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Writing Women and War with Bharati Sen · WriterCon

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This week on the writer com podcast. Okay, my advice would be to
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read a lot first of all, read a lot that gives you ideas,
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and then just write them down and keep until an unless it is polished,
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and then you know, so we'll get it out into the world to read.
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Welcome to writer Con, a gathering place for writers to share their knowledge
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about writing and the writing world. Your hosts are William Bernhardt, best selling
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novelist and author of the Red Sneaker books on writing, and Laura Bernhardt,
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Award winning author of the want Land Files book series. Thank you, Jesse
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Ulrich, and hello writers, thanks for joining us. Last time we chatted
0:57
about the Oscars and now we're too weeks past the Oscars. And guess what
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another movie based on a book? One best picture? I mean based on
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history too, but it was a book based on history that became the movie.
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What else have we done? We've jumped forward for daylight savings time,
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causing misery to one and all. And this episode is being released on Palm
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Sunday. And Lara's just back from a quick trip to New York City.
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Lara, did you go to the library while you were there? We did,
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We did, actually stop by the library because Katie hadn't ever been to
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it, so I had to show off the lions out. She was the
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librarian, after all, might as well see the biggest and best. Did
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she go in? She did? Yeah, cool, went inside and found
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a couple of pins writing pins or stick in your lapel pins. The second
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pi ns yes, pins pins peaks. Oh, there's a pronunciation different,
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I did difference. I did it know, Jesse. I saw your photos
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from the Star Trek Cruise. But now I'm worried. How can the writer
2:08
con Cruise possibly compare? Listen, but the writer con Cruise compares in the
2:14
sense that one, we're on a nicer boat. That nice. Oh,
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and it's not like jam packed with events where I have no time to sit
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down in a day. So really there's that much Star Trek program Yes,
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and it starts early. It's like our Twitter Classic Movies Cruise, Bill,
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I felt like we were scheduled from the moment we got up until we fell
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into bed at night, because there were so many movies and so many things
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going on and people to meet, and it was super fun but very busy.
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Every year they show like at night, they show movies like at the
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pool and every year I'm like, this time, we're actually going to do
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that, because that'd be fun, and we never ever have time to do
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it. Like Star Trek movies and you've seen them all, I have seen
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them all, but not in a hot tub my happy place. I gotcha.
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Well. Our interview today is with Barati Sen, who is the author
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of the novel My War, My Child, which tells the story of the
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Bengali Berengona, the war heroines whose lives were brutally torn apart in the nineteen
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seventy one War for Independence. We will talk to her about writing and this
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profound novel. But first the news. The biggest news in the writing world
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right now and for some time actually actually has been that some alums from traditional
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publishing are launching a new publishing house called Author's Equity. Now, just to
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be clear, new publishing houses start all the time, but this one is
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getting a huge play, at least in part because of some of the people
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who are involved. The executives behind the company like Madeline Macintosh, the former
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chief executive of a Penguin Random House, the largest publisher in the English speaking
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world, and Don Weisberg, the former chief executive of A McMillan, one
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of the Big Five, and Nina von Moltke of the former president of strategic
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development at the previously mentioned PRH. They say the house is small in terms
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of staffing an overhead just six employees, but the people behind it are obviously
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experienced and that's how they're hoping to attract writers. That plus a change in
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the traditional business model. Contrary to the usual you know, given advance up
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front that the author's run then have to earn out in royalties, Author's Equity
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won't offer any money upfront or guarantee that you're ever going to make anything,
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but it will offer authors a larger share. They don't quite specify. It
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probably varies from contract to contract, but they are offering what they call the
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lion's share of any profit made to the authors. And in addition, they're
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going to pay monthly instead of you having to wait till maybe twice a year
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when royalties are paid out paid out, and their books will be distributed by
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Simon and Schuster, where Macintosh still serves as a board member and of course
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is one of the Big five publishers. They've already lined up some authors as
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supporters, like as investors like Louise Penny, who, of course is a
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very well known crime writer, And so everybody is wondering is this going to
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be what makes it the six or is this the model that allows small publishers
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and self publishers to raise their game a little bit. I don't know,
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Laura, would you publish with author's equity? I'm very intrigued by this model.
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I think we're getting the experience and expertise of the bigger publishers, while
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also the type of one on one attention and partnership that you tend to get
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at a smaller imprint. And I like the idea of better royalty rates for
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authors and sounds good to me. Getting paid on a consistent basis. The
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idea that that money's coming in every month that's appealing too. There's a lot
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to like about this model. I'll be watching this. I'm very excited to
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see this takeoff, and I hope it goes very well for them. We'll
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report back on this, of course, Jesse, even if they don't enlist
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your man, James Patterson, do you think this can be a success one
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author that doesn't need more equity? I know think I think this is a
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great idea. I feel like I feel like there's a shift in how lots
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of industries that like pay people at random times. I feel like this is
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part of the writer you know, Hollywood Writers Strike too, is like more
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transparency, getting paid more regularly and making it more consistent and knowing what you're
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going to get when you go into it. I feel like that's that.
