The thought of writing a book never crossed Mountain View resident Mukul Sheopory’s mind until 2009 – when he stumbled upon a biography of Alexander the Great in a Manhattan bookstore.
As he pored over each chapter of the book, Sheopory said he slowly realized that battles from the Macedonian ruler’s life paralleled what he had been seeing from companies and icons in the contemporary business world, such as Apple Inc., Google Inc. and Elon Musk. Sheopory embarked on a journey to write about his realization – and finally, in late 2020, he self-published “Bucephalus’ Shadow: Ten Business Lessons from the Life of Alexander the Great.”
“It was more of an exploration than a fully fleshed-out plan to write a book,” Sheopory said. “The structure was not evident from the beginning. … (I wanted to) make the story more interesting, so I ended up adding fictionalized elements.”
Sheopory noted that the title of his book was inspired by Alexander the Great’s horse, Bu-cephalus, which was afraid of its own shadow.
“I didn’t want it to be very descriptive. … I wanted it to be a little ambiguous. Some of my early readers had interpretations of the title completely different from what I had expected,” he said.
Publishing “Bucephalus’ Shadow” was by no means easy for Sheopory. Initially, he want-ed to distribute his novel through larger publishing houses. However, as he did more research, he learned that the traditional publishing route would cause him to lose most of the control over the process.
“This was a passion project and I wanted it to be exactly the way I had imagined it (in terms of) the text as well as the physical object,” he said.
Although it was a challenging decision, Sheopory ultimately decided to self-publish – allowing him much more creative freedom. For example, he was able to choose his own cover artist and book designer.
“(The cover artist’s name) is John Metz. He does portrait art, and he was amazing,” the au-thor added. “Luckily, he took on the project.”
The book designer drew battle illustrations for each chapter of the novel. Elements of the illustrations were incorporated into the cover.
“The three of us would work together … and it was a beautiful collaboration where (every-thing) was completely (blended),” Sheopory said.
Since writing “Bucephalus’ Shadow,” Sheopory has started exploring the idea of writing his second book. Drawing on his experience working at RingCentral and in product marketing, as well as collaborations with various tech companies in the Bay Area, he plans to write about important scientific discoveries – such as calculus and Einstein’s theory of relativity.
“I’m thinking about making it in a narrative time box … where the whole (story) takes place as a series of flashbacks,” he said. “Hopefully, this will be faster than the first book.”
“Bucephalus’ Shadow” is available at amazon.com.
