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My name is Raj Devan. I am, by day, an architect, designer and builder of things like five star hotels and retail malls. By night, I commit myself to the research of military history, and to the writing of military fiction novels.
I am attracted to history, since it has always fascinated me to know the reasons why the world turned out the way it is, and to learn of the men and their decisions that moulded modern civilization. And it is particularly military history that interests me - the study of human conflict as well as the causes and results of those conflicts - since it has always been war that has effected the most telling and drastic consequences on the course of human history.
My tryst with military history began when I committed myself to the research and reconstruction of the 24 hour conflict that shaped and moulded the nature of my homeland. Every single fact unearthed about that short incident told me volumes about how my country, my state and my people had turned out the way they had. And from that, there was no turning back.
In fact nothing teaches you more about the present than studying the past, because it is in the past that the present was born. Try this: pick a country, however obscure, and study its history… I guarantee that there is no country, past or present, big or small, that will not have an amazing tale to tell about how it came to be, what it had to survive and how it went down in oblivion if it ever did. And it will be story that will be better than anything that the human imagination can create.
And as an off shoot from my fascination with history, I write books that deal with modern human conflict, from an alternate or future history standpoint. I attempt to place emphasis in these on the causes of those conflicts and on the consequences, as much as on the hostilities themselves. One inspiration in the world of military fiction, that for me will always stand out, is Jeff Head, the author of ‘Dragon’s Fury’ - an epic narration of a future war between China and the United States that draws in the rest of the world. There is of course, Larry Bond’s path-breaking book ‘Cauldron’ which talks of an alliance between France and Germany in the 90s going to war with the UK and the US, as well as Tom Clancy’s seminal ‘Red Storm Rising’.
Maybe one day I’ll get to be up there with legends like them.