Meet Varun Sayal - The Author of Demons of Time

We came in contact with Varun Sayal when he had published his first book Time Crawlers. We loved those short stories and during his interview for that book, Varun told us about his future project. After a year he returned with a bang, "Demons of Time: Race to the 7th Sunset". Those who have missed it can check it from below links

1. Review of Time Crawlers
2. Interview for Time Crawlers
3. Review of Demons of Time

In his first interview, you can find the background of Varun and how he started writing. 

Varun without wasting much time lets discuss about your latest book. What is it about? Can you brief us about it?

Demons of Time is a fast-paced science fiction thriller story which follows the arc of a time-traveling hero, Tej, who fights to avert an apocalypse. Though, he has only seven days before all is lost. This book lays the foundation stone for Time Travelers series where I plan to unravel stories about time-demons, time-readers, necromancers, and aliens.

The idea of time travelling is new in Indian Literature. How did you conceptualize it? How many efforts you have given after it?

I have grown up on a heavy dose of fantasy stories from Indian scriptures, so my imagination muscle got a good workout since childhood. I was also a big Doctor Who fan and devoured those YA books in high school. That is where the time travel bug hit me. But for my own writing, I wanted to conceptualize Time Travel in a way which is very different from the usual notion of folks using a time-machine. That concept is over-done in western literature. My notion of time travel is based on biological evolution and genetic transfer of these powers, which is what I bought out in this novel.

If you get an offer of making either movie or series based on the book? Which one will you select? Why?

I really wish that happens, because I would definitely go with a series. Plainly because TV series have a way of engaging audiences for long intervals of time. Even with movies, you can see the excitement among the masses when sequels are announced, which is again in a way serializing a movie. Marvel universe, for example, has engaged fans over years because of series of back to back flicks.

You have finished books with mystery. If you are planning for series how many parts you have thought about?

For now, I have envisioned this series as a trilogy, but I don’t take that as a hard constraint. Readers have given a lot of love to Book # 1, if I see similar engagement with the next two upcoming books, I will write for as long as possible. The characters I have built are strong, they have their unique personalities, voices and their own story arcs. I am even inclined to write spin-off series with characters such as Rudrakshini Devi, the Queen of necromancers.

Any interesting things you would like to share about the book?

The main arc of the story is loosely inspired by the story of Takshak Naag in Indian scriptures who had only seven days to kill a king. He does so to fulfill the curse given by a sage. You can also find references of twin demon brothers which is a recurrent theme in Hindu mythology. But the story itself largely takes place in the modern world with back and forth into distant past.