AUTHOR'S CIRCLE interviews SUDESNA GHOSH

On Author's Circle today, let's welcome my good friend, fellow author and freelance editor, Sudesna Ghosh or Sue who's here to talk about her new book My Small, Thin Indian Wedding. 

Hi SUE, thanks for dropping in and letting us have a peek into your life.

Tell us about your latest book.

My latest book is a smaller, thinner and modern Indian version of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It’s about an Indian woman who wants a simple wedding but her family and best friend have other plans for her

Check out the book here -> My Small, Thin Indian Wedding

What's your favorite line from the book and why is it your favorite?

My favorite line from my book: This man could give Shah Rukh Khan’s dialogue writers a run for their money. I love it because I love Shah Rukh Khan. He’s the only Bollywood man who makes me believe in love and romance.

Do you have any strange writing habits?

Yes, I have a terrible time getting started with each new WIP but once I begin, I don’t sleep or eat or remember anything else (other than my cats, of course). So I get into this obsessive, restless state until I type The End.

What does your day look like?

I work from home as a freelance writer and more recently, as a social media manager for other indie authors like myself. So I work on social media marketing throughout the day with afternoons reserved for the gym and other errands. Evenings are for writing blog posts, planning out chapters, and adding word count to my manuscript. I used to be a night owl but I don’t find energy for that as I get older (and wiser).

What’s your favorite book by another author, and why?

That’s such a difficult question to answer! Well, in the last one year, I have been reading lots of Sarah Morgan, Sue Moorcroft and Debbie Macomber. There stories are always so heartwarming – especially the Christmas ones.

If your book becomes a movie whom would you want to play the hero and the heroine?

Mindy Kaling and Hrithik Roshan

How did you become a writer? In other words, tell us YOUR STORY.

I’ve been a bookworm since my childhood, thanks to my mother being a major bookworm since her childhood too. Spending so much time in libraries and bookstores and with my nose in books, got me dreaming about seeing a book with my own name on the cover. My first attempts at being a writer were in elementary school in the US when I wrote and read out my own short stories in class. I continued writing short stories for my own satisfaction until I was asked to write for the Indian Chicken Soup series in my 20s. That’s when I realised that writing books and stories was my calling. So I left my full time job at the region’s biggest newspaper here in Kolkata and started writing short stories for children’s magazines, feature articles for newspapers and magazines, non fiction books for a publisher, and then my own kindle books as an authorpreneur. It’s been a learning experience going from aspiring writer to serious writer who treats writing as a small business now.

What is your best marketing tip?

Read up as much as you can about book marketing and always start marketing each book a few months before its release. Traditional publishing and self publishing both require marketing effort from your side, so work on building your author brand.

Why write what you write? As in romance or suspense or thrillers?

My books span multiple genres. I started with nonfiction because the publisher commissioned me to write two non fiction books based on my writing expertise and samples. Then I wrote some kid lit books because I refuse to grow up and love children’s books even now. Romance novellas came as an experiment for me because I saw all my author friends writing romances and wanted to try my hand at it. And finally, humor, that’s something that you’ll find a bit of in all my books because that’s just me – it always comes out into my writing. Along with my love for cats.

Is there a certain scene you find difficult to write? Eg: Racy or action etc.? Why?

Action and racy both. My romances are usually funny and /or sweet. I am not confident about being able to write a scene that will be sexy and real. Yet. And violence and action are two things that I avoid when I watch movies and read books, so I think I’m too sensitive to attempt those.

Is your writing character-driven or plot-driven?

Character-driven. I let my protagonist tell me what she wants and my protagonist’s are often similar to me in their thought process and behavior, so it works out well.

Naturally, in part you are all your characters (they come from your head) but which of your characters is the most like you? Or resonates in you the most? Why?

