A Bookish Conversation with S.P. Aruna, author of 'Girl Within Girl'
Half
French, half Khmer (Cambodian), I'm a woman whose head is filled with fantasies
and intriguing stories, and who wants to share them with others.
S.P.
Aruna’s latest book is the erotic thriller, Girl
Within Girl: An Erotic Thriller: Book 1: Unraveling.
Visit
the author on Facebook.
About the Book:
Katrina is never alone. She is bound to others inside her,
tighter than any Siamese twins could ever be: Cherry, the freewheeling
photojournalist, Anisa, the covert spy-assassin, and others as yet unknown, all
sharing her body and mind as she goes about her work in a psychiatric hospital.
But she
is starting to unravel, and her sole hope is the handsome Dr. Sean
Paisley, the only one who can make her whole again.
Girl Within Girl is a dark erotic thriller that wanders
through a sensual maze of mind control and torture.
For More Information
Q: Welcome to The Writer's
Life! Now that your book has been
published, we’d love to find out more about the process. Can we begin by having you take us at the
beginning? Where did you come up with
the idea to write your book?
I came across a book written in
the 1970's, The Control of Candy Jones, by Donald Bain, a fascinating
true story of a beautiful pin-up model who later discovered (while under
hypnosis) that she had been hypno-programmed to act as a spy for the CIA.
Strange as this tale may seem, it was so convincingly written that it lead me
to do further research, and lo and behold, the CIA actually had a mind control
program called MKULTRA, where subjects were hypnotized, given hallucinatory
drugs, and were tortured in order to fracture their personalities. Although
this plot was used in the 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate and the
two film versions that followed, I thought to myself that this would make a
great plot for a work of erotica.
Q: How hard was it to write a
book like this and do you have any tips that you could pass on which would make
the journey easier for other writers?
Peace and quiet, and having time
alone are essential ingredients for me to get ideas, but these conditions are
not so easily met, especially if you're married. Finding a time where I would
not be distracted was the hardest challenge I faced.
As for other writers, I'm
hesitant to give tips. I write my stories on the fly, letting the story and
characters take on a life of their own. Others might outline the book before
they even start. In any case, for fiction, sharp, crisp dialogue is crucial.
Q: Who is your publisher and how
did you find them or did you self-publish?
Because my novel was not
mainstream, but a sub-genre of erotica, or I might say, X-rated fiction, I
decided that the easiest way to get published in the shortest amount of time
was to self-publish. There was no need for an agent to take time to decide if
s/he could sell it to a publishing house. I self-published using a service
called BookBaby. They handle everything from formatting to distribution.
Q: Is there anything that
surprised you about getting your first book published?
Not yet. I think the surprises
are still ahead. Or maybe disappointment if the novel is not well received.
Q: What other books (if any) are
you working on and when will they be published?
I'm currently writing Book Two of
the series, Healing, and my plan is to have it released in February of
2017. I envision three books in the series Girl Within Girl and after
that I'll go on to something else.
Q: What’s one fact about your
book that would surprise people?
That there actually was a program
of mind control, and part of that project was to see if they could create
multiple personalities that would not have any memory of what each personality
did. This was done in an attempt to create the perfect spy who would not reveal
secrets; in other words, the Manchurian Candidate is a fact.
Q: Finally, what message (if any)
are you trying to get across with your book?
One objective I had was to make
people aware that mind control does exist. I guess the other goal I had was to
write an erotic novel that had a strong plot as well as hot sexy passages.
Q: Thank you again for this
interview! Do you have any final words?
If anyone would like to know more
about me, they can check out my Facebook author page, though I have to warn
people that some things I post are explicitly sexy. I believe that our
sexuality is still a mystery to us and I try to explore it using that page as a
platform. Other than that, I wish everyone a good day.
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