Keran Pantth Joshi's latest book Check-in Checkout is an anthology of stories

Mona

Making the most of what life doles out is what Keran Pantth Joshi specialises in. As the lockdown hit the pause on life, she was left stuck in the five-acre Tudor style hotel that she runs with her husband in Tasmania, Australia. To fill in time, she went back to her passion, which is writing. The result is Check-in Checkout, an anthology of horror stories. Each story exploring a sub-genre – gore, psychological thriller, urban legend and the like.

Positive response to her stories encouraged her to carry it forward, and she found time when she was pregnant and a medical condition kept her confined to her home. That’s how It Follows Us, another anthology, was born.

“It Follows Us has stories as modern as a young girl going through the horrors of social dating sites to a young bride in West Bengal and an old lady in Uttarakhand,” says Karen, who was in Chandigarh recently to launch her books.

A fan of RL Stine, Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe, Karen says, “I started with Stine. King is, of course, amazing and I love symbolism in Poe’s world.”

Her first book came out in 2012 when she moved to Australia post-wedding. “Since the paperwork took its own time, I couldn’t work, and so I wrote,” says the trained physiotherapist, who also has done an MBA. She has lived across Delhi, Punjab and Maharashtra. Her first book was Beyond Forever.

During this trip to India, she did research for her next, again a horror thriller for which she interviewed many psychics. “I have interviewed psychics in Australia, but here the experience is all together different,” says Karen, who is looking forward to screen adaptations of her stories.

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