Kolkata, Feb 1: Popularly known as Greatbongs by virtue of his blog, Arnab Ray launched his second book “ The Mine” in Kolkata on Tuesday.

At the event at Starmark, Ray confessed that this would have originally been his first venture as he had conceived the plot in 2004 but he “ultimately decided against it because of two reasons.”

“I wasn’t confident about writing this book at that time and I also did not know if the publishers would publish it,so I finally decided to write about something which felt safe,” he said. “The Mine” tells a gory tale of “terrifying walking nightmares” and “strange occurrences” in an underground mining facility in the deserts of Rajasthan. “This isn’t like the usual kinds of books published in India as it does not have that happy upbeat sort of ending. The story is rather horrifying and depressing and in India there is really no such horror genre,” Ray remarked.

Ray revealed that he was planning to write sequel to his first book entitled “May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss” and even another thriller but that will be in “some distant future”. “On the prospects of my book in Bollywood I don’t think any movie can be made upon it in near future because the budget required is enormous and this is not really going to be a family movie,” Ray stated.

Ray, who is also a research scientist at Maryland University in USA, affirmed that juggling between work and writing was really proving to be a huge toll on his social life. “In order to keep balancing work and writing I have nearly reduced my human interaction to zero and even when I am meeting people I keep on thinking about my characters. But I guess that is also one of the joys of being a writer, you can really do it at anytime,” Ray said.