Govind Suresh (Astradhari)

How the Astradhari series will be laid out.

As a part of my first few posts on this blog, I thought it would be a great idea to document what exactly I have planned for this work-in-progress, and what I’ve already completed. Noting the status of the series might become a(n) (in)frequent post, depending on how I’m feeling. Important to note that anything I post is subject to change at any point, but it is the current status of my series.

Right now, Astradhari is planned to be 5-6 books. The first two books will be the story of Nishant. If you haven’t met him yet, you should go read the blurb I posted earlier – Where “Astradhari” begins…. His story is the center of everything, with events that are the culmination of the past and massively impact the future of the world.

Book 3 will be a prequel book, detailing important events of some characters living several centuries before Nishant. Expect to see some similar Astras and some familiar eyes to the ones you’ll meet in book 1 and 2. On the other side, books 4 and 5 (and maybe a 6th) will be a century or two after Nishant. The world here may look a little different, and a little bigger.

Every Astradhari I discover in this world comes with their own stories, so I’m hoping I can add some short works along to the series to breathe a little more life into some side characters from the main novels.

Everything I mentioned, including one or two short stories, have at least an outline noted down. I just completed the draft of book 1, which will be sitting patiently until I finish the last two-thirds of book 2. We’ll see what’s in store for them after that!

Where “Astradhari” begins…

Nishant, a 17 year-old boy from the small village of Kadha, wants more than a life of sweeping the floors of a blacksmith shop. With the King and his army sitting in isolation in the palace, stronger villages are growing close to a civil war. One which threatens to swallow Kadha and the other villages in its wake. When his powers awake as he stands up to soldiers, Nishant must be hidden away by Astradhari rebels.

Naktam, a veteran Astradhari and leader of the rebels, is the oldest survivor of Pralaya, a purge carried out by the King. After a decade of hiding, he has trained a new generation of Astradharis to avenge his late friends and restore the strength that the kingdom once had.

Nishant is swept up in the rebel cause, becoming the newest recruit for Naktam’s resistance. He trains with his newfound friends and faces their Astras, witnessing powers wilder than the fairy tales his father used to read to him. The King himself is a mighty Astradhari, with an army of loyalists spared from Pralaya, but Naktam believes that his group has a secret weapon. The only question is if they will be ready to stop the kingdom from tearing itself apart yet again.

All the while, the fog to the south of the kingdom border continues to grow and stir, shrouding an ancient threat.

I am a writer

Growing up, I was a math kid. Math was concrete – there was a right and a wrong answer. On the other hand, any English class felt too subjective. Writing felt too free-form, so I never considered it as something I could enjoy.

Yet, I always had stories in my head. They’d brew up as fantastical nightmares or video game ideas, all of which I would ramble on about to my parents or to a handy sticky note. My first taste of fiction writing came from Michigan’s annual writing exams. As a third-grader, I remember entering that writing flow state and racing through a 30 page short story in an hour or two. Even then, I ran out of time before I could get the entire thing out of my head. Later, in high school English class, I wrote flash fiction based off my dreams. I had never been more proud of something I turned in for a grade, because it was purely from my own brain.

The best part was that it really was the right answer, or at least each twist and turn in the story was exactly the way I knew it should be. It was a formula that I created myself. Still, I was a math kid, so why would I write outside of school?

I eventually went to college for computer science – just like every good Indian American kid. I enjoyed it, and I was good at it, so I never thought about anything else.

Until late fall of 2020, when I was stuck at home and finally bored of playing video games and procrastinating online lectures. I decided to make a video game myself. My dream game: a beautiful 3D action adventure masterpiece, with a story loosely based on an idea I had as a kid.

The thing is, making games is difficult, especially when you have no artistic capabilities. I tried learning Blender, and I got as far as modeling a few swords and rough (and I mean rough) player animations. I started to procrastinate the development of the demo by working on something easier: world building and my characters. All I needed for that was to stare at a wall and write down whatever popped into my head. I researched the Astras and the Vedic and Puranic myths and the few sentences of plot in my brain ballooned into an entire world. The other stories I grew up loving as an American, combined with early Indian mythology, seeped into this world until I discovered a mythology of my own.

Many, many wrong and right ideas (and a few years) later, the story sprung from a sticky note into the several books that will make up Astradhari.

I was a writer from the start, but it just took a while to believe it. Now that I’m here, I know that I will always write down my dreams, whether it’s the world of Astradhari or any others that I find.