Mastho Vamsee is an author of thriller twists and suspense filled stories. If you love the protagonist in a haunted house with a dark ghost… if you love to read a scary thriller… if you love horror stories for adults, Mastho is your man!
This Leo by Sun Sign, Mastho is an actor, ace radio presenter, a busy voice artist, an adored entertainer, a director of television series, music composer, Reiki healer, Tarot card reader, a certified hypnotist, a theatre artist and a YouTuber.
But according to him, what he is super good at is writing kickass stories, Says, he can’t help it :).
1. Please tell us something about yourself.
I am Mastho Vamsee, author of stuff that aims at thrilling you apart from scaring you, keeping you guessing, making you laugh, entertaining you and at the end, leaving you with a charged up and happy vibration to make things more beautiful around you.
I write thriller novels with lots of suspense and scores of twists. My areas are the occult, supernatural, spiritual ascension and human psychology.
Could say, I play several roles.
Doing just one thing is simply not me :).
I am an Actor, Voice Artist, Radio Presenter, Music Composer, YouTube fiction director, and a Tarot card reader. I and been a meditator too for some 27 years now and am a practitioner of Mantra, Kundalini & Kriya Yoga apart from being a Reiki practitioner and a certified Hypnotist.
Had been a stage performer and a theatre artist too. Have a couple of MBA degrees, the certificates of which lie under a pile of dust in my store room :). And had worked for the corporate for about 14 years apart from being a corporate and public trainer.
2. How did you decide to become an author?
I hail from Hyderabad in India. The kind of local movies that happen here, need a truckload of entertainment and whacky stuff to succeed. So, in discussion with a friend, I came up with an utterly whacky concept and went on to develop it into a screenplay for a film. The screenplay took me about eighteen months of not totally focused work, because I keep doing so many things throughout the day. And finally when it was complete, I could not get myself to market it to film producers/directors. It was taking too long. So, in a discussion with my childhood mate and mentor, Dr. Vishwanath in a café over tens of tea, strangely, I got convinced that I could actually write a novel in English. The next day, I began converting the screenplay into an English novel.
3. Please tell us about your journey to become an author.
A year later, on December 3rd 2017, I found myself publishing my first novel on Amazon with the strange title, The Spookoholic: Kanchi.
I’d already written two books by then. But after my first novel got published, I knew I would never stop writing.
From June 2017 till the end of 2019, I had already written 11 books and published 9 of them.
And the journey has been extremely fulfilling. Not because I sell or fail to sell, but because I realized that something very deep inside me feels utterly gratified when I write novels or stories. Though, I should confess, every book is akin to childbirth to me. The labor pains are intense and tormenting until the flow begins, and then I am transported into another realm for days, getting almost disconnected with family and the world around me.
4. Who are your role models?
You wouldn’t want to pose that question to me, trust me :-). Why? Because by birth, I am a misfit. My thinking has been extremely distant from the society’s attitudes in general. For example, I believe that I am an individual and no one can be like I am. And that’s also true to every one on the planet. I have my own life to live, my own demons to fight, my own genes and set of Karma to deal with. So, how could I be like anybody else? How could a fingerprint be like another? And why should a fingerprint seek to be like another?
Inspiration is the mother of all creativity. Yes, people have inspired me. If life takes me on such a rout, I may do what they did, else, that’s that.
So much said, I bow down to every soul that inspired me and put me on the path I am on, this day.
In writing, Conandoyle, Eric Seagal, Robert Ludlum, Madhu Babu, Yandamoori and Malladi had greatly inspired me. In music, it’s Nadeem Shravan, Ilayaraja, Shankar Jaikishan, Kalyanji Anandji, Lakshmikanth Pyarelal who are all Indian music directors. And films like Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle inspired me… hats off to Stephen Chow, these movies are like a religious book to me, I revere them.
And in the spiritual realm, there are many Gurus who had come into my life to inspire me. I am here only because of their compassion and inspiration. Osho runs in my blood and vibes in every atom.
5. Please share about your latest novel. Is it available on kindle as well? Please share the links.
Thanks for asking :-). That would do me good, publicity wise. This book is just too crazy and whacky, to the extent of being called ‘just too much’. But that’s me. I guess you’ll get the hang of me but slowly and when you do, you would not want to stop.
This novel is called The Spookoholic: Demonic Whispers. It is the second book in The Spookoholic Series. The first one, The Spookoholic: Kanchi released exactly 2 years before this one. It took me 2 years to finally come up with something worth to be called a sequel to Kanchi, a novel that I consider a classic in my own works.
It is available on Amazon, yeah, both, the Kindle and paperback versions. As of this moment, it is available on Flipkart, Notion Press and Pothi too. Here is the link to the Amazon page for you. Please don’t forget to leave your review after you read it :-).
6. What is your most memorable experience as an author?
For one, after I released my first novel, almost no one came to help except for a very few in my circle. I understood that people are different when they come to us for help and they are something else entirely when we approach them for help. I questioned myself if I am that way too. Probably not.
