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Elizabeth McKenna

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Tag Archives: India

Now & Forever by Simi K. Rao – Book Tour

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by Elizabeth McKenna - Author in Book Tour

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Contemporary, Giveaway, India, Multicultural, Romance

32543951Now and Forever (Inconvenient Relations #2)

Can Shaan and Ruhi face their biggest fears and unite together?

Shaan and Ruhi Ahuja, very much in love Indian newlyweds, discover each other in Simi K. Rao’s Now and Forever—the sassy and sexy sequel to Inconvenient Relations. After getting the scare of their lives while traveling in the Grand Canyon, Shaan and Ruhi go back home to one dilemma after another. Shaan’s job is in jeopardy, and one of Ruhi’s closest friends, Sunshine, needs her. How will Shaan and Ruhi handle life’s hurdles, while still trying to get to know each other as husband and wife? Will they be able to forsake all others and consolidate their relationship?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/32543951-now-and-forever

http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/1539394476/

Inconvenient Relations (Inconvenient Relations #1)

24355815Shaan Ahuja found himself bowing to tradition and agreeing to an arranged marriage to the beautiful Ruhi Sharma. He went through the motions but had no intention of carrying through on his vows. His last foray into matters of the heart with an American girl had left him scarred and unwilling to try again. Thoroughly disillusioned and disgruntled he wasted no time in making his intentions clear to Ruhi on their wedding night. But, he was completely unprepared for what his new wife had in mind.

This multi-cultural contemporary romance story of an arranged marriage is a beautiful blending of showing the Indian and American cultures. Readers will learn more about the Indian heritage and the romance that happens behind closed doors in an Indian relationship in Simi K. Rao’s Inconvenient Relations. This coming of age story about true love explores multi-cultural issues.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24355815-inconvenient-relations

http://www.amazon.in/gp/product/1505694582/

Reviews for Inconvenient Relations

As a whole this was a brilliant novel. Rao walks the line between traditional Indian culture and all that is Hollywood to create a tale that will pull at your heartstrings and keep you captivated throughout. ~ Jonel Boyko

It was a beautifully timed love story and I enjoyed it. I also loved the way the author interspersed the language throughout the story. It made me feel connected to the culture. ~ Jazmen This Girl Reads A lot

This book is a complete package of love, hate, distrust, betrayal and every other emotions that we feel. ~ Souwmiya

Giveaway

1)  A $10 Amazon gift card

2) A kindle copy each of Inconvenient Relations and Now and Forever.

Click here to enter the Rafflecopter giveaway

About the Author

simi4-5Simi K. Rao was born and grew up in India before relocating to the U.S., where she has lived for several years. The inspiration for her books, and other projects, comes from her own experience with cross-cultural traditions, lifestyles and familial relationships, as well as stories and anecdotes collected from friends, family and acquaintances.

Rao enjoys exploring the dynamics of contemporary American culture blended with Indian customs and heritage to reflect the challenges and opportunities many Indian-American women face in real life.

Much of Rao’s down time is devoted to creative pursuits, including writing fiction, poetry and photography. She is an avid traveler and has visited many locations around the world.

A practicing physician, Rao lives in the United States with her family.

Random facts about Simi in her own words

  1. I have a dual personality. I exist in two worlds at the same time. It can get quite confusing.
  2. Writing is a stress buster for me. I write for myself rather than anyone else.
  3. My heroines can be pig headed, rash and violent. I think they learn their traits from me.
  4. My stories are occasionally clichéd just like life is sometimes- banal and boring.
  5. My books are not just for women. Men should read them too. They can get a few pointers on what women want.
  6. I believe cuss words are a means of expression. Used appropriately they can be very effective.
  7. I also believe that at any time there are two conversations going on. The nonverbal one happens to be more interesting.
  8. I credit my Dad for my fondness of the written word. By giving me books instead of toys he gave me the best gift ever.
  9. Writing helps me stay lucid while reading blurs my cynicism—two traits vital for day to day life.
  10. Be warned; I’m one of the least interesting people you’ve met. So move on and forget about me. Just read my books.

Connect with the Author

http://simikrao.com/

https://www.facebook.com/simikrao

https://twitter.com/simikrao

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7169786.Simi_K_Rao

Other Books by the Author

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25158346-the-accidental-wife https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/26212981-milan

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Milan by Simi K. Rao – Book Tour

22 Tuesday Sep 2015

Posted by Elizabeth McKenna - Author in Book Tour

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Asian American, Hinduism, India, marriage, Wedding

MilanMilan (A Wedding Story)
When a daughter turns marriageable age, what should a responsible father do? Easy—wed her to the most suitable boy who comes knocking on the door. Jai Bharadwaj, Mili’s father and owner of The Serenity Tea Estate in the idyllic Nilgiris would’ve probably liked to do the same, but being who he was, he had to ask her first. What would she say?

