8.15 Shikhar Goyal: On Writing Love, Obsession, and the Road to Publication

When carefully laid plans go up in smoke, is it fate playing its hand, or the works of a silent puppet master pulling the strings?

In this episode, engage in a candid conversation with Shikhar Goyal, an iron-and-steel entrepreneur with a creative streak that led him to write his debut novel Delhi Disco, a romantic thriller that crackles with chemistry and unease inside Delhi’s newest club, Kapital.

He opens up about the grind, the tactics that kept him motivated, the early rejections he faced, and how a pragmatic approach to pitching finally took the manuscript to publication.

The conversation moves across the plot twists and suspense along with exploring the love story, the tongue-in-cheek humor, and his process of creating characters he knows so well, even slipping in inside jokes just for kicks.

Books and Movies mentioned in the episode:

• Thursday Murder Club Series by Richard Osman
• Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
• If Tomorrow Comes by Sidney Sheldon
• Bloodline by Sidney Sheldon
• Club You To Death by Anuja Chauhan
• Forgotten (2017)

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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

Tara Khandelwal: 0:52

Hi everyone. Welcome back to Books and Beyond. Today's episode is all about secret sabotage and a whole lot of disco. But before we dive in, take a second to hit that follow button and rate us on Spotify Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your podcast, that's the best way to make sure more book lovers like you discover our show. Now, let's get into it. Today. We're stepping into the chaotic, glamorous world of capital Delhi's hottest nightclub, where music never stops and drama never ends. So we have Samira Kapoor, who is the club's owner, and she's trying to revive her late parents legacy, and nothing is going to get in her way. But there's a series of unfortunate incidents. One minute, the sprinkler system randomly goes off, there's a fire. The next, an entitled birthday boy starts harassing her. She gets splashed across gossip films for all the wrong reasons. There's clearly somebody who wants her and capital to fail. And then we have her boyfriend, Neil, who is a DJ, and we see sort of their relationship evolve and how they team up to sort of figure what's going wrong with this. And I really like this book because it sort of takes you into the ecosystem of Delhi's disco nightlife, which is quite fascinating, and it's a cozy thriller. So I'm very thrilled to have its author, Shikhar Goyal, with us today. And I actually first read this book in manuscript form when Shikhar had submitted it to bound for Editorial Services, and I knew then that there was something really fun about this book, and it's going to do really well. So I'm really happy to have Shikhar here with us today. Welcome Shikhar.

Shikhar Goyal: 2:30

Hi. Tara, thank you so much for having me on this podcast, and thank you for that description of the book. I mean, whenever I hear somebody talk about the book, and they talk about some aspects about the book, like the way you mentioned in a whole different breadth from what I described to people, I am like, wow. Like, you know, like, people are actually reading the book. And, you know, having their own descriptions and their own, you know, highlights of the book. So that is amazing. And thank you for having me cool. I want to know

Tara Khandelwal: 3:01

what is, how would you describe your book?

Shikhar Goyal: 3:05

I usually start from, I usually tell people my my go to one line. Phrase for the book is it's a thriller. So expect people to die, but it's not a dark thriller. It's a comedy thriller. So expect yourself to laugh and not feel too, you know, heavy when people die, or when things go or and, and all of these things. So a lot of, lot of negative and bad elements, but in a very, very light tonality. So, yeah, so that's my go to phrase, and I've been talking about the book so much. Sorry, no, no,

Tara Khandelwal: 3:42

yeah, I was gonna ask you about that, because I actually found the book quite funny, and I found the book quite ironic. Was it meant to have that tongue in cheek humor, that sardonic kind of style. It almost felt like it was a bit of a satire of, you know, these high flying people who run Delhi nightclubs,

Shikhar Goyal: 4:00

100% so I have been the biggest, you know, reader of thrillers in my life, and that's a genre that I read the most. But when it comes to writing myself, I've realized that I cannot do something very serious. I have to, I have to do something which is light and funny, because entertaining readers comes at a later stage, when the manuscript is completed, when I'm sitting with myself, I have to, you know, enjoy myself. So I try to sneak in jokes, I try to sneak in puns, which I think will will be funny, and at that stage, it's all a gamble. And so, yeah, I just try to have fun myself when I'm writing. So that's, that's why the tonality is very light, because when you, whenever you you laugh, you just imagine that I was having so much fun wearing it.

Tara Khandelwal: 4:51

Yeah, I can see that, and it is very light and easy to read. Tell me one insider joke that you put into this book.

