MY NOVELS

 How I Balanced Realism and Myth in 'Where Worlds Part'

One of the questions I kept returning to while writing Where Worlds Part was this:

How much of a story should feel real… and how much should feel just beyond explanation?

Grounded Realism

For me, realism had to come first.

Rudra’s journeys follow actual routes — Panvel, Roha, and Korlai. The distances, roads, and timelines were mapped carefully so that nothing felt out of place. The landscapes — forts, rivers, and coastal stretches — are all drawn from real geography, grounding the story in terrain that exists beyond the page.

Even the quieter details come from lived textures. Rudra’s classical guitar practice, his grandfather’s perspective shaped by a life as a forest officer, and Niya’s quiet observation — these are all rooted in everyday reality.

Mythic Resonance

But the story doesn’t stay there.

There is the spiral — a simple marking, almost easy to overlook, that gradually begins to carry weight beyond its form.

There is Meghraj — a black horse with a white patch, appearing during Rudra’s journey, grounded in the physical world yet carrying something that feels just out of reach.

And there are fragments of verse — whispers that seem to echo across time, as if memory itself refuses to stay contained.

The Balance

I didn’t want myth to overpower reality. I wanted it to lean into it — quietly, almost imperceptibly — until the line between the two begins to blur.

Because sometimes, the most unsettling stories aren’t the ones that feel unreal.

They are the ones that feel almost real.

Stories where silence and echoes coexist. Where memory doesn’t end — it shifts.

And somewhere in that shift… another reality begins.

Where Worlds Part is now available on Amazon.