Publication date: August 31, 2015
Formats: Paperback, Digital Ebook
ISBN-13: 978-1517142865

Milan (A Wedding Story), Kando Books, is found at your favorite book retailers: Amazon.com
Coming soon to:
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Kobo
Smashwords

About the Author

Simi Photo - 300x375Simi K. Rao was born in India and has been living in the United States for several years. Milan (A Wedding Story) is her third novel. Her previous novels are titled: Inconvenient Relations and The Accidental Wife.

The inspiration for this book, and her other projects, comes from her own experience with cross-cultural traditions, lifestyles and familial relationships, as well as stories and anecdotes collected from friends, family and acquaintances within the immigrant community.

Rao enjoys exploring the dynamics of contemporary American culture blended with Indian customs and heritage to reflect the challenges and opportunities many Indian-American women face in real life.

Much of Rao’s down time is devoted to creative pursuits, including writing fiction, poetry and photography. She is an avid traveler and has visited many locations around the world.

A practicing physician, Rao lives in Denver with her family.

Behind the scenes at an Indian Wedding

Indians in general are deeply rooted in tradition. Our culture gives us our identity. Most of us (especially those living away from the homeland) cling to it, even though several aspects in these particularly modern times, make no sense at all. Why do we do so? Perhaps because it brings us together as a community and provides us comfort in a foreign environment. The same I think applies to immigrants from all over the globe.

Marriages in India, in particular Hindu marriages are long drawn intricate affairs fraught with age old tradition. Little has changed over the centuries except for certain embellishments due to modernization. To non-Indians these ceremonies appear just that—elaborate colorful rituals flavored with plenty of pomp and show.

In the following story I take my readers on a ‘behind the scenes’ tour at a traditional Indian wedding. I’ve tried to illustrate the proceedings from engagement to the wedding ceremony with “generalized” Indians—my characters, and have also made an attempt to expound on the emotional upheavals that occur in the background and often aren’t spoken out loud. Milan is more of a ‘short story’ concept where it shows the before/during and after of an event than it is a ‘long novel’ about characters with hopes and dreams and goals. And its purpose is exactly that, to show the emotions Indian couples go through during the process of a wedding. This story may help the reader get a better insight into the culture of marriage in India.

The Setting of MILAN:

Milan3Whenever I travel back to my homeland, I prepare for a culture shock. The crowds, the noise, the pollution have all increased several fold as the country races forward at breakneck speed to catch up with the rest of the world. There are very places left where it still seems like life goes on as it did a few decades ago, where people are laid back and nature is not at war with mankind.

Milan1MILAN is set in one such place; Coonoor– a hill town located in the Nilgiri Hills, about 56 kms from the Coimbatore Airport, in the southern Indian State of Tamil Nadu. It is part way from its more well-known cousin Ooty. I spent some time there during my last trip and was so enchanted that I chose to use it as a setting for my story. Known for its tea plantations, Coonoor is a lovely, rustic little town. With its abundance of greenery and quaint architecture it is a throwback to India as it used to be. The temperate climate and serene environment help the restless soul to relax and take a few breaths of peace. When you are there, don’t forget to take a ride on the Nilgiris meter gauge train, as well as a personalized tour of the tea estates.

Milan2I want to thank Debdatta for giving me this opportunity to express myself and for hosting this blog tour. I also want to thank all the bloggers who are participating in this tour and have made space for my book on their blog. Your time and generosity is much appreciated.

Please visit my website http://simikrao.com/ for more info on me and my work. You can also connect with me on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/simikrao and twitter https://twitter.com/simikrao

Happy Reading!

Simi K. Rao

Milan Banner

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Meet Author Andy Paula

22 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Elizabeth McKenna - Author in Meet the Authors

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Authors, Contemporary, India, Interviews, Romance, Women's Fiction

loves-labor-largeToday I’m welcoming Andy Paula, author of Love’s Labor. Thank you for stopping by, Andy!

All about Andy. . .

Andy Paula is a corporate trainer, an avid reader, a near-passionate blogger, and now, a writer. When she met her editor during the writing of Love’s Labor, she realized how ruthless she may have appeared to all her enthusiastic trainees who nurtured creative dreams. “Never again,” she thought, “am I going to correct another article.” And she proceeded to make corrections in her own manuscript.

She confesses to never having made a kaleidoscope with broken bangles or taken apart a clock and put it back together, in her childhood. Two things that she did cherish were reading and falling in love. To the question, “What prompted you to write?” Andy gives a tongue-in-cheek reply.”They say there’s a book in each of us. Just wanted to check if they were right!”