Shikhar Goyal: 4:59

Okay, there are a bunch of them, but I'll tell you about, like, a very small pun. So there's a there's a point in the book when Neil is talking to Samira. So Neil is my protagonist, a for everybody who's not at the book. And he's come to India to woo his ex girlfriend, Samira back. And Samira owns a nightclub called capital, and Samira asks him, why are you here in Delhi? And he has to come up with reasons. And he's telling her that I'm I'm also and Neil is a DJ. Neil says that I'm DJing at other clubs in Delhi and so and so. Artists are coming, and he's naming all the artists. And he takes a particular name of an artist, which is called so the artist. Is called Pankaj, and Pankaj is Lego. Is a generic Indian name. But the way that I have written Pankaj is, so it's P, U N, K, hyphen, AJ, AJ, so it's like punk and ujj. So I kind of was thinking like, you know, if there's, if there's a DJ, if there's a cool DJ with a boring, generic name, how would he or she try to, you know, project themselves to the world. So I called him punk. AJ, so I don't know, it's not that big a joke, but at least three, four people have told me that they they paused when they when they came across that, and they laughed a lot. And they should not have laughed that much, but they laughed a lot that, and, and, yeah. So I had, like, other names also in contention. For example, russik. So normally, rustic is R, A, S, I K, but I kind of wanted to put him as R, a hyphen, s, I C, K, like sick, as in, like, you know, like, in a cool manner, like sick. So that did not make the contention, because I was, like, if I put too many similar jokes, like, you know, people will lose the point, so just put one joke, and don't be so greedy. So, yeah, some little, very little thing, like a very minute thing, I think most people would not have even recognized, but yeah, like, when somebody tells me that they come across something and and they laugh. It kind of makes me really happy.

Tara Khandelwal: 7:11

And I love the sort of, also the characters in the book, you know, from Samira, who's the young woman who's trying to revive her mother's legacy to her mother itself, right, Maya. And there's a Prolog where you talk about how she's really into fitness, and how she looks really young, and how she's a very fancy person, and it's even the characterization is really interesting and funny, but also with empathy. But before we get into the characters, I want to know a little bit more about you and how you came to writing, because this is not your day job. You are an iron and steel entrepreneur, which is a completely different world from this Delhi disco that you've sort of, you know, spoken about in the book. So how did it all sort of, and this is your first book. So how did an iron and steel entrepreneur end up writing a novel like Delhi disco?

Shikhar Goyal: 8:06

Oh, my God, that's almost one of the most commonly asked questions that I've been asked ever since the book came out. And and I tell and I for the uninitiated, I tell everybody that where I come from, whether the place to come from, or the work that I do, it is as far a cry from writing as you can get. And, and, yeah, so how does an iron and steel entrepreneur get into writing and publish his first book? So I went to a boarding school in Missouri, and I think I had the best, best English teacher when I was, when I was a kid, probably 10 or 11 years old, and I so I've been a storyteller before that, because I've always been into films and, you know, just being enamored by stories. But for my writing, I think I have to give my teacher a lot of credit. Her name is ma'am Juliana D'Souza, and so she used to run a creative writing class, creating writing club, actually in school and and when my mom was when my mom was coming to drop me to school, she realized that I'm 11 years old, and I have really bad handwriting, very bad English and writing, and I still do to till this day. I still do whenever I sign books, I tell people that I apologize for my bad handwriting. And she came across the creative writing club on on the kind of activities that the school is offering. And she kind of thought that it is cursive writing and not creative writing, because creative writing is something that I we had no context about that there is something like this that happens or is is into existence, and she's like, or she's like, You have to take this for like, you know, two three months, go there and improve your handwriting, because otherwise, like, no matter what subject you're going to study, like, if your handwriting is bad. You couldn't score low marks. And, and my mom was a little like, you know, particular about academics and all of those things. So it's like, finally we can, again, probably, like, do one or two months in ma'am Juliana's class. And little I did not little I did not know at that time, but it was a creative writing class and, and it is all about writing stories, writing poems, and all of those you know, Kiddush, Kiddush things that you could do at that time with with your with your time, and till till date, I could not improve my handwriting, but I wrote a story or two. And I think that cat. Filtered into something wonderful. I discovered my love for writing, and it was wonderful, yeah, and yeah. So when I came when I came back home, after my college, after my academics, everything, I always harbored a dream for writing a book, and you know when you were writing, when you I didn't do any sort of activity. You know whether you play a sport, whether you were whether, whether you do a particular activity, you always harbor a harbor an ambition that you want to take it to the highest level possible, even if you don't do it ultimately. But you always kind of have a tease of a dream. For example, if you play cricket in school, you kind of imagine that you know you're going going to the districts, you're going to the States, you're going to you're going national, you're going international, playing alongside the biggest names in the game at that point. So I always harbored a dream that I'm going to write a book which is a national nationally published, next, nationally recognized book. And so I always harbored that ambition. And when I came back home, I was like, I had given myself deadlines across my life. When I'm 20, the book should be there. 20 came and went. When I'm 25 the book should be there. 25 came and went, and when 30 was approaching, I was like, bro, you need to sit yourself down, and you need to write this book, no matter how people receive it. You need to write this book because it's a dream that child sugar has promised to himself, and you cannot, you know, do a betrayal of that. So. So yeah, when I was 2728 I kind of sat myself down and I was like, we are going to write this. Told myself, we are going to write this group. And no matter how the world or how the world receives it, no matter if, if there is a publisher for it or not, but you have to at least give it a sincere effort. And yeah, and yeah, I think beyond that, I was somebody who's very I was incredibly lucky to get published and get the publicity and get the acclaim and love that I'm receiving. But at that point, it was just a promise to myself, promise to a kid, kid version of myself. Yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 13:05

