Dive into the world of true crime narratives with host K. Hari Kumar and seasoned Indian journalist Shevlin Sebastian as they discuss the book ‘The Stolen Necklace’ and the art of weaving captivating stories from real-life incidents.
Interview originally printed in Deccan Chronicle in June 2013.
Wannabe writers might want to try travelling in trains when they feel creative. Back in 1990 J. K. Rowling was on a train to London when the idea for Harry Potter just “fell into her head”. Twenty years later, K. Hari Kumar wrote his first novel on a train in Delhi.
Inspiration comes from all quarters; films, folktales and even cartoons. I have read stories from Chandamama, and ghost stories of Charles Dickens, Satyajit Ray and Ruskin Bond. Pet Sematary was the full-fledged horror novel that made a deep impact in my mind. The Butcher’s Theater by Jonathan Kellerman made me realise that every horror story does not have a supernatural entity. This served as an inspiration for my book, That Frequent Visitor (2015).
Screenwriter and bestselling horror writer K. Hari Kumar finds the genre’s market marginalised and untapped despite our rich oral horror tradition. “Only few retain the taste in horror, while majority keep away because of the fear it instilled in their mind. The tendency to choose an international writer sometimes puts Indian English writers of the genre at a disadvantage. The equation changes when horror readers from regional languages switch to Indian English or our books are translated into regional languages,” he says.