KARACHI: `There are days when I like Karachi and days when I don`t,` said journalist Saba Imtiaz while answering a question about her relationship with the city at the launch of her work of fiction Karachi, You`re Killing Me at Liberty Books near the Bilawal Chowrangi on Thursday evening.

Giving away the gist of the book, Ms Imtiaz said it`s about a twentysomething girl, a reporter, looking for a boy and faced with different situations in Karachi. She said she wrote the book in dribs and drabs, usually after 10pm.

In Dec, 2012 she quit her job and started to work as a freelance journalist. One of her friends asked her to write a book, to which she replied that she didn`t write fiction. The friend had an idea (about the twen-ty-something reporter`s account of Karachi) to which she eventually agreed. She began to write the manuscript in dribs and drabs, in between watching a few seasons of `Sex and the City`, and when she showed it to the publishers, they liked it.

Journalist Hasan Zaidi moderated the programme. He gave a brief introduction of the author to the audience and commented that the publishers of the book had called it Pakistan`s Bridget Jones. He then invited Ms Imtiaz to read a passage from her book. She read out an excerpt from the first chapter in which characters working for a newspaper are trying to dodge the column because it`s New Year night (Dec 31, 2011). When Mr Zaidi quipped she was stabbing her colleagues in the back, she answered it was not the case as she had worked for two newspapers and beenthrough different situations.

Ms Imtiaz remarked writing fiction was far more difficult because the writers did not know what kind of audience they`re writing for, whereas in journalism they had atarget audience. Responding to the moderator`s question as to where she sees herself after five years` time, Mr Imtiaz said, `I don`t see myself as an author. I`m a journalist who wrote a book.` She couldn`t say what would happen in the future but hoped to write another book. `I will not give up journalism,` she insisted and added `image of an author making money doesn`t exist in life`.

Mr Zaidi requested her to read out two passages from the book.

One was to do with a protest at the Karachi Press Club and the other with a fashion week. She did. The passages would have been more fun to listen to had Ms Imtiaz read them not at the pace with which she spoke.

After the chit-chat, the floor was opened for a question-answer session. Replying to a question, Ms Imtiaz said she had lived a majorpart of her life in Karachi, so it was inevitable that she could write about the megalopolis and not about any other city in the country.

As for the title of the book, it was chosen by her editor friend.

Besides, she had always hated giving headlines (as a journalist).

On the issue of her relationship with Karachi, Ms Imtiaz said there were times she hated the city and on other occasions loved it. She pointed out everyday Karachi was turning into a horrible place with people`s moral acceptance of violence. However, she has made a career here, and the city gives people a lot of things to work with.

When someone inquired about the hardest part while writing the book, Ms Imtiaz said it was the love angle that she had found the most difficult. According to her editor, she`s the most unromantic person the editor had ever met.