I love the way that you motivated yourself and you actually set a deadline and you made it happen. That's not something that many people are able to do. I know I've missed so many deadlines, and I really liked the part, you know, I saw in your acknowledgements, because I'm somebody who always reads acknowledgments first, and then you had thank to English teacher and thanks for telling the story. Because I really wanted to know, you know, there's always that one person in any author's life who believes in them, not like the unconditional ones, like parents or friends would, but someone who supports us because of our potential. And I think that your teacher was probably that for you. So yeah, you know why this book? You know, you decided that you want to write a book. So how did you come up with this plot, you know, about a disco? You know, you set it in a disco. These characters sabotage secrets and via thriller, how did it all come about?

Shikhar Goyal: 13:58

Oh, by this book, a very interesting question. Or Delhi disco, first of all, after my right after my school, I went to Delhi University for my undergrad, and and I lived in Delhi for three and a half years, or three for undergrad, and half for half for a job that I could not for the life of me, do over there. But yeah, I was there, and Delhi is the place where I kind of discovered freedom, and was there, was was there, when I was discovering myself in terms of life, who am I as a person? Who am I without, you know, constructs of constructs of a place, or often institution, of an institution. So I always wanted to write a book about Delhi, because that city is very close to my heart. And why thrillers? I think deep down, I am a kid who grew up, who still, who still loves watching Cid and the Dalat, because these are the shows that I grew up with. And you will, I don't think you will find many authors talk about, like the television shows being and being as inspirations. But yeah, whenever I'm consuming content, I am the biggest fan of the template that a crime is committed. There is a very hard to crack mystery, and you have a detective who comes in and who solves the crime, and at the end, at the end of the story, everything is tied down. So I've always been a fan of this toner, and this toner is very easy for me to think, because it's like a crime has been committed and you have to solve it, and then there has to be. End, which is very satisfying and and when I was in college, I kind of was like, I kind of plugged it into a disco setting, because I was like, at the end of the day, you have to make it interesting. You have to make it a little offbeat. You know, people, people are going to read it, and they're going to be, there's so many thrillers out there in the market, so how do you how do you set yourself apart? So I was clear on one thing, that it cannot be a very serious book, because when you talk about thrillers, thrillers are normally very serious. So it's like you have to set yourself apart. So I was like, Okay, I need a setting where I can put in humor. So I was like, I cannot do a setting where, you know, I can. I thought of a lot of different other settings. And I was like, I cannot put humor into that kind of a setting. So, so I was kind of brainstorming names, and Delhi disco just just came to me. And I'm a big fan of alliterations, you know, like the first first letter and the second letter of both the words are the same letters. So Delhi, Discord, Speedy. So I was like, this kind of has an appeal, and let's create a story around it. And I already had a rough beginning and ending, ending in mind, but not A, not A properly defined version, but, like a rough, rough version. And I was like, Okay, let's put it to a Delhi disco setting. And you know, once that seed is planted in your head, and once you start entertaining that idea, and that seed grows into something really cool, and you start believing in that idea. So that happened. So before I actually got down to writing this book. I dreamt about it. I dreamt about the characters, the settings of the jokes that I would put in, the way the mystery would be cracked, the different small elements in the book. So, yeah, I kind of daydreamed a lot about it. And the more I daydreamed about it, I was I was convinced that this would be a story which would appeal to people, and at the same time, it would also have a different element that people, at least, I have not read read in a very long time. So, yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 18:02