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I think that's going to help more people feel comfortable getting into writing, which
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I think is one of the one of the major roadblocks that we deal with.
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That's great. I mean there's been a lot of complaining online because,
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as I said, they've got a staff of six, they're planning to use
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freelancers for a lot of the editorial and marketing and publicity, and you know,
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people talk about gig workers, which is not necessarily synonymous with freelancer.
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But you know, I'm not sure I see why this is reason for criticism.
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They're obviously just trying to keep their overhead down so they can survive,
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because they're not kind to make their first million the first day, right,
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Yeah, I mean, I mean, if there has been a success in
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five years from now they're still using that, then then we can complain.
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But like they're a startup at this moment. That's how you know, that's
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how those things start exactly. Okay. News story number two, This one
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involves a best selling self published author, David Goggins, who is now suing
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Amazon over counterfeit book sales. Now, we have reported in the past about
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this phenomenon of people copying books and publishing them in other countries, or publishing
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a book and claiming it's by a well known author even though it isn't.
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This problem has been around for a while, but now we have a major
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author basically putting his money where his mouth is to tackle it. And this
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is David Goggins, who has sold millions and I mean millions of copies of
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his books. But he's suing Amazon to recoup damages he's lost from these counterfeit
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books. In his petition, it says, and I'm quoting, each of
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these bootlegs sales unjustly stole revenue from Goggins. Amazon, however, received revenue
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from each sale, just as goggins authentic profits have been sold. This does
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not exactly assess blame, but he's making a point. He's getting ripped off
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and Amazon is making money by selling anything anyway, he recorded a lengthy Instagram
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video talking about his anger and frustration, and then this is noted in the
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pleadings for the lawsuit that within days of his Instagram post, Amazon called his
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people and shut down the sales of counterfeit books, but only after he released
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the video. Jesse, what do you think about this? Do you think
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he's right to go after Amazon? I mean they didn't generate the counterfeit books.
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Oh no, he's one hundred percent right. Like Amazon puts no effort
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into protecting creators of things until those creators make us think about it. Like
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Amazon has billions of dollars. They could spend one percentage of that hiring people
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to double check these things. It's less than one percent, I think.
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Yeah, I was being generous, So yeah, no, they like Amazon,
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only fixes problems when someone who is powerful enough to get attention to it
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draws attention to it. So let me just say, in case someone from
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Amazon is listening, that I will take that job for one percent of Amazon's
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I will too. Where's he is theft? Yeah? He is theft.
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That's and artists already have a difficult time just trying to support themselves. We
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aren't paid like doctors and attorneys. And you know you're going to walk into
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a Starbucks and steal a cup of coffee, you would you would recognize that
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as theft. Stealing someone's hard work and passing it off as your own is
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just theft. And I have no I have no empathy whatsoever for thieves.
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Yeah. Amazon is just as liable as uh, you know, Pirate Bay
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is for illegal torrents right right, And the government has gone over those,
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gone after those people. So I absolutely agree with what Goggins is saying.
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They don't do anything about it because they make money on that sale, just
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as if it was his. But it's taking away from the actual creator and
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that's not right. Well, you remember we reported on another lawsuit the romance
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writer who is going after somebody in South America who's doing this. It's obviously
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going to cost a lot, but you know, you have to are people
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who stand up. They're not the only ones that's happened to. You may
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have read the Savannah Guthrie, the Today Show host, she published a book.
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Apparently the Puplisher underestimated the demand because it's sold out completely not long after
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its release, and almost overnight, a counterfeit market for that book appeared on
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Amazon because legit copies who are no longer being sold. Be ashamed of yourself,
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Amazon ashamed. Yes, all right, jesseque up the music. Let's
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talk to Barati Sen. Barati Sen, Welcome to the podcast. HIARTI by
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all right. Traditional. First question, if you could offer writers one piece
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of advice, what would it be. Okay, my advice would be to
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read a lot. First of all, read a lot that gives you ideas,
13:09
and then just write them down and keep until and unless it just polished,
13:16
and then you know, we'll get it out into the world to read.
