The Pied Piper of Hamelin," which in my collection is called "Denying Hamelin." There's also a story connected to "The Emperor's New Clothes" as well as a "Goldilocks"/"Sleeping Beauty" mashup.

Many incredibly talented authors and writers have "fractured" well-known fairy tales or retold them by changing settings, genders of characters, or some other major aspect of those originals. My idea in this book was to take classic tales and rhymes, leave what we know firmly in place, and then explore the gaps of those foundational elements. In my author's note at the start of the book, I compare it to moving into a new house. Without knocking down any walls, how do you make the space your own? You repaint walls or even change the purpose of a room -- a dining room becomes a music space; a bedroom becomes a home office. The essentials of the original house still stand, but parts of it have been completely transformed.

As I was brainstorming ideas for my third book, I was actually working on a completely different story. That one was incredibly dark and sad. Last year, my father died and that's been a hard experience to endure. My parents, my sister, and I have always been very close, so losing Dad was, and continues to be, a challenge. In processing my grief, I couldn't keep working on that dark, sad story. So I switched gears to what would eventually become The Witch's Apprentice and Other Stories. Even though there are a handful of dark, sad moments in this book, some parts of it were also lighthearted and fun. I found it much easier to work on shorter stories in this period of my life than I have that other project. In doing so, I had so much fun that I'm really tempted to start working on a second collection now!

J:  Tell us about your books "The Truth About Elves" and  In the Heart of the Linden Wood.

E: The Truth About Elves is a holiday novella for grownups about a man named Curtis who works part-time for Santa as an elf. Santa asks Curtis for a favor, which he really doesn't want to do. He kind of owes Santa, though, so he does the favor, and it ends up taking him to the place he thought he'd never see again: home.

In the Heart of the Linden Wood is an original fairy tale for grownups about a grieving king who has to go on a quest to save his kingdom from a major threat. While he's on that quest, he'll have to rescue some hostages and mend another broken heart piece by piece, all while he's struggling with whether he's worthy of his crown and the memory of his late wife.

Essentially, I write stories about grief and magic and hope, how my characters find themselves at the intersection of all three, and what happens next. The official genres are magical realism and fairy tale fantasy. If you're a grownup who loved books like The Chronicles of Narnia, Bridge to Terabithia, or even more modern classics like The Lunar Chronicles, or the movie Wicked, my books are definitely for you!

J: Do you have any advice on writing?

E: There's an old saying: "You can please some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time, but you can't please all the people all the time." In other words, write fearlessly. Don't be worried about what anyone will think. Be true to yourself and the stories you want to tell. If you were to ask every single person on the planet about your work, chances are pretty high that some of them -- maybe even many of them -- wouldn't like it. Don't write to trends or what other people are writing. Write the stories that are bursting out of you. 

J:  Before you write a book do you outline or just start to write?

E: I'm a planner by nature, so any book or story that I write has some sort of framework holding it up. However, I don't plot every single scene or moment. I like to have a general idea of where the story is going, and I absolutely have to know what the end is. I've left too many stories unfinished because I had no idea where they were going. But I also leave plenty of room for creativity and that magic that happens in the moment when you're swept away by your imagination.

J:  Tell us about your podcast  "Biblio Breakdown."  Where can people listen to it?

E: Biblio Breakdown is my writing podcast where I talk about great books and how to write them. I pick a book, usually a recent read/release, and examine the book along a specific theme. Then I offer exercises during the podcast for writers to try their own hand at doing something similar to what the book has done well. It's available on my author website, https://ektargarg.com. 

J:  Do you have any official website and or social media page?

E: My author website is: https://ektargarg.com. 

My writing blog is The Write Edge, https://thewriteedge.wordpress.com.

Socials:

Facebook: https://facebook.com/ReviewerEditorAuthorDreamer

X/Instagram: @EktaRGarg

J:  Anything else you would like to add?

E: If you're interested in ordering any of my books, I request that you do so from my author website or from an indie bookstore. Help small businesses and indie authors by supporting them directly!

J:  Thank you for the interview.

E: Thank you for the opportunity! I'm truly grateful for it.