Sue in Crazy Cat Lady Finds Love. If you read the book and know me well, you’d see that she IS me. Her love for stray animals including cats. Her instant attraction and love for a man who feels the same way about animals. Even her name is the same. Haha. That novella is basically the love story that I desire.

What do you wish to convey through your writing?

Empathy for stray animals and rescue cats. Understanding that women in India don’t have to be married by a certain age. Or that women don’t have to get married at all if that’s what makes them happy.

What can we expect from you next?

I’m taking a mental health break at the moment but am brainstorming for a sweet romance with a dash of humor. And of course, like most of my books, there will be a cat. Or two. Or more.

To end lets try a Rapid Fire round. Your answer should be the first word/s that pops into your head when you think of:

LIFE: Love

PASSION: Writing

HERO: Shah Rukh Khan

LOVE: Everlasting

HATE: Harmful

Thank you once again, SUE, for being here and talking to me. It was fun!

About the book: Blurb: 
Reema is in love. And she's ready to get married. BUT she doesn't want the usual big, fat Indian wedding. Will she get the quiet, simple wedding day that she wants? 
Find out in this dramedy about a modern Indian woman and her family.

Where to connect with Sudesna Ghosh:

Twitter: @sudesna_ghosh

Instagram: @sudesna_meow

MY LAST LOVE STORY - INDIA COVER + EXCERPT

Dear Readers,
I'm so excited that My Last Love Story releases in India today with a lovely new cover.
#HAPPYREADING 

Chapter 2:

On the drive home, Nirvaan jabbered inside the car while the rain played a harmonica on the Jeep’s roof—fast, then slow, loud and then soft.

Since I commanded the steering wheel, I was exempt from input on the baby-making plans beyond a well-placed hum or an indistinct nod. Normally, it took about twenty minutes to get home from the clinic in Monterey, but the downpour hampered our speed today.

By home, I meant, the beach house we’d rented for the year in Carmel-by-the-Sea. We’d moved in barely two weeks ago, and we were still feeling our way around the resort-town community. We weren’t complete strangers to the area. Being so close to San Jose, where we’d lived for the first two years of our marriage, both Carmel and Monterey had been our favorite spur-of-the-moment getaways. We’d often discussed buying beachfront property as an investment or retiring to a seaside town in our winter years—all this, of course, before the cancer had forced us to move to LA and in with Nirvaan’s parents. We were living our dream now, in a fashion, as part of Nirvaan’s Titanic Wish List—the list so dubbed because of the magnitude of its scope and theme.

The beach house was ideally located for our needs—twenty minutes from the fertility clinic and a scant five-minute drive from one of the best cancer hospices in the country. The Bay Area boasted a temperate climate throughout the year, getting neither super hot or insanely cold. With Carmel Beach as a backdrop, Nirvaan truly had chosen the perfect place to die.

“Why didn’t you make the appointment, Simi?”

I’d expected the question, yet I flinched when Nirvaan asked it.

“Your treatment starts next week. Let’s concentrate on one thing at a time, honey,” I replied, collecting my wits.

“You’re trying to wiggle out of our bargain.”

“No, I’m prioritizing the important stuff.” I kept my eyes peeled on the rain-slick California highway. If I looked at him, I’d melt or say something I’d regret.

“The IVF is important. You promised we’d try, Simi.” His words were matter-of-fact, but I heard the accusation hidden in their folds well enough.

“We will. We are.” My voice wobbled, and I struggled to moderate it. “Once the radia—”

“No.” He cut me off, reaching over to rub my thigh.

I hadn’t realized my body was clenched so tight.

“Both procedures together. Whatever we do, we do together, like always or not at all,” he said in a tone that would not countenance an argument.

I wanted to scream at him for being such a bully, but I couldn’t because I had promised, and I’d never broken a promise to him in my life. I might lie to him—had lied to him many times about many things. I wouldn’t deny manipulating him, but I’d never broken a promise.