yeah, I like the element of the disco, because I have not seen that either. And talking about the setting, you know, I've noticed that a lot of books, and there's a good reason why, because even I'm fascinated with it, you know, they capture Delhi, and they capture this very specific crowd, this, you know, there's a very well off people rules, don't apply attitude. And there's this character in your book, bhanti Gulati, you know, and he really exemplifies this, by the way. Love the name. He hosts a party at the disco, which is capital, and he gets drunk, and he crosses boundaries with Samira, who is the owner and who's a protagonist, and then he has the audacity to play victim when confronted, you know, so I really like the analysis of these kind of people, and I think disco is a perfect place to set them, because you have things like kitty parties. You know, you really show a lot of things that happen. You know, I didn't know that kitty parties go to discourse. You have brawls. You have, you know, huge parties. You for food, coming in, alcohol, you know, coming in, people going to a bar right before they even enter the club. So this Delhi disco ecosystem, I think you've captured very interestingly. So can you tell me a little bit more about, you know, this ecosystem and what actually happens in a Delhi night clock?

Shikhar Goyal: 19:25

Thank you for describing it the way you did. But all my, all the things that I've written a more observational than research and analysis, so I kind of, I kind of went out on a limb and put in, put in all these assumptions and conjecture that I had about this outsider impression that I had about discourse, because, you know, like, and first of all, I did not do any research before writing the book about discourse. I kind of, I was very hell bent on completing my manuscript and

Tara Khandelwal: 20:02

gone to a few discourse.

Shikhar Goyal: 20:06

I went to these I went to these clubs and discourse after I kind of wrote. I was after I, you know, was into 70% into my manuscript. So I went, I went to these clubs, and I realized whenever I go in the day, like, you know, because in the night, you cannot get a lot of description on the color, because the lights are very dim. So it's like, Okay, let's go in the day, and you can get a get a better gage on what the colors that they what are the colors they've used, what is the kind of alcohol they have stacked upon on the bar? And I realized when I'm going in the day, the crowd over. There is, is largely women, groups of women who are there and who are having the small parties and and some places had like two, three simultaneous groups of women, and they have joined, like three, four tables together and made like this long table. And they're doing, and they're doing these games, activities like how cmbola, or the clicking the selfies and and they're having such a good time over there, they're enjoying themselves. So I kind of started noticing a pattern, and I realized that, okay, all of these cafes, Disco's, nightclubs in the day, they kind of become, become a place for for these kitty parties to happen. And I realized that's a very good business model, because in the day, you have your clientele is your target. Clientele is usually low. People are either coming for lunch meetings or people are coming for, you know, having these, these meetups with their friends. And so, yeah, I thought that was very interesting, very interesting to put that in the book. And I went to a couple of couple of clubs, generally, not Delhi specific, but generally. And whenever I went, I just started observing a little more, and, and, yeah. So the club that that is shown over your capital is a is a mix of a lot of different clubs, not A, not one in particular, but a lot of different clubs that some element have taken from here, some element have taken from there. So, yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 22:27

nice. Really, I don't go to discourse much, so I could sort of travel vicariously through the book. And in any thriller, obviously the characters are the most important, right? Because you have the protagonist, you have the suspects, and they really move the story ahead. So you have Neil, who is samira's ex, you know, who flies in from the US, and he really wants to win her back. Then you have the chef from the get go. There's something really off about Him, and He gives us serious creepy vibes. And then you give access to his diary entries, and we reveal what shaped him, and he's in love with sabina's mom. And there's more that we discover. There's more going on than what we thought. So what is your favorite character? You know? Is it Neil? Is it Samira? Tell Tell me and listeners, a little bit more about the characters in your

Shikhar Goyal: 23:17

book. You bang on right when you've mentioned the chef. Chef Alex is my favorite character, because I think whenever Chef Alex comes. He's sort of a catalyst for something to happen in the story, because there's never a time that he's come and the stories, the story is going on very simply. He kind of add a lot of spice, and he adds a lot of drama to drama, and a lot of tension to to the storyline. And whenever he comes after a certain point, the reader knows that these guys, he's here to store things up, and things cannot be normal. And even right in the beginning, when I've introduced him, we do not see an insider view into the, you know, into his thought process, until the diary entry comes but you still get to know that there is something unhinged about him. So I had a very great time writing the book, and especially, especially his diary entries. I think that's the only point in the book which are written in a first person POV. And I normally stay away from writing first person POV, because that kind of makes you restricted. You cannot do a lot with the plot. You only have to mention anything in the story which happens with this person. Whenever this person is not there in the plot, you cannot use a first person POV, but when I wrote chef Alex's diary entries as first person POV, and we we travel with him in in his past and in his recent present, I realized that I'm having a very good time writing these entries and and I took A lot of liberty with developing him as a character. He has some issues going on with his mental health, and he's trying to rectify those. He's seeing some people for that and the way he operates. So I think he is my he's a character that I had the most fun writing him and the two bumbling policemen that I have created, kk and Badri. I think I had them. I wrote them also with a lot of fun, because initially as a kid, when I also mentioned. Earlier as a kid, when I used to always think about writing a book, I always used to think that the crime is going to happen in the beginning and I'm going to have my detectives, or the people who are solving the crime coming right in the first first few pages of the book. But I did not do this over here because I was trying to attempt something different. So my detectives come here in the second half of the book. But they were always supposed to be the protagonists. In my mind, they are the protagonists of those of the story. So I wrote them, the characterization, the depth that I have given them. I had a very, very good time writing them and and the audience feedback also that I received was that they wanted to see more of KK and Badri, and they wanted to see more of you know, what is happening in their life, because they enjoyed these characters so much and and lengthwise, they had a shorter, shorter length compared To the other characters. So so I kind of realized that when I when I heard those feedbacks. But yeah, so these three characters I had the most, I had the most enjoyable time writing.

