Hey everyone! Here’s another awesome author interview for you. Today, we interviewed the author of Romantic Sagas, Sunanda J. Chatterjee! Find out the books that inspired her, what she does in her free time, what she’s currently excited about, and more!

Hi Sunanda! So to start off, we want to know which three books have influenced you and your writing the most!

It’s so hard to just pick three books, but the books that have influenced me most as these:

Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Silent Wife by Kerry Fisher

My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I read a lot of lot of women’s fiction and thrillers: Dan Brown, John Grisham, etc. I also binge-watch crime dramas on Netflix. But when I really want inspiration, I go on long walks or jogs. I used to be an avid painter, but haven’t been painting much lately. Oh, and I love cooking. I mean, really love it. I don’t mean to boast, but I cook restaurant-grade Indian food. In fact, in my newsletter, I often share Indian recipes and have got a lot of compliments from my readers. Actually, that gives me an idea: I should start including a recipe at the end of my books.

Certainly you, like most authors, encounter difficulties when it comes to writing. But what, for you, is the hardest thing about writing?

Finding time to write is my biggest hurdle. I work four days a week as a pathologist, where I spend all day making diagnoses. Many times I report out a metastatic cancer or other deadly disease, which affects me to an extent. So not only does it take a lot of my time, but it also takes an emotional toll. Still, in my free time I am plotting my books, imagining scenes and dialogues, so when I can sit by a computer, I can just type it up. That is why outlining and plotting works better for me than “pantsing.” On weekends and on the fifth day off, I write, write, write.

Tell us what you’re excited about right now!

For the first time, I am writing a series. This is really exciting for me, because all my previous books were standalone. The books in this series can be read as standalone, but they are all set in the same imaginary world of “filthy-rich” folk in an exclusive community I called Wellington Estates, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. They are all romantic sagas, with some suspense, some family drama, and a lot of romance. The first two are published, and I’m writing the third one now, while planning the fourth.

Thanks for sharing all these with us! Finally, we want to know which of your books you’d recommend to someone who’s starting to get into your work.

Fighting for Tara is my all-time favorite. It is about a child-bride, who becomes a mother and then a widow in rural Rajasthan, where child marriage and female infanticide is rampant. She escapes her village to save her baby and through a series of unexpected events and a carefully scripted lie, she ends up in California. But seven years later, her lie prevents her from saving her baby once again, this time in an American court.