Introducing author, Khalid Muhammad!
Where are you from?
That’s
an interesting answer… I was born in Pakistan, moved to the United States when
I was 2 (with my parents), moved back to Pakistan about 16 years ago, when I
was 27. So I am from both countries, having lived in the US for about 27 years
and Pakistan for 19.
What inspired you to write your first
book? What genre is it?
I
first got the idea for the book about 6 years ago. I tried many different
flavors of how the story should come together in terms of flow and structure,
but it never really worked for me until I switched gears and let more of myself
into the writing. I am extremely pro-Army and pro-Pakistan – it will always be
home to me.
Agency
Rules – Never an Easy Day at the Office takes you behind the headlines into the
events that created today’s Pakistan. It is a tough look at a nation in
conflict from the eyes of a young man, Kamal Khan, who is looking for his own
identity and place in society. Kamal is raised in privilege, but leaves it all
behind as a man to serve his nation. Once in that environment, finds himself
embroiled in a complex narrative that shifts with the fiery speeches of their
anointed political and religious leaders.
There
are a number of motivations behind my story. First, and probably the most
important motivation, was to share the Pakistan that I know with the world. The
narrative that has become commonplace about my country is that it is a failed
state with many players in the power corridor, but that is not all that
Pakistan is. My Pakistan is a country that struggles with inept governments
more interested in themselves rather than the people who elected them. It is a
country whose people are extremely talented and patriotic but unable to take
advantage of any opportunities because the country is run like a fiefdom rather
than a nation. It is a country in search of its identity, much like Kamal, that
is trapped amidst power plays from internal and external forces.
The
backdrop of terrorism does make telling the story easier, but to paint the
mosaic of the complexities I had to move backwards to the 1990s so that the
reader could understand what happened to create the image of the country as it
is today. It’s also a little bit of what I wish had happened rather than what
really has happened. In my story, as in real life in fact, the people of
Pakistan are the underdog against so many powerful forces, it’s a miracle we
still exist. That we do is testament to our resilience as a nation, no matter
what you read in the international press.
I
hope that, as a reader, you will experience that Pakistan that I fell in love
with when I moved home from the United States after 25 years. You will feel
your heart wrench with Kamal’s when he is stationed in Karachi, Peshawar and
buried deep inside the terrorist camps. And, hopefully, you will cheer him on,
because he is the Pakistani that you don’t see in the media – smart, driven and
motivated to do good for his family, fellow citizens and country.
Do you write full-time or part-time? How
do you balance your writing life with your family/work life?
It’s
like a 2nd job for me. I work during the day running a marketing and
brand management company and at night, I write for hours and hours.
The
balance is difficult when I am writing, because I never know when an idea is
going to take shape and I will need to write it down somewhere so I don’t
forget it. I find myself turning on the digital recorder on my iPhone over and
over throughout the day, adding thoughts and sentences that I don’t want to
forget before I sit down to write. Once the process is done and the book is
complete, then I go back to family and reading for fun and knowledge.
How did you come up with the title?
When
you talk about intelligence agencies around the world, they are either referred
to as “the service” or “the agency,” with the exception of the CIA, who like
the moniker “the company.”
Agency
Rules, the series title, came from that thought process. I wanted a title that
would automatically identify the book series in reader’s minds, but not be so
spy or espionage related that it would turn off readers from other genres. The
Never an Easy Day at the Office came about half way through writing the book. I
was storyboarding the next few chapters and the more I looked at how the progression
was mapped, the more I saw the difficulties and struggles for my main
character.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
I
hope that, as a reader, you will experience that Pakistan that I fell in love
with when I moved home from the United States after 25 years. You will feel
your heart wrench with Kamal’s when he is stationed in Karachi, Peshawar and
buried deep inside the terrorist camps. And, hopefully, you will cheer him on,
because he is the Pakistani that you don’t see in the media – smart, driven and
motivated to do good for his family, fellow citizens and country.
Are experiences based on someone you know, or events in your own life?
When
I tried to write my first novel years back, I found myself creating situations
and scenarios that I couldn’t identify with. The story was disconnected for me
as the author, so there was no way that the reader would be able to connect
with it. With this novel, I stayed true to what I know, have experienced, seen
or heard first hand. I tried to capture the emotions and dreams of the people
in different social classes. I hope that I have been able to do all of that
with my writing.
What books have most influenced your
life most?
The
greatest influencers on my life have been Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck. I
can still pick up any of the books written by these two writers and find
something new, something that impacts me differently.
My
favorites are Fredrick Forsyth, Tom Clancy, Helen MacInnes, Alistair McLean and
John le Carre. These are the bricks that laid the foundations of today’s modern
spy thriller and they teach authors from their books and writing.
I
do have to be honest and admit that I watched a lot, and I mean a lot, of spy
movies and TV shows. It helps to understand how a story plays out on screen to
know the level of realism and environment that has to be brought to a story on
paper. When you don’t have the visual to count on, the author has to paint the
picture in the reader’s mind. I hope that I have been able to achieve that with
my debut novel.
What book are you reading now?
Right
now, I am wrapped up in research for the second installment of Agency Rules. I
have 4 or 5 books on my bedside table right now. Jason Burke’s The 9/11 Wars,
Imperial Hubris, Terry McDermott’s Perfect Soldiers and Steve Coll’s Ghost
Wars. For pleasure, I am reading Tom Clancy’s final novel, Command Authority.
