In the Pipeline...

Every month I receive a couple of emails from readers. Mostly, I am asked when the next novel, promised on the interview page, is coming out. Here's the answer:

You claim on your website that your fourth novel is in the pipeline. When is it due out?

Well, it’s a very long pipeline and in the meantime there are three novels stuck in it, with at the moment no end in sight!

Writer’s block?

No, publisher’s block. I have not been able to find a publisher for them.

But you already have a publisher!

No. That publisher rejected Novel Number Four. Number Five and Six would have the same problem, as the common denominator is the same.

What is that common denominator?

They are set (mostly) in Guyana, my home country. Apparently most readers have never heard of Guyana and don’t want to read books about Guyanese characters.

Can you tell us more about these books?

Last of the Sugar Gods is a sprawling, epic novel about a young Indian girl who is sexually abused in Guyana; her best friend who vows to avenge that abuse; and the teenage boy who wins her heart by saving her from drowning. It's set against the turbulent political background of Guyana from the late 50's to the present.
 
White Night is based on the Jonestown mass suicide/murder of 1978, and tells the story of a a Guyanese journalist who goes up there to investigate; and ends up fighting for her life as she tries to escape with a group of inmates.
 
The Small Fortune of Dorothea Quint is set in both Guyana and the UK,  in two time-frames, contemporary and past. It's about a priceless postage stamp turning up in an immigrant family, and the dramatic events leading up to its present role in a household of three very different women.
 
And now, back to India:
 
Work in Progress: Akbar's Rajput Wife (Working title)
 
Historical novel.
The amazing story of the greatest Mughal emperor, Akbar, told from the viewpoint of his wife, a Rajput princess from Amber (Jaipur). She is a Hindu, he a Muslim. She fears conversion, and as a condition of her marriage demands that she can keep her religion. To everyone's surprise, he agrees; between them a great and lasting love develops. Akbar sets about bringing about religious tolerance among his subjects.
 
Akbar is the grandfather of Shah Jehan, who built the Taj Mahal. He ruled over 100 million people; in comparison, his contemporary Elizabeth I of England ruled  3 million. He established India as  one of the great world powers. Fate and history would combine to bring India and Britain together in a way neither Akbar nor Elizabeth could have imagined in their wildest dreams.
 
"No Renaissance ruler in Europe, not even the brilliant Elizabeth I, tried so consistently as Akbar to bring in the rule of reason. And one has to say, given the extraordinary resurgence of religious fundametalism in our own supposedly more enlightened age, it is an idea whose time has yet to come." Michael Wood, The Story of India.