Interview with S. N. Nina Arthur

Interview: S. N. Nina Arthur

Interviewer: Roza Csergo

Hello everybody, and thanks for reading “Author’s Spotlight”! Today we have S. N. Nina Arthur with us. Hello, Nina, thank you so much for agreeing to this interview.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity, dear.

You're welcome. Could you please tell us about your roots, upbringing, and education? Who are you? 

Hello, my pen name is S. N. Nina Arthur. I was born and raised in India. Right now, I am taking my MBA courses.  

Is your family supportive of your writing? 

Yes, my family highly supports my writing. Although they never asked me what I write or never interfered with my writing. When I get any type of ideas for my books, I run to my younger sister and tell her about it, leaving out the parts of dark romance or erotic parts. 

She had been a passionate reader for a long time and the way she explains what readers like and what they don’t helped me a lot.  

Overall, my family supports my writing.

You are using a pen name? Is there a specific reason behind it?

There’s no specific reason behind it, although I just don’t want to mix my personal life with my writer's life. 

Do you have a full-time job? If so, how do you juggle it with writing?

I don’t have a full-time job, as I am still a student but the online classes and other college stuff sometimes don’t allow me to write much. I sit at night, before going to bed, and allow myself to write.

It relaxes me.

Are you multilingual? Which languages do you speak, and how did you learn them?

 Yes, other than my mother tongue, I speak Hindi, Punjabi, English, a little Kannada, and Spanish.

I learned Hindi from my friends and school, English from school and my family, every single person in my family speaks fluent English. Punjabi and Kannada were also from friends. I began learning Spanish, recently from one of my translators and closest cousins. 

Do you have other hobbies besides writing? 

Yes, I’m a singer, choreographer, a passionate reader, and a dancer. I visit dance studios for workshops, collaborations. When I’m free, I do covers of my favourite songs alone or with my friends.          

Do you plan out your novels, or you just sit down and discover them as you write? 

I don’t usually plan out. When I get an idea, I sit down and write it and everything just flows out. 

What is your favorite genre to read and write? 

It completely depends on my mood. When something gets my attention, I go for it, and it includes my writing too. There’s no specific favourite genre for me.  

Do you research world-building and layered character development?

Yes, I do a lot of it. My upcoming book has very unique world-building. It takes me hours to create those rules, laws, history, culture… and when it comes to layered character development, I sometimes write down about real-life people. 

I write every single thing about every character before introducing them in the story, it really helps me and the best part is, if you forget something about the character, like what he likes and all, we can just go through the written things about the character and get what we wanted. 

What are the 3 things you love and 3 things you hate writing about? 

             I love writing about relationships, family drama and psycho men. 

             I hate writing about deaths, heart-breaking scenes, and sad endings. 

Can you, please, share with us at least 3 books that left a mark on you/influenced you in any way? 

The notebook by Nicholas Sparks, Me before you by JoJo Moyes, The Witcher series by Andrzej Sapkowski. These amazing books have influenced me to write things I never thought I would.  

Do you have any advice for beginner writers?

Write for yourself, the only advice I give for beginner writers is this. It is very important to know what you are writing. Let the alternate world in your head flow down and write what you love to read. Write down your ideas in a book before starting the book. Once you begin writing, don’t stop it in the middle and try hard to finish the book. 

Aim for good skills rather than fame or money and I’m sure, once you discover your style, you will ace it. Remember, no book has ever been written overnight. You need to be very patient. This is a long run, and you need to be prepared for it before you start. 

Enjoy what you write and allow yourself to finish what you started, don’t let negative thoughts like, - Will readers love this? Does my book have errors? Will I get followers from this book? - Disturb you. No book is written perfectly at first try. 

Finish the book, leave it for a while and read other books, observe things in the book you read, and you will have an idea. Go back to your book and edit it until your eyes bleed. 

Every single beginner writer, you need to let go of your fear of failure or negative feedback. Just Write, and every single thing will come to you. 

How did you come across Booknet? 

I was actually searching for a new app to read books online, and I stumbled on Booknet. I downloaded the app and read many books. At some point, I had decided to write books of my own. 

Can you share your insight on being a commercial author on Booknet? 

When I first started writing Mixed Feelings, I didn’t think about selling it. I just began writing for fun and when I got offered to sell book 2, I got very excited. The sales at the beginning were low, but I kept telling myself that something is better than nothing. As I kept writing, sales increased and my book got popular. 

I was the kind of person who likes to experiment with things and get experienced. When I share my experiences or advise things, I like to be very honest and straightforward. I don’t sugar-coat when I say them.

As I read a few contracts of other platforms and compared them with Booknet, I was surprised, the contracts were completely different. I got offers for Mixed Feelings from many sites. The list was extensive and as I said, I like to experiment a lot. 

I began reading the contracts I received and many of the contracts were very similar to one another. The very popular platforms were asking complete rights of my books and were only offering me 7 or 8% royalties whereas Booknet was offering me 70% royalties and no rights asked.

If you go with non-exclusive contracts with those sites, you won’t earn anything since they don’t promote your book well but in Booknet, this didn’t happen to me. 

I never thought I could earn money by writing books. Till now, my experience with Booknet has been quite good compared to other sites, making Booknet my first priority. Although I earn a good sum of money with Booknet, the income I earn never bothered me. My complete attention is on improving my writing and to learn and discover more about writing.

You are the Admin. for the Facebook Page Booknet Promos. Could you tell us a little more about your group?

The group is all about Writers and Books over Booknet and the Booknet site. It is more of a readers' space to ask any question or start a thread. Readers can write about the books they liked or the authors they like over Booknet and promote and discuss their interests in reading.

We also encourage writers to announce any of their upcoming books, discounts, and promotional activity regarding Booknet.

If you are a reader looking to find what Booknet actually is, you are totally welcome to drop by to post and get the chance to communicate the ones writing on Booknet. Any person, reader, or writer find in any act of piracy will be banned in the group.

Do you have any future projects standing in line, waiting for you to finish your ongoing books? What are your plans for the rest of this year?

I have 8 books standing in line and waiting for me to complete “The despair” series. The titles, plots, characters, everything of each book was ready and waiting for me to publish them. 

Among those 8 books, 2 are with Indian settings and those books are making me anxious to see the reader's reaction when I release them. 

I planned out the release dates for every single book, I just hope everything goes according to it. This year, I want to overcome my flaws in writing and experiment more. I hope readers will support me as they did from the start and I wish to entertain them more this year. 

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Thank you for sharing your time and talent with us. It was a pleasure to get to know you more, as I'm certain your fans will agree. If you would like to read more of S. N. Nina Arthur's work please visit her profile at:

https://booknet.com/en/s-n-nina-arthur-u4179998