Tara Khandelwal: 27:02

Very cool. Yeah. I also really liked the detective characters. And I think also in a thriller, the reveal strategy is very important, and I think you do that really well. So for example, in the PROLOG, you know, Samira, the protagonist, Mother, is found dead, and that is how the story really starts. And then you know, cut to five years later, where we have Neil and Samira trying to get back together and relaunch this nightclub and all these series of incidents happen. So I also really enjoy the love story, you know, Neil and Samira, and they have this really fun and slightly chaotic chemistry, and the banter is really good. So at first I was like, Oh, this also is like a romantic comedy. But then obviously the stakes just keep getting darker. So how did you balance romance and thriller without one taking over the other?

Shikhar Goyal: 27:54

Wow, I have not asked them this question before, and I've been, I've been really wanting somebody to ask me this because, because, as I told you earlier, the very first thing, when we started this podcast, I describe this book as a thriller, where murders happen and but you but you laugh. The tonality is LED. But also I've sneaked in a romance. I've sneaked in a like a proper romance, which is which, which is the main driving force of the book, because without the romance happening, I don't think the plot moves the way it does, and a lot of things would not happen. And I am not the biggest reader of romance. I've barely read any romance, I think, in the past few years, and so I had a very I was very conscious about the dialogs when it comes to romance, and I had a bunch of cousins who were my beta readers after I finished my manuscript to please tell me that if this is working, or if this is not, because am I overdoing, this is the banter, the banter that I that I wrote, between Neel And Samira. I had a great time writing this. And I was writing that more from a conversational point, you know, because when you talk to somebody, it's a you, you use different words when you but when you come to writing, it's a different word, different word, like your tonality of writing, the way you write stuff is is very different, written English and spoken English. And what I was trying to do was trying to inculcate normal spoken English into written English. So I kind of lost a sense of subjectivity that is this the correct way to do this? Is this going to be easy for a reader to read or and does this come across as naive, or does this come across as childish? Or does this, is this working or not? And so those are the parts which were very hard for me to even edit, because, as I say, that I did not have, I did not I was not the best judge about it, and I was being very, being extra conscious about how this is going to come out, so I did a lot of rewrites. I kind of there were parts where I felt that dialog was dragging, so I kind of cut them short and I I added a little punchier dialog so that people would, people would, would not think that it is going a little too slow, and that happened and and most of it, I think, was a whim that I just I was like, okay, there are these two characters and who've been in love with each other at some point, and now both of them are not at. A level at the at the level that they want for each other, but, but still, they are here with some sort of previous experience with with love, with each other, but no nothing happening between them right now, but one of them wants something to happen and but what they cannot deny is the chemistry. So I kind of approached it in a way that friends would talk to each other, not necessarily exes or lovers, but friends, best friends, different gendered best friends, talking to each other, taking their case, pulling their leg, because no matter what different expectations they have of each other, they cannot deny the fact that they have this sizzling chemistry that they have with each other.

Tara Khandelwal: 31:35

So yeah, and tell me more about who these people are. Who is Neil, who is Samira, what drives them?

