Joe Chacko is a doctor turned writer.
He was born in India, then moved to the UK after graduating from medical school. After twenty odd years as a hospital doctor, he decided it was time to change tack.
His wife convinced him to enter a writing competition at a Scottish literary festival. That pitch took him to the final stage where he got to present an as-yet unwritten novel to an audience of hard-core crime fiction fans and a panel of scary literary agents and publishers. The story involved an upright Indian police inspector in charge of a Unit dealing with minor crimes. The story featured coconuts. And drones. It was more than a little bit left field. The judging panel looked distinctly worried.
He didn’t win (no surprise) but he was hooked.
He started writing crime because he thought it looked simple. After two novels and over a hundred rejections from conventional publishers, he realised it was anything but. He signed up for an online writing course, which coincided with the first wave of the UK COVID pandemic. He completed "The Tender Coconut Tamasha" in between shifts in the Intensive Care Unit. He went through the agent submission routine again-this time, it got as far as the desk of an editor at one of the Big Five publishing houses, but no further.
He published it himself on Amazon where, to his eternal surprise, it has garnered an average of 4.5/5 star reviews, and sold a thousand copies.
He lives in Scotland, where he's at work on the second book in the series.