Are there any new authors that have grasped your interest?
I
have really liked Tom Rob Smith’s books, Child 44, The Secret Speech and Agent
6. I’ve also been reading Matthew Reilly’s Scarecrow series. There are just too
many great books out to try to keep up with them all.
What are your current projects?
Next?
We’ll we had the global launch for Agency Rules – Never an Easy Day at the
Office on the 16th of January. That’s when Amazon will get the
e-book. Paperbacks will be available in bookstores and on Amazon in February
from what I understand. I’ll probably spend a few months supporting and
promoting the book.
At
the same time, I have already started to craft the characters for the 2nd
installment of Agency Rules. I know the story line but I need to create the
characters and scenes that will play out on the pages of the next book. You can
keep up with Agency Rules and Kamal Khan on the website at http://agencyrules.com.
I
also write for a few marketing blogs that cater specifically to authors and
book marketing. Being a marketer by profession, I have learned how to translate
the commercial aspects of marketing, brand building and buzz generation into
the publishing world and hopefully, gotten it right.
As
I said, I am doing the background research for the second installment of Agency
Rules, which will take up the better part of the next 6-8 months. I have
started to jot notes and bullet points, but I won’t start writing until I have
a clear picture on where the story goes from here.
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything in your latest book?
Not
a thing. I am extremely happy with the story and the characters. It’s a
wonderful read!
Can you share a little of your current work with us?
Agency
Rules – Never an Easy Day at the Office.
Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing?
Getting
the realism. It’s very easy to create a story and fill in details from your
imagination. With Agency Rules, I have taken the history of a country as a
canvas and painted my own story on top of it. As I said previously, I worked
very hard to get the voice right with what people are saying, thinking and
feeling both inside and outside Pakistan. I don’t want people to come away from
the book thinking that it was a nice story but it just wasn’t believable. Everything
that you read on the pages of Agency Rules has actually happened in Pakistan in
the 1990s, minus one thing, which I won’t reveal.
What was the hardest part of writing your book?
Not
writing 200,000 words. I had so much that I wanted to put in the story, but I
sat with my wife on the storyboards and outlines and she really helped me to
weed out the things that would not add value to the story. Some things were
pushed to the next book, some things may appear on my author website as general
writing between books. There was just so much that I initially thought of
including.
Did you learn anything from writing your book and what was it?
Oh
my God, yes. Having done it myself now, I have a different appreciation of what
goes into writing a book. It’s not easy. Taking a taunting blank sheet of paper
and filling it with an engaging story is a challenge for anyone, doing it over
and over for almost 200 pages… it’s a different respect for the craft.
Do you have any advice for other writers?
So
my advice to aspiring authors is simple - Never give up. There are so many
reasons that you may stop writing, there are hundreds of people that will
demotivate you when you are writing, but you have to take them with a grain of
salt. You can’t achieve something when you are worried about what the naysayers
think.
Do you have anything specific that you
want to say to your readers?
Well,
other than the genre and being a book about Pakistan and terrorism, Agency
Rules – Never an Easy Day at the Office is a fast-paced, action packed story
that will keep you guessing all the way to the end. I hope that, as a reader,
you will experience that Pakistan that I fell in love with when I moved home
from the United States after 25 years. You will feel your heart wrench with Kamal’s
when he is stationed in Karachi, Peshawar and buried deep inside the terrorist
camps. And, hopefully, you will cheer him on, because he is the Pakistani that
you don’t see in the media – smart, driven and motivated to do good for his
family, fellow citizens and country.
Do you have an agent or publisher? How did you go about finding one?
No.
I am talking to some different people now about representation, but I was not
interested in the traditional route to publishing with my debut novel. I wanted
to make sure that I got to tell the story that I wanted to tell.
If you could live anywhere, where would
it be?
Right
here in Pakistan. This will always be home for me, with all the troubles and
challenges, but I don’t want to be one of those Pakistanis that run away from
their home country and complain about what’s wrong with it. I’ll stay here and
be part of the solution, not another voice in the world condemning my country.
If you could have any super power, what
would it be?
I
have had a great deal of bad luck and bad people in my life that have done some
serious damage to me in the past. It took me a long time to put that behind me
and repair myself so that I could move forward to live the life that I knew I
could have. If I could have one super power, I would want to be able to heal
people’s scars, because everyone has the potential of being superb and no one,
and I mean no one, should be allowed to stop them from achieving that.
Microbio:
Born
in Pakistan's troubled Swat Valley, educated and raised in the United States,
Khalid returned to Pakistan almost 17 years ago and fell in love with his
country. His debut novel, Agency Rules - Never an Easy Day at the Office, is a
journey behind the headlines about Pakistan, the world's most dangerous place,
to deliver an intense story that will challenge the reader to question what
they have been told.
Author
Website – http://agencyrules.com
Facebook
– http://facebook.com/AgencyRulesPK
Twitter
– http://twitter.com/AgencyRulesPK
Goodreads
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20587018-agency-rules---never-an-easy-day-at-the-office
Amazon
– http://getbook.at/amazon-ar
No comments:
Post a Comment