Richard Crasta, Author

Richard Crasta: Editing and Proofreading Services About Me Briefly: I am the author of 12 books, one of which was published in ten countries and in seven languages. I have an MFA in Writing from Columbia University and an MA in Literature from American University, and studied editing at a workshop taught by a senior editor from Little, Brown. I then worked at a New York literary agency for a year, evaluating a wide range of manuscripts and writing detailed content critiques on around 400 different books. In recent years, I have edited romance novels, thrillers, literary novels, NGO reports, and a nonfiction book by a senior professor.  A longtime New Yorker, I have attended more than a dozen International Book Fairs, book industry events, and writing conferences, and have traveled widely and lived in five countries. Please also look up my Linked-in profile and my website . I have, by now, received good reviews from many of my clients, and am currently...

My late father, John Baptist Crasta, whose memoir Eaten by the Japanese: The Memoir of an Unknown Indian Prisoner of War is available on Amazon and elsewhere as an e-book and paperback, here in some old photographs: Will someone please tell me if the man in the first picture pinning a medal on my father's chest is the man who turned out to be Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw? Above is the latest paperback edition of my father's book, and it features a photograph of him autographing the first edition at the age of 87. Thank you! Links: Eaten by the Japanese : http://myBook.to/B004UBFXFC http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/50202 http://itunes.apple.com/uk/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11 http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/eaten-by-japanese-the-memoir/id436268256?mt=11 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/eaten-by-the-japanese-richard-crasta/1100079610?ean=2940011274305 http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Eaten-Japanese-The-Memoir-Unknown...

Here's my new blog on Tumblr: http://laffsinthedark.tumblr.com/ . I am just discovering Tumblr, and as I was wandering through it, I was led to a Publishers Weekly interview with author Claire Messud, in which she says: "We read to find life, in all its possibilities. The relevant question isn’t 'is this a potential friend for me?' but 'is this character alive?' . . . .[Nora's] rage corresponds to the immensity of what she has lost. It doesn’t matter, in a way, whether all those emotions were the result of real interactions or of fantasy, she experienced them fully. And in losing them, has lost happiness." Also, I was led to this statement by Jonathan Franzen in a New Yorker discussion on the same subject: "I hate the concept of likeability—it gave us two terms of George Bush, whom a plurality of voters wanted to have a beer with, and Facebook. You’d unfriend a lot of people if you knew them as intimately and unsparingly as a good n...

No, not me. My name is not Khan, and I do occasionally terrorize ants . . . I think. You'd have to ask the ants, because I haven't had positive confirmation of this suspicion, but I imagine that seeing a giant like me try to wipe out a few dozen of them with the help of a tissue . . . how could that not be terror? The reason I titled this post "My Name is Khan, and I am Not a Terrorist," is that I have just returned from seeing the movie My Name is Khan --and, exiting the movie, I greeted the cinema's manager and shook his hands while saying to him, "My Name is Khan, and I am Not a Terrorist." The movie was liberating to me as a few other movies have been-- Django Unchained is a recent one, but there have been a few others that are better--and I believe that it ought to be seen by every American, and every person in the West. I believe it ought to be compulsory viewing, just as the Declaration of Independence and at least one Shakespeare play are co...

"When I moved from Holland to where I live now, in Asia, I shipped a container containing all of my books. Because my books, even the ones I have already read, are a part of me. I have to have them with me wherever I go." So said a Dutch expatriate to me the other day. He added that he sometimes rereads his old books, and truly enjoys doing that. For 17 years, in New York, I had added to my steadily growing collection of books, which rose from around 40 to around 2,000 through four changes of residence, often traveling long distances to buy books at library sales, garage sales, and book sales. I hadn't read three-fourths of these books, but they were all in my “To Read or Browse Through” category. They were my companions, pieces of me, and they were spread out in the various rooms of the last proper home that I lived in. Easily accessible, half of them displayed spine-out on mostly tall bookshelves, they were constant sources of consolation, inspiration, pleasure,...

No Sex Please, You Are Indians! is the ironic title of my partly humorous book, a collection of 4 long essays (including one interview) just published on Amazon Kindle, and a fifth essay (an excerpt from a different book) which explains the title. All of these essays (but the fifth one) are from my controversial second book, Beauty Queens, Children and the Death of Sex, which was published by HarperCollins India in 1997. It and similar free-spirited books, coming from an Id, from a character rather than from me, are published under the pseudonym, Vijay Prabhu. Why the title No Sex Please, You are Indians ? What was the controversy about Beauty Queens, Children, and the Death of Sex ? Why was the book restricted in distribution? You will have to discover the answer for yourself by reading the book--well, the full book is not yet published as an e-book (it's a project I'll soon get down to), but meanwhile, this short book collects four of the most controversial chapters re...