BIG NEWS!!!!

I write this with joint pain, headache and a sore throat.

I went to sleep after taking flu pills, woke up and....


THE BOLLYWOOD BREAKUP AGENCY IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR REVIEW!!!!!!

If you are interested in reviewing the book, contact the wonderful people at Prospera Publishing for more details.

How exciting!!!

A New Addition

I am truly sorry about my lack of blogging. It's been all change here in the Gupta household, and so I have had less and less time to spend in front of my laptop and blog, and catch up on all your blogposts.

The main reason is that there has been a new addition to the family, and no I have not had a baby. My brother who was married earlier this year, now has his wife living with us. I think that it's important that I spend more time with her, since this is a new place for her to live and just make her feel more welcome with us, as opposed to feeling lonely in her new environment. She has moved far away from her family, and I feel bad for her because I can never imagine being so far away from my own family.

Actually, I had a near miss when I was going through the edits of the book. She walked into my room and nearly read a part of it. I locked my screen so fast and thanked the Gods that she wasn't wearing her glasses. Speaking of the book, I think I am finally nearing the editing stage, so I am now prepared to be scared when those review copies go out.

Hope you are all doing great, and now I am going to catch up on all of your posts.

WISHING ALL OF YOU A HAPPY DIWALI

AND A VERY PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

Edits Edits and more Edits

Sorry I've done a disappearing act on you guys. I have been up to my eyeballs in edits. I have gone through it once, and now I am just going through it again, just to make sure it is all consistent.

I haven't abandoned you, and once I send it off to my editor I'll be back with a proper update, and I'll catch up on all your blogs.

See you on the other side!

Thank you

I just wanted to say thank you for all of your wonderful words in the last post. It is just fantastic to have you guys around being supportive during this time, because I know that you guys are empathetic. You have all been there, or are there at the moment. And since I cannot talk to anyone in my real life about all these fears, the only way to get support is through your kindness. So once again I wanted to thank you so much. You are such a wonderful group of people.

I know that the worst part of that bad dream was the typos and the fact that the book became a mini-book with size 16 writing. You can slave over your edits for days on end, but that one typo in the finished piece is the one that will bug you for days. I'm currently going through a round of edits at the moment, so we can only wait and see.

While bad reviews are inevitable and I know it will feel bad to read someone slamming my story, I know it is just part and parcel of what I was doing. If it wasn't worth it then I would have given up by now. I know I am not going to be on the next big author or anything like that, but I am happy with what I have done, and I hope that some people out there will be too.

The Nightmares have started

How many of you have had the 'Book will be Awful' nightmare?

This morning I had to wake myself up from a bad dream that I was having about my book. The following things happened ...

~All that work that I put into writing the story, and it turned out to be an 82 page mini-book with giant writing to fill up the space.
~Every five seconds someone would come up to me and tell me that I got another bad review online - I looked at the websites and saw that they were all so evil.
~ I looked through the book and it was littered with typos.
~Everything about it had been edited so heavily that it wasn't my story anymore.
~Everyone I know found out it was me who wrote the book getting awful reviews online.

If I could be anyone I'd be ....

To celebrate the launch of Talli Roland's new book 'Watching Willow Watts', I'm taking part in her websplash.

So without further ado...

If I could be anyone I'd be...

Image from Fanpop

Why you ask? Because he's cool. We all love the idea that if we are stuck in some mundane job, something will sweep into our lives and make it just that much more exciting. In the case of Chuck, he is inadvertently sent an email which imprints government secrets into his brain, and the CIA have to take care of him in order to gain access to the information, and protect him from the enemies who also want the secrets. He becomes a spy for the CIA, despite still having to work as a tech guy in the 'Nerd Herd' section of 'Buymore.'
I think Chuck is one of those underrated shows. It is so funny and edge-of-your-seat exciting, with fantastic characters as well. 

About Watching Willow Watts

For Willow Watts, life has settled into a predictably dull routine: days behind the counter at her father's antique shop and nights watching TV, as the pension-aged residents of Britain's Ugliest Village bed down for yet another early night. But everything changes when a YouTube video of Willow's epically embarrassing Marilyn Monroe impersonation gets millions of hits after a viewer spots Marilyn's ghostly image in a frame.

Instantly, Willow's town is overrun with fans flocking to see the 'new Marilyn'. Egged on by the villagers -- whose shops and businesses are cashing in -- Willow embraces her new identity, dying her hair platinum and ramming herself full of cakes to achieve Marilyn's legendary curves.

But when a former flame returns seeking the old Willow, Willow must decide: can she risk her stardom and her village's newfound fortune on love, or is being Marilyn her ticket to happiness?

My First Suitor - The 'Surprise' Technique

Well well well, with my book being about arranged marriages, I couldn't let this opportunity go by. I must write a post about some people who came to my house for ... well ... me.

While I am not completely opposed to arranged marriages, I don't think it will ever be something for me. However, a family member informed my family that we were having some guests over to our house. I thought, 'oh that's good, I like these people and it would be nice to see them.' It all went well and we all had a very pleasant afternoon.

After they left, I was informed, as well as my parents (who had no idea what the purpose of the visit was either - they would have, and would've made me, dress up for such an occasion), they had come to visit me to see whether I would be interested in their relative's son. Oh dear.

