An Interview with Lata Gullapalli: Author of Three Loves and Other Stories

Lata Gullapalli is an investment banker by profession, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. She has worked in investment banking for over 20 years in South Asia, Russia, and the UK. She advises companies on mergers and acquisitions, financial restructure, and capital raising. She has designed products for raising capital and has set up and run start-up companies, devising strategies and funding. She has lead teams to enter into joint ventures and taken a company public with an initial public offering.

She has studied and has qualified in corporate law, financial strategy, taxation, and economics, among others. She is an MBA from INSEAD and is also a Chartered Secretary and a Chartered Financial Analyst (I), and holds a Diploma in Basic Finance.

She works with NGOs in the UK and India that are focused primarily on child protection, education for girls, and orphaned children.

She is also an author, with published works, and is currently working on her first full-length novel.

Tell us about your book.

Myriad human emotions run their course through our lives, sometimes like the weather in England, even in the course of a day. What is the magic wand to be waved, for a newlywed couple seeking to discover each other; or a strictly raised girl, to settle into a more interactive kind of relationship; or for a girl full of the gift of love, to find happiness?

Does a professional excelling at work, but a novice at speaking his heart, venture along the path of a relationship, or a child just beginning to blossom – can she survive being bullied? Is it for the daughter to be given in marriage?

These stories tell the tale and more. They are all positive, energetic, and look at a person’s complete life. The search for happiness and finding it.

Why did you want to write a book?

Writing has been my passion for a long time and I have always enjoyed the turn of phrase to make my writing more interesting. When a friend suggested I write a story for his collection of stories published some years ago now, I was happy to try. I got a superb response from the editor who didn’t want to change even one word. That was gratifying. And then I got an excellent set of independent reviews. There the idea of writing a collection of stories began. I thought it’s easier to try to write short stories as I will need less effort per story, I thought.

Why did you choose to self-publish?

The publishing business in the UK has stopped accepting works from potential authors directly. One has to approach agents who evaluate the work based on their idea of what could sell and then take your work to a publisher. There is lot of uncertainty, as well as time taken. For me, I was confident I have a good piece of writing and many agents felt that too – they were all unable to take my work up, they said, as they were busy with other work. And my work needed a committed agent who would fight for me. When nearly 7-8 of the agents out of the 15 or so that I approached said the same thing, I felt I should push myself forward and self-publish.

As a writer, what is your schedule? How do you get the job done?

I write in chunks so it’s not that I will sit down daily and work at writing – though I try to do that. I find it hard to work more than a few days at a time. I prefer to keep thinking about what I will write so it is written pretty much and edited to a large extent in my head before I write it down. Then it’s a question of reading what I wrote and sometimes cutting and pasting ideas that flow better together. Sometimes I add a few pages of writing in between to enhance the ideas.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

I try to leave the topic for a while, or sometimes think about it and what I can say differently, and many times the block is dissipated.

Tell us about the genre you wrote in, and why you chose to write this sort of book.

I have written short stories involving many kinds of relationships to try and give a taster perhaps of how different relationships can work or not work. Relationships are the basis of harmony and caring in any society and I feel deeply about them.

Who are your biggest writing inspirations and why?

It’s the dynamic people bring wherever they live and wherever they go. I love studying people and trying to see why they do things in a certain way or why they speak in a certain way.

Why did you write about this particular subject?

Relationships and managing them effectively to the mutual benefit of all parties concerned have been the mainstay of my work as an investment banker specializing in mergers and acquisitions. I have seen and observed people in many places and learned so much about human behavior and perhaps the why of it as well.

What did you learn on your journey as an author?

It is true many people have ideas and the ability to be able to communicate them effectively to the satisfaction, contentment, help, or empathy of others. It’s a gift and should not be lightly taken. A person who is able to write well must be recognized and encouraged so they write more, especially if their work is to the benefit of society. I am deeply humbled by the affection and the recognition I am receiving for my book of short stories.

What’s next for you as an author?

I am writing my first full-length novel. I am a third of the way through writing it. It is a very exciting project and different from short stories in the way I need to research and prepare.