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Sure. Now this is I think your second book. You previously wrote
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a short story collection, right, but this is your first novel. What
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inspired you to write it? Okay, I have to start again with my
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short stories because I started writing my whole collection was about twenty stories. Out
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of twenty, there was one story that needed to be expanded. I thought,
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maybe that's the reason why I had an odd number of nineteen stories instead
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of twenty. So I loved that out so it needed It's like I wanted
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to turn it into a novel, so I just write it like I had
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to work around characters give it a structure, and then I thought everything fitted
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together, and so that became my war my Child, right exactly. I
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love that My Wantman File series actually started out the inspiration was short story collection,
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and the more I thought about it, the more it turned into full
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stories. So I started out writing short stories too, but no one wanted
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to read them, so I moved on to novel. I think short stories
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are tougher personally, but that's just me. Yeah. People say that you
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start with short stories, but in the end when you write the novel,
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if you find that short stories are difficult than the novel because it's like I
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think, you have to uh, create complex characters and then you know plots
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and explain like the story like my my warrant, my child. It's like
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I had to write it, uh two plots intertwined together, so it's kind
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of difficult to write mm hmm. But you did a good job on it,
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And in fact, I just saw one of your one of your good
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Reads reviews talks about that, talks about how how definitely you intertwined the two
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plots and how interesting it is and the story. So that's that's nice.
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You did a very good job. Yeah, the end of the putting the
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loose ends together so that you give a good resolution to the story. Yeah,
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absolutely, So you you lived in West Bengal for some time, and
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of course this this book is is about the war for independence there. Did
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you include some of your life experiences and the story. Oh, not with
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this one, not with the novel. My experiences were mostly with the short
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stories that I experienced, the things that really happened. But as far as
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this novel is concerned, it's mainly like through reading and research and research.
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Yeah, because the year nineteen seventy one, Like at that time when the
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war broke out, we heard, like I think I was in high school,
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and then I heard like things the atrocities of war in the newspapers news.
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I was just there and my friend's brother, in fact, he joined
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the air force. He fought then Bangladesh, So we had yeah, and
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then that's how. But then after that we just forgot about everything, the
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war and all. It's just again one of these days we were all talking
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about the war, and then I thought maybe I could expand this story into
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Actually the first chapter of the first chapter of the book was a short story.
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Okay, it was actually a short story. But then again, I
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introduced new a lot of characters like Nafisa and all this, so it's a
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good start. Yeah, it was a good cool The book release date,
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March twenty six coincided with Bangladesh's Independence Day. Are traditional celebrations for that holiday?
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Yeah? What do you guys do to celebrate? All right? Like
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I would say that they were just they'll have functions. I think flag hoisting
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and I believe sing patriotic songs and stuff like that. So not really like
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the fourth of July here known in America. Nothing like this, nothing like
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that. No fire. Well, how did you celebrate your new book?
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How am I going to celebrating? Uh huh, I don't know, not
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yet. You should probably have a big party. You need to have a
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big book release party. Yeah, it's in my mind, but I don't
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know if I might have not a big party, Maybe just won't get together.
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Yeah. Good. Well, here's a word of advice for the future.
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Throw your own own launch party. Don't launch leave something that important to
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amateurs. Just go do it. You know how long you've been working on
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this, so celebrate. Oh yeah, definitely celebrate. Why do you think
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readers are so drawn to historical women's fiction. That's a big genre, big
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seller. Why do you think we're so fascinated with it? I think the
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historical fiction, they they're the real stories, real women and real stories,
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and there's some fact and fiction in everything is not fictional, but there you
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you create those fictional characters on the basis of some historical facts. I think.
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So the more popular you can read, I think. So what else?
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Oh, I agree? I think we I think it kind of keeps
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history alive and in some cases it's teaching the younger generations through an entertaining format
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about Like you said, it intertwines actual events with that fictional events story,
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and some of them can relate to those events because those history is being repeated.
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If you see, yeah, even nowadays, you see whatever I've I
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wanted to write that book, it's happening, right, I mean present world,
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like about the two stories. But the impact of the war it's still
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there, like Ukraine and other Yes, so people have been thinking about that
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when I read it. Yeah, and which is unfortunate. It is so
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even this Bangladesh war it happened like it's going to be fifty two years now,
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So we think about the atrocities and everything. But it's it's still happening.
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I think it's all it will happen, it will keep on happening as
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long as I think civilization is there. I think so that's how I not
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it's not just historic. Oh another thing. I was going to say,
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there's some romance there in historical fiction. There's always it's not just war and
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every thing. Next to history and other things, there's romans. Like in
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my book, I think there's mm hmm. I think the impact of the
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war it changes the relationship. And yeah, there there is a nice balance.
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There's a nice balance of seeing what these women lived through and then seeing
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them try to move forward, and yes, we cheer for them when when
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they take those steps and and something good happens for them. It's a nice
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blend there. Yeah, that was the moral of the story, Like,
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uh, everything is not it's not finished. There's some light you can see
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the tunnel, right, Yeah, that's what I wanted to see through the
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story. Like, yeah, I don't think a little bit of romance hurts
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anything too bad. Jesse isn't here. He could talk about spicy or romance,
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but you may not want that for your book. So never mind.
