Ebook 1: I take on the Baton of Blogchatter Ebook Carnival from Pra-Gun whose ebook 'Coming Home to Nature' is also part of the mix.
About Pragun's ebook: Each of the 5 elements in nature represents a state of matter. Nature’s paradise has given me all these things. This book has few inputs on all the ways to stay connected to natural resources in and around us.
Yes, dreams
do come true! All you need to do is to dare to dream, take efforts to fulfil it
and hit the right opportunity. My dream of becoming an author has now come true
and I want to pen my journey to immortalize it.
I was lucky
that the habit of reading was instilled in me at a very young age. I remember
how I engrossed myself in reading Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie. As I grew up
I read Arthur Conan Doyle, O Henry, Sidney Sheldon, Rabindranath Tagore, Ramdhari Singh Dinkar, Rudyard Kipling and Shakespeare while
still at school.
While doing
my Honors in English Literature, I studied the works of Jane Austen and it was
there that the thought of writing took birth. ‘I want to write a book someday,’
I scribbled in the last page of my notebook which came alive today, some twelve
years later.
In these
years, I did my post-graduation, grabbed a flourishing job in my dream company,
married the love of my life and had two adorable kids. Then came a phase of my
life where I was eventually cocooned at home, taking utmost care of my kids and
spending the rest of the time in reading and playing my keyboard. Making the
best use of solitude, by now I had already started writing. I wrote poems,
stories and some parenting blogs which turned out well and I also won awards
for it. It encouraged me further and I thought of writing a book on a
serious note.
It is rightly
said that when you truly wish for something, you get help from unexpected
sources to fulfil it, and my source here was Twitter! I was new to it and
started following some of my favourite authors and that is how I came across
Blogchatter’s Ebook Carnival. Without wasting time, I immediately connected
with them and registered for the carnival which was just a month away.
With a
one-month-old baby in my arms, still recovering from my caesarian surgery,
amidst a pile of diapers, sleepless nights, nursing blues, post-partum
depression and with lots of people around, I couldn’t find a log to hold upon
to fulfil my dream. At times I gave up completely because I would wait for my
kids to fall asleep so that I could write. By the time I got that required pin-drop
silence at home, I was too tired to look for my laptop.
Blogchatter,
on the other hand, was highly encouraging, the session they arranged with
established authors, their microblog sessions and facebook chats all motivated
me to keep going. I then decided to first ditch the laptop and switch to my
mobile for writing and second, write anytime and anywhere.
I wrote
while I was feeding my baby, I wrote when I was awake at three in the morning,
I wrote while waiting for my turn at the hospital, I wrote while eating, I was
always scribbling something and eventually I ended up finishing the entire book
in my mobile. To my surprise, I was ready with not just one but two books
simultaneously.
Then came
the difficult part of editing, designing covers, and formatting which was not
possible in mobile. To add to my woes, we had to move to a different city at
that very time. Till now an entire village helped me with my kids but now I was
all alone. It was impossible to take out time for yourself, managing a toddler
and a newborn. I still tried to work smart but my laptop crashed and so all my
hopes too came crashing down. The only possibility to complete my book was now
to work on my hubby’s office laptop. To test my patience, it was also his
go-live month in office and he would return home not before midnight and
sometimes as late as 2 a.m. So, on a weekend I hijacked his laptop for two
days. He too helped me with the formatting, the last-minute hassles, we also
fought while our ideas clashed and finally I hit the submit button!
Then came
the big day of the book launch. Blogchatter made it a very special event for
all of us and launched all the books of the carnival one after the other. I was
impatiently waiting for my turn and was extremely proud to be part of the
august group of authors. Blogchatter made it look like a cake walk, brought
smiles to our faces and changed our lives forever.
May 22nd,
2018 at 2:30 p.m. I witnessed my cherished dream come true, I was now a
published author.
Ebook 2: I pass on the Baton of Blogchatter Ebook Carnival to Kathakali whose ebook 'Love in the Battleground: A Maharashtrian Saga' is also part of the mix.
About Kathakali's ebook: The novel is based on a 19th century Bengali fiction “Maharashtra Jiban-Prabhat” by R.C. Dutta. Raghupati took up a soldier’s job under Shivaji at a time of political unrest. He falls in love with Saryu but things go wrong.
This is such an inspiring story, Rashi!
ReplyDeleteManaging a home, a toddler and a new born are tiring enough, with no energy for anything else. In these difficult times, changing cities and working without a laptop must have been very challenging.
I could also relate to writing on the phone rather than the laptop because I was in a similar situation once. And writing whenever you could! Oh, you are my hero :)
To have completed not one but two books on spite of everything is a huge achievement. Kudos!
Thanks for such kind words Sona! All you need is determination :)
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