Finally here ...

It’s been over five years since I first sat down and started writing Refuge. And now nine drafts later, after countless late nights and dark moments when I thought I’d never finish it or ever see it published, it’s finally about to go out into the world.

When you set out on a journey, you always imagine what it’s going to be like, and what’s remarkable is how the journey never turns out how you imagined. It’s never as easy as you think it will be, but if you sit back a moment and reflect, you realize it was a damn sight more rewarding.

For if there’s one group of people who’ve given me untold satisfaction it’s been my characters. I love them as much if not more than when they first drifted into my consciousness. I feel like I have a deep and loving friendship with Noor, Charlie, Aamir Khan and Wali. I understand them deeply, appreciate them more than ever, take delight in their idiosyncrasies and am sensitive to their failings. When I was done with the last major pass, I felt a sudden loneliness at not having them around, and now as I am finishing up proofing the book, it is almost as if some long lost friends have come back to visit. When it comes to more nefarious characters like Ivor and Tariq, I suppose my enmity towards them is more intense because I know there is humanity still in them if only they could take the trouble to grasp it. They attempt to hurt those I love and for that I can never forgive them.

I am deeply proud of this novel and I am extremely excited about the next step, to getting others to fall in love with the story and the characters. There’s a part of me who, of course, dreamed of the big publishing deal. The swift and glorious literary acclaim with a party thrown in my honor on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Salman Rushdie perhaps making a late entrance.

But, on the other hand, there is something exhilarating about having my destiny and the destiny of this book in my own hands. Right now, I’m developing a TV show about the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, and at its center is the figure of Francisco Pizarro, a man in his late 50s, still searching for his empire, while others his age have long retired. He endures all manner of deprivations on his explorations - mutiny, disease, hunger, suffocating heat and swarms of mosquitos. For seven lonely months, he and twelve other men were stranded on a beach in the middle of nowhere, with the hope of anyone coming to rescue them fading by the day. Yet he kept believing, and once rescued, he kept exploring and he found the Inca empire and won a fortune.

I’m not as old as Francisco, and I certainly hope when I do find my ‘gold’ that I’m not consumed by power and greed as the conquistadors were, but if there’s anything in Francisco’s example, it’s that you have to seize your own destiny nowadays, believe utterly in what you do, and keep sailing on long after others have turned back or told you you’re mad.

This is a new world in publishing. I am excited to be a part of it, I am excited to get Refuge out to the widest possible audience, and I am excited to continue Noor and Charlie’s wondrous story on way beyond this book …