Happy Birthday, Shadowland: Thinking Back to the Beginning

Excitement! Excitement! My new children's fantasy novel, Shadowland, came out today! (For a description and excerpt, see www.chitradivakaruni.com). It is a stand alone book, but it's also the final novel in the Brotherhood of the Conch trilogy, a project I began in 2002--a long haul. I want to share with you a bit of the story of how all this came to be.

At that time I'd been writing for several years and had already published Arranged Marriage, Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, Vine of Des