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So you talked about the research in this in this novel, how did you
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so? So a little bit of it. You're kind of remembering what you
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read about while it was happening when you decided to write this. How did
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you research? Okay, I read books on Bangladesh War. I read quite
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a few. I was telling you the names of the authors, like,
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and then I think most of my research it's through internet, like Google things.
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And then again I was like forced to decide how much history I should
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put and how much story history. Like It's like like I was not writing
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a treatise academy, so I kind down many historical facts, but those are
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just research work, so I needed to put some history. Like there was
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one chapter Operation search Light that was from research. Definitely. I guess I
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didn't make it up like these things happened actually, but the characters are put
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in there, of course, fictional characters, so that that's the only research
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part I think I did. The Internet really opens the doors for us.
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I was kind of fascinated by the story, and I went and looked things
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up, and I could find newspaper articles and found other things that thirty years
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ago we wouldn't have been able to access. I don't think. Oh yes,
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and there's so much information and you just it's overwhelming. So it's really
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hard how much you've taken and how much you've And of course I didn't add
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anything except that that chapter with your stories. Yeah, it's true. I
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have been told. I've been told that you hold a master's degree in international
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relations. Yes, and now you're writing about social disparities and cultural differences and
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things that I since that you are very passionate about. Do you think that
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the passion keeps you motivated to write? Oh? Yeah, that's how I
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started. Like you don't realize them when you were young. You see them,
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right, Like I grew up in Myanmar and I grew up in Kolkato,
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so you see those social disparities, especially in Indian societies. You know,
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the rich and the poor and the middle class and things that happens a
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vast difference. So I I used to see them when they got registered here.
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I never thought about writing. And then you talk about them. So
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that's how it started. Like this, I think it shocked me probably seeing
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so I just grevet about them. But it has nothing to do with international
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relations. International relations is just politics. And historical. You know, it's
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just well, that's one of the things Laura and I always say it are
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retreats. The writing retreats small groups is you know, when confronted with,
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in effect, the question what should I write, my answer is what do
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you care about most? You know, what's important, that's the most important,
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and then we figure out the rest the part and the characters and whatnot.
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Mm hmm, I hear your Bengals, Barati, I can hear your
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Bengals. Bengals are very important and they play a big part in the book.
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Makes me happy. How I started, Well, this turned out wonderfully.
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Well what next? Are you working on another book? Oh? No,
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not yet, no never, or just not yet. In fact,
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I've just started writing short stories. You'll be surprised. It has nothing to
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do with women, nothing to do with social dispackage is going to be like
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what what should I say? Spooky stories. I don't know what it got
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into any I started with like painting that started, you know, a guy
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bought a paint painting and it just you know, it's like the spooky things
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started happening and I didn't I can I can see that though, just in
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my war my child you have some very atmospheric and mysterious passages, so I
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could absolutely you saw those bearing in that direction. Absolutely. Yes, Well,
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Baratti, thank you so much for being on the podcast. We really
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appreciate it. Just a few parting words. You won't have to listen to
27:23
me pitch the writer Con cruise this time because the registration is closed, although
27:30
though we're still looking forward to actually doing it. But remember there will be
27:33
a small group retreat in July in Branson, Missouri, and then of course
27:38
in the fall over labored a Labor Day weekend is the annual writer Con conference,
27:45
and we've revised the website which meant a new registration block. But it's
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all done and it's all ready for you to register. And if you register
27:56
now you get the early bird price, which will say for you at least
28:00
one hundred dollars, depending upon which way you go. We've got more than
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fifty speakers lined up, authors, agents, publishers, book marketing experts,
28:10
and much much more. Please visit writer con dot com to learn more.
28:17
We also just released a new issue of the writer Con magazine. Laura tell
28:22
everybody about that super fun. We've got a sweet little bunny on the cover.
28:27
We're celebrating Easter time. We've got articles out, yes, the Rabbit,
28:33
Yes, oh gosh, yes, we have articles on the reality of
28:40
writing, fantasy, guidance on foreign rights, how to prune your publishing,
28:48
Rosebush, inspirational and entertaining. Yeah yeah, and then an inspirational piece by
29:00
Barry Friedman, and a book on how to an article about how to connect
29:04
with potential readers in your audience. Yeah, on and on. But let's
29:11
an interview, of course. Yeah, various pieces based on the Ted talk
29:14
he just gave, which I had the pleasure of being on the audience for.
29:18
And let me tell you it's it's moving and propound and wonderful, wonderful
29:23
talk. Not yet released, but you can see the print version right now
29:30
in writer Con magazine. Just go to sub stack and look for and search
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for writer Con and it'll come right up. All right. Until next time,
29:40
people, keep writing, and remember you cannot fail if you refuse to
29:45
quit. See you next time.