Shikhar Goyal: 31:43

Neil is somebody who Neil is somebody who wears his heart on his sleeve. He wasn't he was in the New York City when Samira was there for a short time. She was there for some, for some course that she was attending. And they met over there. It was a chance meeting. And they met when Samira is online, hint state stood her up, and she was waiting, waiting at a club. And Neil was a DJ at that club. And they both Indians and and you know, if you travel abroad, when you see, when you see, when you see somebody of your same somebody of the same nationality, you just become kindred spirits. And at least that's what I have seen in my own experience. I think you you, you are easier to become friends when you see somebody you know who you, who you share a culture with. And I think that's what happened with them. Kind of Neil kind of sees this girl sitting by herself, and he dedicates the song to her in the club. And they get talking, and even though, even though she's there for a very short time, they end up dating and Neil. Neil proposes to her on New Year's Eve in New York City, in Times Square, which is, which is, again, a very which is supposed to be a very romantic thing, and a lot of people do that all they come from all around the world, and they do that, either that or Paris before the Eiffel Tower. So I kind of played into that stereotype. And and Neil, he wears his heart on the sleeve. As I said, they've just, they've just been dating for like, a few weeks, and I would not say, even months at this time, and he already wants to propose to her and make her his wife. And she's not ready for that. For her, it is a fling at that point, and and when her course is over, she just comes back to India and she leaves him, or she leaves him over there. And Neil kind of comes back, comes to India on his first ever trip. So Neil is Indian origin, but he's not Indian. He's American. And he's born and brought up in in the US, and he comes to India. And because he's a DJ, he kind of finds work with other clubs in the in the city in Delhi. So that Sameera does not think that he's come here only to woo her, even though that's the main reason. But he he cannot say that because she's already told him no once, and he does not want to force her into anything. And he wants to kind of make it a little organic. And he's here and to woo her back, and he gets his gets a ring that his mother has given him, the same ring that his father used to propose to his mother. So there's a little bit of backstory and a little bit of more sentiment attached to that. And Samira is somebody who just lost her mother a couple of years ago and her father a decade before that, and and she is this rich, social light business woman who's launching her own club called capital. And for her, her priority is that she wants to revive the club and make something of herself in terms of a career and ambition, and she has no time for love at this point, because for her, it is very important to come across as somebody who's independent and somebody who's not just, not just a Nepo kid, as You would say, Who's, who's, you know, just being given her parents money and she could have an easy life. So she has this goal for herself that she wants to crack the folks 30, under 30, and she wants to be known for her business acumen rather than her fashion sense. And. So yes, as I mentioned, love is something that is completely not on her mind. And when Neil tells her that you know that this might be the reason that I am here, that I want things to come back to the same way as they were, when, when, when you were in New York, she tells him off, and she's very clear about her stuff. And so I think she is not a hopeless romantic, but Neil is, and Samira is a little pragmatic. And I think that's that's a beautiful thing, because that plays on in the chemistry that they both share. Because you have you, you have a better story if you have two very different people, very different characters, who have very different sensibilities and very different expectations of what they want in life from each other. So yeah, I think the both of their different sensibilities play into play into their love stories, their their dynamic and how the story moves forward. Yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 36:49

that's very well described. And I think you know your characters really, really well. It almost feels like you're friends with them. I also want to talk now about, you know, because you're a debut author, and, you know, sort of, I've sort of, like, also been seeing your journey a lot of authors. You know, the journey isn't always smooth. You send out work, you don't hear back for ages. So what was your publishing journey and what helped you stay motivated through that process?

