Scottshak or Prashant Singh was born on 26^th November in Chandigarh, India. His upbringing happened in multiple places ranging from Kasauli, Delhi, Jaisalmer to Vadodara and Bhopal.

The nomadic brought up was a result of his father’s (Pramod Kumar Singh) job in the Indian Air Force where he served 20 years of his life before switching to business. He eventually left that as well and is now working full-time for Ericsson. His mother Punam Singh was a computer teacher at Air Force School, Jaisalmer later turned into a lab manager for the American School of Baroda, before eventually retiring from work. She finally chose an even more punishing pursuit of being a full-time housewife.

Prashant Singh got first published as a child at the age of 5 years in a school magazine of Air Force Golden Jubilee Institute, Delhi. Whilst the world refused to bat an eye for him then, it gave him immense pleasure nevertheless to find his name on a piece of printed paper.

The force for reading was strong in him since childhood. His affair with literature started when he was 8 years old. He wouldn’t put a book down before finishing it. He had this wont to devour his English books first, the moment fresh books emerged as part of his scholastic academia. Then he would scavenge his elder brother’s (Diwya Singh) books too.

Marveled by the likes of Mark Twain, Alexandre Dumas, and William Shakespeare, he forever wished to be a part of something colossal. The dream to be an author, however, was helmed in those Foreword sections wherein writings of an author generally appeared. He would fantasize, and yearn to be a part of the elite, that children just like him, would read his very own excerpts, carrying a similar inspirational dream in their eyes.

It was only until eighth grade that he picked a pen for real. He became intrigued by the idea of writing an autobiography. He started out on a diary with his broken English as tenses constantly eluded him. But he never stopped.

It was in the ninth grade when he was introduced to an English teacher Kirty Kochar in Zenith School, Vadodara, whose idea about literature further aggrandized his dream. It gave wings to it. She was one of the primal reasons why the love for literature intensified. Her recommendations became his priority. He was caught one day by his father, reading Dan Brown placed in his Science Workbook when he had an exam the very next day.

It was also somewhere around that time when he came up with his first poem which got lost in pages of time. But with that, his poetic sojourn took a sharp shape. He wrote sonnets and ballads, many short stories, almost a novel, but nothing could ever really find a true direction.

His father would be mad at him for not preparing for his English Exams while he would politely respond, “What is there to prepare? These are stories in the book, and I know all of them by heart.”

He went on to win numerous Essay Competitions in School and was always the highest scorer in English.

He somehow got sidelined with the crowd doing Computer Engineering later on which was a decision solely propelled by fate. He joined NRI Institute of Technology in Bhopal from where he pursued a career in engineering.

Over some time, he produced numerous prologues but failed to weave any of them into a fully-fledged work. His first full-blown work hit the light with “An Untitled Project of Love” which he wrote during his college days. He used to carry a printout of the story in his hands for readers to find.

Once through, he joined Mphasis, a Software Company in Chennai. Meanwhile, he freelanced for foreign clients just to keep that ink flowing and joined HitRecord Community to showcase his work under his pen name Scottshak.

He liked the idea of blogs and soon came up with two biggest ventures of his life namely:

1. Straight From a Movie showcases his peerless love for movies. He watches more than a hundred movies every year and writes reviews for them as well.
2. The Darkest Blog houses stories of the dark. He is fascinated by horror and jots down stories in it so that there’s a place for every lore and account from every corner of the world. He also animates regularly for the blog.

It was about the same time he had come up with Songs of a Ruin blog too, where he had decided to showcase his collection of poems.

In 2015, in hopes of making it big, he started a mammoth project of his related to mythology. But the distance was once again clouding his dreams. Surrounded by the walls of his cubicle, he came up with yet another website called Dumb IT Dude to deal with and help those in need with software-related issues.

In 2016, lost in a discussion with one of his friends, for once he was thinking about finding a publisher for real. That’s when he got the idea of publishing his anthology of poems first, before releasing a novel hoping it would spring up his ambitions and expedite his dream.

With that came into existence, his first book Songs of a Ruin. It finally took form on Feb 12, 2017. Within a week of its release, he hit #22 on Amazon’s Bestseller spot under the section of Poetry.

Prashant Singh currently lives in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, works as an Automation Tech Lead, and tries hard to juggle his time between 6 websites, 6 YouTube channels, a 9 to 5 job, and two incomplete books.