Unlikely Stories

Unlikely Stories is an anthology of horror and comedy stories based on several real-life incidents. After writing over two dozen exclusively non-fiction books, the author was forced by several governments to name this book as 'Unlikely Stories' and release it only as a fiction title (!) with a rather quaint description. Their verbatim copy follows:

Boy meets girl. Both fall in love. Boy proposes marriage. Girl postpones decision for one month. Girl's gonna leave next day. Until then, boy tries to impress girl by telling stories - funny stories... scary stories... and all kinds in between. No worries. Everything ends well.

The stories were tough to come by. Having given up on fiction years ago, the young man had to marshal some old personal anecdotes, wild tales told by strangers, and even some vividly detailed nightmares for his first novel. Like a male Scheherazade, he somehow wove those yarns together. They also just about helped him bag his babe.

As a result, the stories are mostly supernatural/paranormal fantasies with ample doses of action, sci-fi, romance, horror and humour. The entire book is in first person and everything happens very fast. There is never a dull moment.

• The trip: The lead is invited by his friend to spend the weekend at a resort. There, he meets the first heroine Vampira. That is not her real name.

• The swim: The lead decides that Vampira is the soul mate he has been waiting for all his life. He tells several stories to entertain his friend's kids and also impress Vampira.

• The exorcist: The second lead is an Indian scamster who escapes to the US to start a new life. He attempts to go legit but finds competition from a professional medium operating under the trade name of Mademoiselle Zuma. (She is dangerous because she is secretly a mind-reader.) He is forced to try his hand at performing an exorcism that the Church has given up on.

• Alien encounter: After the successful exorcism, this lead is asked to help a teenager who has been repeatedly 'abducted' by an 'alien'.

• The lift: A recently deceased security guard haunts a lift where he had died and seeks revenge.

• Femme fatale: The second lead has a showdown with a female animal spirit.

• The seance: A young woman in the city is troubled by nightmares involving a hooded skeleton. A newly married nurse in a rural area blanks out every night. She is also troubled by bizarre nightmares. Mademoiselle Zuma solves both cases.

• The haunting: An old mansion is haunted by a presence. Every new buyer and his family gets driven to such desperation that they eventually sell. The current owner wants the paranormal activities investigated. The second lead tries and almost gets killed.

• Family planning: This is an over-the-top parody of the controversy about MEN WRITING WOMEN.

V. Subhash is an invisible Indian writer, programmer and cartoonist. In 2020, he published one of the biggest jokebooks of all time - 2020 FRESH CLEAN JOKES FOR EVERYONE. He followed this jokebook with a tech book on the free multimedia-editing utility FFmpeg and a 400-page volume of 149 political cartoons.

Although he had published a few ebooks (using off-the-shelf software) as early as 2003, Subhash did not publish books in the traditional sense until 2020. For over two decades, Subhash had used his website www.VSubhash.com as the main outlet for his writing. During this time, he had accumulated a lot of published and unpublished material. This content and the advanced book-production process that he had developed helped him publish 21 books in his first year. In February 2023, Apress/SpringerNature published his rewritten and updated FFmpeg book as QUICK START GUIDE TO FFMPEG. Thus, by early 2023, Subhash had published 30 books!

In 2022, Subhash ran out of non-fiction material and tried his hand at fiction. The result was UNLIKELY STORIES, a collection of horror and comedy short stories. After adding new stories to this fiction title (for its second edition), Subhash plans to pause his writing and move on to other things.

Subhash pursues numerous hobbies and interests, several of which have become the subject of his books such as COOL ELECTRONIC PROJECTS, HOW TO INSTALL SOLAR and HOW TO INVEST IN STOCKS. He was inspired to write his jokebook after years of listening to vintage American radio shows such as 'Fibber & Molly' and 'Duffy's Tavern'.

For more, check out: www.VSubhash.in