Shikhar Goyal: 37:18

Oh, stay motivated. I'm going to answer the stay motivated through the process. One first i If you read my acknowledgements also, I wrote my acknowledgments before I started writing the book. I I made a cover of my book. It had a it had two, three people dancing, and they have like gunshot and knives wounds in a club. And I wrote Delhi disco, and I wrote Chicago below that, and I got a print out of that, and I pasted that along with the acknowledgements, and I made a post that I was going to post on Instagram the day that I break the news to the world. So I wrote that already, and I and I made printouts of all of them and pasted at my study table before I wrote a single word of the book. And I used to look at them, and I used to stay so motivated, because, you know, writing is is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You have to do it across so many days, but also at the same point, it's a lonely marathon. There are no other runners running beside you. You cannot see people live running beside you. You are just there with yourself. And so this is how I kept myself motivated. I used to look at these things in front of me whenever I'm having a writer's block, whenever I'm not feeling that I can write today, I used to look at these things, and I used to say to myself, that, dude, you got to make these things a reality. Because just imagine how cool it will be, how wonderful it will be when people read the story that's been in your mind for such a long time. So that's how I start. That's how I kept being motivated all time. And yes, the journey of a debutant author who does not come from publishing, who does not know people, for guidance, for support, who does not know authors, publishers, agents, anybody, the journey is very overwhelming. The journey is, I had a very difficult time early on. I felt when I've written my manuscript, I thought that, okay, now I'm going to send it to somebody, and within six months, I am going to be published and the book is going to be out. I had no idea. I had zero idea how the industry works. I had no benchmark, no yardstick to measure it against. And I was like, wow, you've written a book, and that's all it takes. But little did I know that getting a book published is a different ball game altogether from writing it. These are two very different things, and you have to do both of them. You just writing a book is not enough. You have to get it published. And you have to get it published in the correct way so that it reaches the maximum number of people. Because I think that should be the ultimate aim for a book to book to have. So early on, I was told that write to all the literary agents in the country, and because if a literary agent likes your book, he or she can pitch it to a publisher. And if your book is is given to, if a book is on boarded to a literary agent, I. That is as good as being published, because they take care of everything. But I kind of chased all the agents in the country for, I think, six to seven months, and I did not get the replies that I was expecting from them. And hence I was like, Okay, I've spent a considerable amount of time at this point, I should start taking things in my own hand, because what's the worst that will happen? Everybody will reject me, or they won't reply to me. I can wait another year, another year and a half, because I have to do something about it. I cannot just keep waiting for people to reply to me. I have to store things up on my own. And that's what I started doing. I started reaching out to publishing houses on my own. Bound has a has a service where they provide publishing guidance. So I kind of, I kind of went to bound India also. I got my mind, got my submission packaged, refined, and I went to a lot of different publishing houses. I used to write to them. Please tell me. Please tell me if my book is worthy of, you know, representation from your publishing house, and I'm willing to tweak things that you want, and based on the replies that I would get, I based on the feedback that I used to get, I used to alter my submission package. I used to alter things accordingly, because, you know, you are not perfect when you are sending stuff out and people who are rejecting your work are not evil or then I cannot say that they do not understand your work. It's just that these people have been in the industry for so long they know what works and what does not work. And so I realized that the more people I talk to, the more rejections I get, the more feedback I will be able to receive, and the more alterations I can do to my submission package, and the better I can make it. And before I actually got my deal with Penguin, I might have spoken to 7080, maybe 100 people or different people, editors, authors, people in publishing houses, people who have met at bookstores, bookstores, and I asked them, Ki or ye book, chapana, sikawa, Mirco, because I thought that because these people are selling books, they might have some in towards a publishing house. And whatever advice I got, whether it worked or not, it kind of ultimately shaped the way the submission package actually was made, and and I made an entire marketing plan for my book. I realized, I realized that I have to approach this in the way of somebody as somebody who's applying for a job, or somebody who's applying, somebody who's applying applying at a university, you always do not have to talk about how great your book is, how great you are. You also have to tell people publishing houses per se, what is in this book for them? You have to tell them that this book, because everything, every publishing house, is a corporation at the end of the day, and they're here to push a product forward in the market. Because all of this does will not make sense. You know, if your book does not sell copies, if you want to write more books in the future, your books have to sell, I feel, and that's where my entrepreneur brain comes into place, because I recognize that for any enterprise, things have to sell, like, you know, things have to be marketed well, and they have to sell. And so I made a marketing plan, and I jotted down a lot of things that, you know, we will do this. We will do that. I'm ready to push hard for my book on my own. I'm ready to take owners and initiative and ownership for my book and and I wrote this really detailed plan that, you know, and I wrote different USPS of my book that that I envision this being turned into an OTT sometime, or a movie or an OTT series sometime, and so all of these things will will mean that there is more exposure and more marketing push on it, on its own, for the book. So I so the main thing that I did was I started telling different entities that how this book is going to help you, and when it came to Penguin, I realized that Penguin has already come out with books which are which are thrillers and mysteries, but have tonalities in a very comical sense. So penguin. Had come out with the Thursday Motor Club series, and everyone in my family has killed someone, and and Harper had come out with another Johan books, which are, which are, comedy, Thriller mysteries. And so I realized that these publishing houses would have the bandwidth to understand what my book is, and they would be better able to place the book in their lineup. So I, I contacted penguin first, and I told them that, you know, this book is similar to what what is already there in your title, so it is not a completely alien project. And so I think all of these things ultimately helped me to get published and and I, and it seems easier said than done, because by the time I got my deal, I had spent a lot of time in frustration desperation. I had already started to explore or different options I had started to explore or Kindle, Direct Publishing, which is big in the West, but I don't know if it has kicked off the way it has kicked off there in India yet. So I was keen on exploring that and and I kind of told myself that that I have another year to probably reach out to all the publishing houses in India and to pursue them. And if that does not work out, probably Kindle, Direct Publishing would have been the way to go. And, yeah, but I think I was incredibly lucky to have,

Tara Khandelwal: 47:25

yeah, I really liked the way that you approached it, you know? Because I also always tell people that approach it as a product, you know, I think you want to.