Anyway, the memorable experience was with my elder daughter, Sisilika, who happens to be my first fan, reader and critic. She’s a lot like me, I guess… ‘different’ in thinking to the extent of being called crazy. She gets to read my books first… and she would almost be ready with an unlicensed gun if I try to divulge any details of the novel I am working upon. She just needs to have a fresh read, that’s all she wants. She never reads the book description too.
When I published Kanchi, she read the book and gave me her feedback. And the way she described each scene in the novel and expressed how she felt reading it was just unforgettable to me. In a span of twenty minutes of her feedback, she was smiling, laughing, crying and wiping tears from her eyes, and I saw her exceedingly exited when she talked about the climax. She said she fell in love with Surya, The Spookoholic. This kind of an experience is a blessing to an author. Every moment he had struggled seems to be gratified when each of his twists and creative flights was actually been read and appreciated exactly as I would want it to be by a reader. Memorable, sure. Later, I had several other readers who discussed the book and their feelings at the same length with almost similar expressions, which was exhilarating too, but Sisilika’s first feedback was special to me.
As I do this interview, I am waiting her to read The Spookoholic: Demonic Whispers. She hasn’t yet.
7. Being an author, what are the top challenges you face and how do you overcome them.
In March 2019 I released an out and out action thriller called Pop A Cap Smith!. Since then, I had been struggling like a fly in the spider web to wriggle free of the web and fly back into my imaginative skies. But the block had to continue eight long months. One day in November, suddenly inspired, I began writing and finished the book in 20 days, breaking my own record :-). I think it is because of the energy and inspiration given to me by some invisible spiritual sources. Else, there was no way I could achieve this feat.
The top challenge is to bust the block. And then to fall into a flow that comes from beyond, not really from my mind. Once these two things happen, the rest of the journey of writing the book is of extreme pleasure. I keep laughing and sometimes sobbing while I write :-).
8. What’s your greatest fear as an author.
I don’t know about the others, honestly. But for me, I don’t nurse any fear. I don’t mind even if I am not selling a single copy. If the flow from beyond happens, I am happy to keep writing. The end is not important to me honestly; the journey of finishing the book is too gratifying in itself. What more can I ask the compassionate Gurus?
Yet as you ask, it just flashed in my mind. I did have a deep negative feeling in me some time back. I felt that the days of my being able to write are now over and I wont be able to come up with any inspiration that has the strength see me through to the climax. But eventually, it’s gone. I guess that feeling comes only when I had been holding a logical/no-deep-inspiration thread of thought for too long a time. Once that is broken, that feeling too would be gone.
9. Which online marketing strategies are you using for promoting your novel, and which one is more effective and why?
I am just two and a half years old as an author. I keep learning with every book I publish. And marketing has been one of my weakest areas since twenty seven years. I don’t see why I would be able to change that now. Having said that, I had followed every step that was given by compassionate senior authors who suggested them for infant authors like me on the Internet. I still follow them with and without success.
But what I believe is that I should keep writing. When my work is registered in the cosmos and grows in weight day after day, my weak area would be taken care of by someone whose strength is the same. For example, traditional publishers have begun replying to me, approaching me slowly. And as another example, I would have enough budgets for a book, which would enable me to hire people who are skilled at marketing.
10. Would you like to share any success secrets that helped you in your journey?
I had written a beautiful book (sorry for being boorish enough to praise my own work :-)), Limitless You – The Only Way To Be A True Millionaire. It’s a fantastic book, and please don’t be mad at me for saying so again. It was like a third party opinion, really. Because this book, like most parts of other books, was written with an immense guidance from something I cannot see or talk to. I feel I wrote it more like a person taking dictation. No, doesn’t mean I heard what I typed on the system. It’s just that the flow was from beyond my mind and I kept typing in wonder, realizing how each scene or page was shaping up.
Anyway, one important point of Limitless You is that you need to keep on going. Just do something day in and day out, without a break, without thinking too much about it, keep on doing it again and again, even if it takes you your entire life, even if it needs you to be born again to complete it… all you do is go on with it. The result would be, a new you.
11. What do you enjoy most about what you do.
I had been a stage performer of magic. Was a child magician at the age of 8. That’s because I abhor the routine and love to be mysterious. I love thrilling people, surprising them, stunning them, shocking them, and playing practical jokes on them… I like to play the mysterious man. So, like in every other aspect of my life, I enjoy presenting suspenseful thrillers to my readers and imagine how they might be feeling.
12. Any message that you would like to give to our readers?
This is a very important phase for humanity on this planet. It is the phase of Mother Earth’s Ascension process. The Spookoholic: Demonic Whispers stems out of perhaps the channeling that the spiritual masters of the universe have been up to. This book, I promise, would be a very interesting read and if you have not be acquainted with it yet, would connect you to Mother Earth’s Ascension… which would inspire you to learn more about it from sources like the Internet.
Light warriors, the final battle is on, keep surging ahead relentlessly doing your own little part, everyday.
13. How can people connect with you?
It would be lovely to talk to my readers. I have a website where you could know more about me and my work. You could email me through the site. My other social media links too are available on it.
I respond quickly to my readers’ mails. I don’t think I would start thinking that I am a celebrity even in the future :-).
Thank you so much for giving us your precious time! We wish you all the best for your journey ahead!
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