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Elizabeth McKenna

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Tag Archives: marriage

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 Susanne Dutton

01 Sunday Sep 2013

Posted by Elizabeth McKenna - Author in Meet the Authors

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Authors, Interviews, Love, marriage, psychology

IMG_0895Today I’m welcoming Susanne Dutton, author of The Apportioner’s Counsel – Saying I Do (or I Don’t) with Your Eyes Open. Thank you for stopping by, Susanne!

All about Susanne . . .

Susanne M. Dutton, D. Min. Pastoral Counseling, has served as a professional pastoral minister, hospital chaplain and mediator in the courts of Virginia. Born in Des Moines and raised just south of San Francisco, she lives today in a leafy old neighborhood of Charlotte, North Carolina, where she writes psychology, fiction and poetry. She is married to a brave man named Tom. Together they have two—even braver—grown children, toughing it out in the art in a cold northeastern city. Susanne blogs at Longerstory.com and Jungworks.org.

1. How did your life as a writer begin?

My mother says it started out cute. The black board on our back porch, with the alphabet printed along the top, was the instigator. Pudgy-fisted four-year-old Susie found some chalk and took to copying random letters of the alphabet onto the board at her own height, just over the chalk tray. She put the letters in groups so they looked like words in books, but she didn’t know whether they were actual words. That’s when the cuteness went out of it, because Susie’s mother and father were summoned continually, day after day, to answer the question, “Did I make a real word?” Later on I morphed into the kid with a secret book of highly emotional personal poetry jammed under her mattress and then the girl who spoke to no one in high school but worked her way through the library starting with A.

2. What makes you feel inspired to write? IMG_0813

Good writing inspires me, in any genre or style and on any subject. Strangely, it’s not people or events out in the world that inspire me, but the things that happen when a good writer gets ahold of them. I hope to be a person who succeeds at those things in her own way.

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

I hate to admit it, but The Apportioner’s Counsel began as an assignment. I was a member of The Muse Writing Center in Norfolk, Virginia. The writers in the studio class were asked to use any photograph at all as inspiration. The photo I used showed a lovely older woman at a desk, the same photo my character Cass Lott, a psychologist, finds in an old file at Stanford University in the beginning of my story.

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

I have written in both ways, seat-of-pants and outline. Outline only works to get me started, as something I can trash when I realize what’s really happening in the story. Seat-of-pants begins with an image and the characters that are somehow summoned to populate the world of the image. I try to let the characters handle the story and make it true to themselves. Is that too mystical? Most of my stories grow from the middle. When the middle is good, I make sure the beginning leads to it. After that the right ending is obvious to me, but almost never as I had imagined.

5. What is your most interesting writing quirk?

I have two. The first is that I am a SLOW writer, as in slower-paced. I like slow writing because I honestly believe it’s like slow cooking as opposed to fast food. The results are more satisfying for the writer and the reader. I stir my sauces at a low heat for a long time and my stories are the same. I don’t know that I actually finish fewer works than I would otherwise, but there certainly is a penalty. I put in many hours into what I write and I spend all afternoon, often seven days a week at my desk.

The second quirk drives some people crazy. I make up words. Don’t worry. The Apportioner’s Counsel has only two out of the 33,000 words. Most of my inventions are just sounds—as in threll-thud-ka-dunc, the sound of a wheeled suitcase going down a sidewalk. I did make up a verb, too: awn. When you blink, two things happen to your eyelids. They flick and awn. Let’s face it, if a word is immediately understood, then it was ready to be invented.

6. What do you have in store next for your readers?

I’ve got The Burglar of Light, a funny little story about a woman who gets into the in-home cosmetics sales business and begins to steal things from her client’s homes, only to find that fate has a heroic task in store for her. I’m also writing a new blog, LongerStory.com, thoughts and stories about youth, aging and creativity.

IMG_0895The Apportioner’s Counsel

A uniquely accessible invitation to a depth psychology of love—to lessons by story—begins as three women of three eras (one still in the present day) find themselves in a cramped apartment somewhere between heaven and earth. With little jargon, the author explores both conscious and unconscious energies behind everyday experiences in the lives of normal people in love. What is love at first sight? What is it to fall in love? Is there such a thing as a soul mate? Why is it this person and not another? What if I fall out of love? Is it time to say good-bye? What’s happening to marriage, anyway? What does “I Do” mean anymore?

Connect with Susanne Dutton

Buy links:

Buy in Amazon

Book for Nook

Buy in iTunes

Book Site: Book Site

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In a remote lodge in northern Wisconsin, friends gather for a festive, New Year’s Eve weekend. When a blizzard traps them with a murderer, who will be left to kiss at midnight?

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