When she is not making stories in her head, this Thinker does her pranayam and tries to meditate to keep a grip on her wandering mind.

1. How did your life as a writer begin?

It was written! I was always writing for my friends and relatives- their thank you notes, farewell mails, letters for adoption, even love letters, without ever thinking that I would or could make a career out of this. Officially, though, I became a writer when I had no other job! I’d quit my corporate training job in India and accompanied my husband to London on his project. It was there that I discovered the joy of blogging and did it diligently as there wasn’t much distraction in terms of relatives and social commitments. The universe conspired and put me in touch with the publisher of Indireads who was looking for writers from the South Asian diaspora. And my debut novella, Love’s Labor was born.

2. What makes you feel inspired to write? A Paula

From the time I became aware of things around me, every experience I underwent made me wonder, ‘how will this read in a book?’ or ‘how will this look on screen?’. It’s probably strange for a child to have such thoughts but if you have it, you just have it. So, practically, everything inspires me to write. And this highly romantic thought (I don’t remember if reading Anne Frank did it to me or Emily Dickinson) that when I’m dead and gone, people should find scraps of paper in my study which will go on to become masterpieces! (laughter) The thought of fame, posthumously, is such an inspiration!

3. How did you come up with the idea for your current story? 

Love’s Labor only needed the telling, it had happened over a decade ago in my family when it was discovered that a sister had fallen for a man from another community. In the India of those days, an inter-caste marriage was frowned upon and one often heard of rigid parents disowning the ‘offenders’. My sister was put through similar trails, despite the educated family that we were, and asked to choose between her parents or lover. Caught between the Scylla and Charybdis, she disappeared from home one day amidst speculations that she had eloped. Investigations revealed that the lover was very much at home, which then threw my family in a quandary about her whereabouts.

I took some creative license with the dénouement to give my story a more desirable end. The rest of the book is real life, as I saw it unfold, in my own extended family.

My novella is a tribute to a sister who deserved a better deal than she got.

4. Tell us about your writing process. Do you outline, or are you more of a seat of your pants type of a writer?

For Love’s Labor, as I said, I did not have to outline because I was a spectator (albeit, mute) to the real-time occurrence. For my next manuscript, yes I have made a framework outlining the characters and the path they are to traverse. Let’s see if I can strictly follow it. Very possibly, my characters will develop a mind of their own and I may be left grappling with their errant ways, struggling to make them behave (smiles). I will know only as I proceed with my writing.

5. What is your favorite scene in the book? Why?

This is like asking a mother who her favourite child is!

Lemme think…one of my favorites is when Sathya comes to drop Piali home, after they’ve returned from an excursion. This is the first time that Piali’s mother meets him and she reads at once, with a mother’s instinct, that her daughter has lost her heart to this young man. She finds him dashing but also knows that her husband will not approve of the alliance because Sathya is from a different community.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Mrs. Roy knew at once when she saw Piali and Sathya on their return from Panchgani. Coincidentally, they lived within a 3km radius of each other and Sathya had insisted on dropping Piali home. When they reached her house, he wanted to meet her parents. Piali was petrified; Sathya assured her he would meet them as her colleague, for the time being.

Mrs. Roy saw the way her daughter looked at the young man and blushed in his presence. Quite a dashing man, this fellow, she thought. As she led them into the drawing room, she observed the chemistry between the two and her heart sank. Piali had introduced her ‘colleague’ as Sathya Nair, the school chairman’s son and her colleague. Mrs. Roy knew about the family. Piali’s father would never agree. She knew her husband. She had been married to him for over twenty-five years; his beliefs were nonnegotiable.

Mr. Piyush Roy, a government officer, was a traditional man, very progressive where his children’s education was concerned, very conservative when it came to their marriage. He had stopped talking to his elder brother when the latter married a girl outside his community. Mrs. Roy was proud of her husband’s convictions, his integrity, but she knew Pia found his stance on love regressive.

“Where’s your dad?” Sathya whispered as soon as Mrs. Roy went inside.

“Sathya, please, not now!”

“Chill, I’m only asking where he is. Stop being so scared.”

“He leaves for office at 10 and returns by 5.30pm. Bistupur mein office hai unka.” Piali regained her lost breath, “It takes him around 20mins from here.’’ “Ok, I’ll meet him after that then. Don’t get so hyper.”

“No, please!”

“No please? How else do I ask for your hand in marriage?”

“He will never agree. I know him.”

“He will! I know me!”

Mrs. Roy came back with home-made snacks and juice for the two. Elegant in her starched tant sari and a big sindoor bindi, she filled up the room with her presence.

