Student of Nature

The colourful cover of Listen to Your Heartbeats, a book by Sonika Shandilya, sets the tone for the romantic lanes the story winds through as it unfolds page by page.

The story set in Amer Fort at Jaipur, Rajasthan, started when Sonika once sighted the full moon in the night sky. “It emerged from a hillock ahead of me and made me wonder if it also watched the light and sound show at the fort with me. That is when I decided that my next romantic novel had to start from here,” says Sonika.

As the novel progressed, Sonika tells us, she experienced all that she felt strongly about percolating inside her, with her love for music and dance drumming a happy, lively rhythm in her as she wrote the novel.

“The thrill of creating characters and making them do what I want them to do keep me going. My characters live for me,” says Sonika.

However, writing a book is never easy, and Sonika, like many other authors around the world, reiterates the commitment it takes. “To be able to stay in the mood of the novel and be near the characters I create, I have to be very regular in writing, and I constantly work towards that discipline,” shares Sonika, who claims to write for ten hours on most days.

Sonika finds her inspiration in nature. “Nature writes bestsellers in the rain, flowers, clouds, rainbows, and I try to bring nature’s pure romance through my characters,” she tells us.

Listen to Your Heartbeats is trending as one of the hot new releases on top 100 ‘literature and fiction’ and ‘romance’ lists across shelves. Incidentally, her debut novel Tinkling of the Bell Before it Rings was one of the top five best reads in fiction on Amazon.