Are you a member of a kitty? If you are, you’re lucky. If you aren’t, well, you don’t know what you’re missing. For the uninitiated, kitty parties are peculiar to females, where the members contribute a certain sum of money to the “kitty” every month, (hence the name), and lots are drawn to see which lucky member gets the sum. Kitties may range from a token amount, just a few hundreds, to perhaps a few thousands for those who have that kind of disposable income. Most women are in it for the fun, a chance to meet and let their hair down. The kitty money is just an added bonus, and also perhap ..read more

Is the short story the answer to our shorter attention-spans? I recently attended a very interesting talk at the Emirates Airlines Festival of Literature on the topic of Short Stories. Cleverly titled The Gravity of Brevity, the three speakers had a lively discussion about how the short story was making a comeback. Here are some golden nuggets from that discussion: *a short story leaves a punch *short stories are for introspection * a short story has its own physics, its own trajectory * a short story has to be true to the reality the writer has created, and (my favorite) *In the social media ..read more

Alloo! Allo! And all that stuff – plus a bit of a rant on loneliness (as it pertains to my novel) Hello friends! Let me cut to the chase! The “experts” tell me I have to blog rrrreggggularly. By that they mean, every day, every week or every other week. Now, my question is: If I send you missives and epistles every day, every week or every other week, won’t you get bored? Do I have enough interesting material to post every week/other week? Won’t it be a bit tedious for both of us to write or receive material so predictably? I mean, the fun’s in the suddenness, ain’t it? So, for the above reaso ..read more

Dubai oh Dubai! A continuation of the travails and tribulations and the struggles I’m going through in my writing. These are just little hints I’m throwing along the way in an attempt to lure you into getting more interested in my novel (whenever it comes out). Setting Why a novelist chooses where a novelist chooses to set her or his novels Or (to put it briefly) Why I chose Dubai as a setting for my novel You’ve read all that stuff about how time and place maketh a man. I mean, someone born and brought up in New York or New Delhi will be very different from someone brought up say in The Peopl ..read more

Hello! This is Minnie Karsan, a pseudonym I am using to hide my real identity. I want to be known by my pseudonym as I – ahem- am writing a novel . And that novel is about the great, glittery city, Dubai, and the folks who live here. And it’s full of laffs. So you see why I want to use a pen name, just in case someone decides to sue me. Not that my book is about any particular individual. Still – I have to be careful! I’m going to share with you my experiences as a writer, all the trials and tribulations we of the writing fraternity go through. So here I go ..read more