Unknown: 47:38

Can you hear

Shikhar Goyal: 47:40

me? I can hear you now. Oh, could you hear me before this lag

Tara Khandelwal: 47:46

for like five seconds? Ah, okay, okay, um, so maybe I just like move on to the rapid fire round now, because I don't want the internet

Shikhar Goyal: 47:54

to this thing. Wow. Okay,

Tara Khandelwal: 47:58

okay, so thanks for that story. And I think I really liked, you know, the way that your entrepreneurship background has come in, because that's something that I also tell people that approach the book as a prod, broad product, and you're very methodical about it, and love the fact that you had your goal so set already, that you were working towards it, so I can already see how goal oriented you are and able to break things down. Okay, so now it's time for a rapid fire round where you have to answer my questions in one word or one sentence only. Okay. Okay. If Delhi disco was turned into a movie, who would you cast as Samira, Neil and Alex?

Shikhar Goyal: 48:37

Samira would be Alaya F I'll do you a better her mom, Maya Kapoor, would be Pooja baby, because it real life. Mom and daughter deals. Neil would be sidhanth Chaturvedi, and Alex is a character that I have written for Vinay Bartok. I when I was writing it, I knew that I'm writing it for Vinay Bartok, and he's the only actor that I have envisioned playing Alex.

Tara Khandelwal: 49:05

Oh, so you really thought about it. Is there a talk about this being turned into

Shikhar Goyal: 49:10

a movie, not at this stage. I'm trying to pursue that. I would be the happiest person on the planet, if that, if that happens. But yes, I'm trying to pursue that.

Tara Khandelwal: 49:21

Yeah. I think it would be really good for a movie, especially with the whole disco stuff. Okay, yeah, what is, what is your go to thriller book?

Shikhar Goyal: 49:30

My go to thriller book, I think it's any Sydney Sheldon book, if tomorrow comes, I would say if tomorrow comes a bloodline, yeah.

Tara Khandelwal: 49:41

And what's your go to thriller movie?

Shikhar Goyal: 49:44

Thriller movie? Oh my god. I saw this amazing Korean movie on Netflix the other month. It's called forgotten. It's currently available on the Indian Netflix. I without revealing too much of the plot, I'll just say that there is a boy who thinks that who sees his brother being abducted, and his brother, after abduction, comes back to home after a couple of weeks, and this man realized that it is not his brother but somebody else, some an in impersonator, who's trying to take the place of his brother. And the story how it unfolds, it's completely mind boggling. 100% recommended, forgotten on Netflix India.

Tara Khandelwal: 50:29

Oh, my god, yeah, definitely. I think I would have watched it if you had to choose one book to take with you on a 24 hour flight. What would it

Shikhar Goyal: 50:38

be? Or any book from Anuja Chauhan, ma'am, Glossary of books I have not read her recent. Two books which are, which are mystery thrillers. So probably one of those. There's a book called club you to death, which was recently made into a Netflix movie. Also not seen the movie either, but she's my favorite author. So her book club due to death, because I'm really, really want to read that book. Yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 51:04

actually, I was going to mention your nujaa Chauhan, because I see the writing also, yeah, so that's wonderful to know what's next for you. What are you working on next?

Shikhar Goyal: 51:15

I am working on another book which is which has a similar tonality. It is a comedy thriller, and without revealing too much about the plot, it is about a fraudulent Instagram influencer. And, yeah, it is very current. It is very Gen Z and Millennial. And I am having such a great time writing it, and ever since I got published, and I'm receiving all sorts of feedback and critique, I know I know what I know the direction that I have to take, and I'm just having a great time writing it. And hopefully, hope, hopefully, sooner than later, we see that

Tara Khandelwal: 52:05

that sounds like a really fun topic and also very relevant and not done before. Love to read that as well. And is that also going to be published by Penguin, or you've not started

Shikhar Goyal: 52:14

that process yet? I It's too premature to say that there is no deal or anything, but too premature to say that. But I hope it happens through them. Yeah, because I'm obliged to show it to them also. And, yeah, because I've had a great time, the best time at Penguin and everything has been so smooth, and I could not imagine anybody else. I could not imagine coming out with a book in my life with anybody else.

Tara Khandelwal: 52:43

Oh, wow. It's a lovely endorsement. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's been so great chatting with you, Shikhar and to all our listeners, if you're looking for a thriller that has a pulse on Delhi party culture, layered characters and a plot twist, you will not see coming. Pick up Delhi risk. And hey, if you're a friend who's a thriller junkie, send them this episode. Don't forget to rate review us and hit Spotify Apple podcast, or wherever you tune in. You can also follow us on Instagram and bound India to be updated and all things bound. Thank you so much. Hikar, this is really fun.

Shikhar Goyal: 53:18

Thank you so much. Tara, I had a blast talking about my book and talking about my journey in general. And it was awesome. It was my first podcast I had a great time. So glad. Yeah.