When the parish church loomed up like a stone beacon on the right, I eased my foot off the accelerator and took the exit onto the local roads, driving around the church building. A backlit signpost stood, water smudged, on the front lawn. Every single day, the pastor—an austere-faced though jolly man—would put up a new adage for the world to pontificate on.

Today, it simply read, “Trust in God. He knows what He’s doing.”

My face tightened at the patently false advertisement. Khodai didn’t know what He was doing any more than Nirvaan and I did.

Trust in God? The God who’d inflicted cancer on a fun-loving young man? The God who’d orphaned children and would leave a wife as a widow? The impotent God who’d done nothing while my eighteenth birthday turned into my worst nightmare?

Thank you, but no. I could never trust God as His executive decisions had failed to impress me so far.

And Nirvaan wanted to produce another soul for Him to torture.

The rain began to pelt down in fat musical drops as I zigzagged through the streets, filling the obstinate silence inside the Jeep. I was glad for the sound. It allowed me a reprieve from all words, emblazoned or spoken or thought.

At the tip of a quiet long road with nowhere left to go, I eased the car over a pebbled driveway and parked as close to our slate-blue craftsman-style home as I could. Ahead of us, a strange black truck with monster tires blocked the front of the detached carriage house, the rear covered in blue tarpaulin.

Before I could utter a word, Nirvaan chortled, “He’s back,” in a bizarre falsetto.

“So I gathered. But what’s he brought back?”

Instead of answering the question, Nirvaan unbuckled his seat belt in one fluid motion, grabbed my face between his hands and smooched my lips, as if our recent tense moments had never happened.

It was typical of him. Nirvaan stubbornly refused to let bad moods win. I approved of the quirk with great gulps of gratitude, as one moody bitch per household was quite enough.

“Happy birthday to us, baby.” He grinned from ear to ear as our noses Eskimo kissed.

I squinted at my husband. Our birthdays weren’t for another three weeks. Mine fell on May 31, and Nirvaan’s was on June 1. I wondered what kind of present had gotten him even more excited than the visit to the fertility doctor.

Nirvaan spilled out of the Jeep before leaping up the three steps onto the thick wraparound deck where our longtime friend, the third Musketeer of our pack, Zayaan Mohammed Ali Khan, stood under the aegis of the front porch. He, too, grinned like the Cheshire cat high on cream.

I’d steeled my nerves before looking at him, but even then a gasping ache speared my heart. Zayaan was the living reminder of all that was wrong in my life, all Khodai had taken from me as part of His grand plan to keep me in line.

Astoundingly, Zayaan and Nirvaan shared their birthdays. The fact was the deciding factor in their friendship that had been founded one summer on the streets of Surat, the year they—we—turned fifteen. Same birthday, same street address, same damn-the-world temperaments, where could they—we—go wrong, really?

But we’d gone wrong. Like a roller coaster plunging off its tracks, our world had splintered apart one awful night, and I’d been left bleeding and alone, as always.

Stop wallowing in self-pity. Control yourself, and get out of the car.

Nirvaan gestured at the truck and said something. Zayaan nodded in reply, still grinning. He held a nonalcoholic beer in one hand, a hand towel in the other. His thick mop of poker-straight hair stood up in glossy spikes, like he’d vigorously rubbed it with the towel, while the rest of him was drenched from shoulders to sandaled feet. His cotton shirt was soaked through and plastered against his torso, delineating every muscle beneath it.

My throat went dry. I was a sucker for broad shoulders and washboard abs, and Zayaan’s were quite deliciously on display right now.

Cursing the paradox of emotions he always spawned inside me, I pulled the red hood of my raincoat over my head, as much to serve as blinkers for my wayward vision as to protect my hair from the rain. With a tight grip on my nerves and my purse and the tote bulging with a dozen medical files, I got out of the car and dashed up the wet whitewashed steps.

© Falguni Kothari

Visit my website for more information on my books, appearances and buy links: 

www.falgunikothari.com