“So how was Panchgani?”

“The best trip of my life, aunty!” Sathya smiled. Piali tried to put on a nonchalant look.

“We won the Best Team trophy, too! Piali was a great team leader,” Mrs. Roy beamed with pride. In all her phone calls from the camp, Piali had never gloated about her role but then, she always knew she had an intelligent and capable daughter.

“And how was Mumbai?”

In Mumbai, where the group halted for a day, the lovers finally found time to talk about themselves, their families, and the future they wanted. If the Panchgani air had brought out the romantic in Piali, Mumbai brought out her filmi side. Sathya saw in her a young adult who enjoyed the regular things of life; in her denims, check shirt and sneakers, she hardly looked the serious teacher. As for Piali, she had found her life’s hero in Sathya. In that short span, she lived her life to the fullest with him; she had never felt so alive before, so full of mirth and such gay abandon.

“I’ll leave now aunty, amma must be waiting for me.”

When Sathya got up to leave Piali found herself tossed back into the present. After the last week’s togetherness, she couldn’t think of staying away from him but they were back home. How would they meet? Where? In this small town, everybody knew everybody. Being a teacher made her all the more ‘famous’. If she were not bumping into students, she would be meeting their parents; there was no privacy, no secret would remain a secret in this township. God!

How and when could they meet? She left for school at 7 every morning and was back by 2.30. She took the school bus and everybody in it knew her stops; she could neither board nor get off the bus earlier or later without arousing suspicion. If Sathya picked her a little distance from her stop, they could be together for a while but ma would be waiting for lunch and she could not make ‘extra class’ excuses every day. Anyway, ma had the uncanny knack of knowing her innermost thoughts. While it was a commendable trait in a mother, it could become a major impediment in Piali’s love life. She would sense foul play immediately. Foul play! The term made the world’s loftiest emotion seem like a crime.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I like the juxtaposition of love and realism in this scene. The lovers are back to their home-town and subject to scrutiny; the mother is caught in the vortex of being a mother and a wife; the lover wants to meet the girl’s father; the girl is positive that such a meeting will have disastrous consequences; the father is not present but has already made his presence felt as a despot- the scene palpitates with life, there’s a medley of emotions in there.

6. What is the highest goal that you desire to meet as an author?

Two goals if you permit- the Utopian one of having the freedom to share philosophy with my readers without being told by the editor to keep my philosophies character-specific. “Love teaches you to lie” is universal.  For now, I’d to make it, “Love had taught Piali Roy to lie.” How limiting is that! C’mon, everybody lies in love. Who has not told at home they’re going over to a friend’s for home-work when they were out with the special someone? Or blurted out it’s a classmate’s call when, very evidently, it was the lover’s?  Why make it specific to a character?

And my Epicurean goal is I’m sitting in Starbucks, sipping my coffee and there’s this group of youngsters who go, ‘Wow, Andy Paula!’ This image always makes me smile. And I’ve been caught smiling sheepishly a lot, lately.

7. Who is the one author that you would love to meet someday and why? 

I’d love to meet Maya Angelou. She’s someone whose writings resonate with me- the honesty, the struggle, the triumph- all so palpable, so legendary! And although I’ve made my debut as a fiction writer and may remain so for a while, I see myself graduating to her kind of writing, and learn – if such things can be learnt – her fearlessness and  transparency in her words, her ability to lay bare her Soul.

loves-labor-largeLove’s Labor

Love’s Labor is a story about Piali Roy, an English teacher, & Sathya Nair, an animator, who are brought together by circumstances, and despite behavioral and communal differences, end up falling in love. All very well. What is not is the reaction of the two families, and a third’s. That of the girl’s who Sathya was slated to marry, when Piali took his life by storm.

Set in various towns of India – a couple of hill-stations thrown in for good measure – Love’s Labor,  a tale spanning over two years, leads you through the maze of tradition, culture, love and rebellion. The various locales that the protagonists travel to and the people they meet make for interesting read. The introspection that the characters indulge in & the transformation that brings about gives Love’s Labor its cutting edge.

In the end, will the lovers make it? Or, as time rolls, will they succumb to the time-honored customs that are so much a part of their upbringing? In a country where society is held above the individual & collective laws more potent than human dreams, the cookie could crumble either way.

Connect with Andy Paul

Website – http://www.andypaula.in

Twitter – https://twitter.com/meetandypaula

Facebook Page – https://www.facebook.com/pages/Andy-Paula/331796276937019

Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7153256.Andy_Paula

Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Andy-Paula/e/B00GLKKU76

Buy Links

Indireads- http://www.indireads.com/books/loves-labor/

Goodreads- http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18137981-love-s-labor

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