How did you come up with the idea? Did you start off wanting to write it as a novel-in-stories or did the idea just come to you?
I wrote "Season of Marriage" first about Raji, about fifteen years ago, as a stand-alone story. Then, in my MFA program several years later, I was searching for a story idea and thought it might be fun to have Raji as a minor character in another story, so I wrote "Minal in Winter", about Raji's niece. People really liked it, and a few years later, in a different grad writing program, I wrote "A Gentle Man" about Raji's father. From there, it just mushroomed very quickly, as I got interested in all these different family points of view.
How long did it take you to write and revise all these stories?
If you leave out Season and Minal, about four years.
Is it true that it's harder to sell stories than a novel?
Yes, much much much harder. I got lucky, and had a web page with a *lot* of hits to point to as evidence that people would want to read my stuff.