Indie Author Spotlight: Human By Milan Bakrania

“The time is 10:34 in the evening and these are 

the last days of the human race.”

Zenith has been ‘dead’ ever since his Uncle Ryan mysteriously disappeared when he was a child.

Present day – Zenith is now 42 years old. The world is at the mercy of a relentless virus.

His friend, Joy Irani is missing. No one has seen him. It’s all too familiar, but Zenith will stop at nothing to find him. A series of anonymous text messages leads him to a deserted village. Moments later, he finds himself on a boat heading into the open ocean…

From a bustling metropolis to a place where the stars descend from the sky, it’s going to be a week like no other!

Human is available for purchase from

AMAZON

Milan Bakrania has been interested in literature and creative writing since childhood, but never identified it as a career until 2008/09, prior to being made redundant. During an excursion in India in 2012-13, he became attached to the stories of the struggling middle-class and, despite a booming economy, the daily hurdles they had to overcome to make ends meet at the expense of aspirations and simple dreams. This became part of the inspiration for Human. Milan's first novel, The Emissary, was published in 2010.

For more information on Milan and his work, please visit him on

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Keep reading for an exclusive Author Interview! 

Tell us your main inspiration behind this novel, be it person, book(s), random occurrence, ect. 

In December 2013, I was in India, gallivanting and generally having a good time. One day, we went to an ancient unused water-tower in the city of Ahmedabad. It was a very old, magical structure that reeked of history. I could almost feel the ghosts of the past speaking through the intricate carvings in the stonework. Up to that point, I was taking a short break from writing, but something in that place pushed a button. Human was being conceived. 

Was self-publishing/independent publishing your first choice? What was the most nerve wracking part of your process? 

Yes it was. The nerve wracking part was waiting. Although, the process was finished in six months, it was still a long time and the excitement was building to bursting point. At the end of the day, I just wanted to get my work out there. 

As an independent author, did you choose to edit your novel yourself? What was the biggest change you or your editor made to the story and/or characters? 

I didn’t want to compromise my voice to conform to a particular market, so yes I chose to edit my work myself to bring it as close as I could to the vision in my head. I did get my wife to read it before and after the re-write, and then finally I employed a professional proofreader to iron out any grammatical/spelling errors. The biggest change I made early on was the location. Initially, the story was to be based in London, but I had enough information of the Indian city of Ahmedabad to place the action there. I took the city into the future, renaming it Ahmed City (as it would eventually be called by the foreigners who would have a hard time pronouncing the original name) and wrote a story from the view of an Indian man but keeping the international market at the forefront of my mind. Besides, I believe Human is the only fantasy novel to be based in this upcoming Indian metropolis which adds a layer of originality. 

Do you have any unusual writing habits that aide your process and/or character development? 

I’m an instinctive writer, which means I have to ‘feel’ what I’m writing and see it visually before putting pen to paper. In this way, my habit is to write when it arrives in my head. This can be viewed as unusual as I don’t have a routine set in place. In terms of character development, I just observe. I’ve done it since birth. I love to watch and absorb things silently like a fly on the wall. Now, it has become so inherent that I don’t even realize I’ve picked something up until after it appears on the page. 

Is there one passage or scene from your novel that you are most fond of? 

There are many, but there is one powerful passage which sums up the premise of Human, where the protagonist (Zenith Soni) realizes the bigger picture. He says: 

All this time I thought the end of the world was just around the corner. War, crime, viruses, murders, kidnappings, financial instability…it’s all I heard about, it’s all I knew. But what if there’s more, hidden under the radar, in villages, cities and towns all over the world…eager to shine…little sparks of imagination…little gods…ready to create new worlds!”

Big thanks to Milan for letting me pick his brain. Human sounds like a one of a kind read. Look for my review, COMING SOON!