Safe to say I was a little blindsided by the whole thing. If I knew that was why they were coming, I would have made a lot more effort to have gone out that day. I told my parents that I wasn't ready to start looking for a husband, I am still young and I want to live a bit more of my life before I have to settle down, OK well I didn't say that last bit. I think they know all that anyway, but they were just happy that someone was thinking of us.

Luckily, that match possibility is now off, we called them and said we weren't interested and I never have to worry about that family or their nephew again.

News!

The Bollywood Break-up Agency is well on it's way!

At the moment it is going through the editors' scrutiny.

And for those of you who are eager for a taste, you will be able to see a preview of the first chapter in the next few weeks. Yay!


Finally, hello to my new followers! Lovely to meet you.

Bonjour!

I really wish I wasn't a flake with blogging. I am such a terrible blogging friend.

Anyhow my Paris trip.

Paris was fantastic. I am such a city girl, as you know from my previous 'I Love London' posts. When you go out at night, and just immerse yourself in the lights and walk along the cobbled streets, visiting all those cafes and bars and restaurants and watching the world go by, visiting all those amazing buildings - it is just ... indescribable. And who can complain when you find a place that sells pastry and cake on every corner? I also totally re-earned my A in French speaking I got 8 years ago. Damn has it been 8 years? I feel old.

If there is one piece of advice that I could give you, it would be to buy the Paris book from Talli Roland's '24 HOURS' non-fiction range. I took it with me and it was because of that, that I decided to visit the Basilique of Saint Denis. It is the cathedral where nearly all the Kings and Queens of France have been buried. It is outside of the main city area, and because of that, or maybe few people are aware of it, you aren't surrounded by as many tourists. I don't mean that in a hipster-I-knew-everything-before-they-were-mainstream kind of a way. I mean when you go to places like Notre Dame - which is a beautiful place as well - because there are so many people, you get intimidated by the queue outside and you end up following the masses around the makeshift path they are all walking through because everyone is following the person in front. ANYWAY, there are not as many people in Saint Denis, so you have more time to walk around, see and appreciate the building and everything in it.

Back to my original point, get 24hours Paris, there are so many places in there that you wouldn't have thought of going to, and you will be so glad when you do.

Another piece of advice - get an ice cream cone from the Gardens at the Palace of Versailles. They are tasty.

A fantastic week and a bit

Guess where I was ....

It was amazing!

That is all.

I Love London

After a couple of posts feeling a little disillusioned about the state of affairs last week, I thought I would talk about how much I love my city.

Even though parts of London have gone up in flames, I still love this place, and am always happy to take people around and see how excited they get to see the sights, and ask me to take their pictures somewhere that we all take for granted, like telephone boxes, the underground and the big red buses.

I love how London is separated into so many different places with its own life and culture. If you see one part of London, then you have only seen one part of London.

There's the political side of Westminster.
Notting Hill and Portobello Road.
Walking the cobbled streets of Covent Garden and standing in the Piazza and listening to classical music.
Business and skyscrapers in Canary Wharf.
Beautiful architecture in Cathedrals, Churches, Bridges, and Palaces.
Camden Town.
Sitting and watching the world go by on the steps of Trafalgar Square.

I love London and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else.



In other news, I have given myself until tomorrow evening to finish my story and send it to my editor.
Wish me luck!

And before I forget I wanted to wish a very Happy Independence Day to all my Indian friends. Especially to those of you still over there, I hope you are going out and celebrating!

"We are doing it because we can't get jobs"

This was an excuse that I heard about the rioting a little while ago on the TV. It really annoyed me for a variety of reasons.

First of all, there are a lot of people currently out of the job market. Myself included, even though I am grateful for this writing opportunity and my part time job on the side. It has been some years since I graduated from university and, I know this sounds crazy but, I would love a job that is secure, one that I can go to on a full time basis. In my family, not just nuclear but extended as well, a job is not a job unless you are there 9-5 or something to that effect. Something where you are getting a regular and steady income, paying national insurance and have some money to put towards pension; even if currently it looks like we will all have to work until 70 to afford to live beyond that age.
None of them know that I am writing this book though (nearly finished by the way ... yay!).

Secondly, if you are rioting because you can't get a job, having a criminal record isn't really going to help you very much when you are trying to find one.

Next, it was found that a lot of the people rioting were young teenagers. There are still years to go until they are in the job market. We don't know what it will be like in however many years time. Who knows, the situation might improve.
What really annoys me is the people who want jobs but are too lazy to go out and get one. I spent a long time sending out CV after CV, it takes time. No one is going to knock at your door and offer you a well paid job. You need to be proactive. And you need to pay your dues.

We can add to that, burning places down. How is making shops and business unable to function the path to a good economy? Just because you can't find work, it doesn't mean that you should ruin other peoples lives in the process. And why would you break into and burn down people's houses? It doesn't make any sense.

Finally, it was the places that they were looting. They were stealing TVs, trainers, HiFis, and other expensive goods. It seemed that the only way to get what they wanted was to loot the shops. The problem with this generation is that they want everything now. They don't believe in delayed gratification. They don't believe in working hard and saving the money to go towards something great. In this world of famous for being famous, it seems that the only way to earn decent  money is to act like a drunken fool on some godforsaken reality TV show, and that really bugs me.

Wow that was a long post.

Mindless Disgusting Violence

It's going to be a serious post today. How can it not be after everything that has happened?
Just take a look at these pictures and you will see what I mean.
Even this one, of a woman jumping out of a burning building to safety. It's just frightening.

Full scale riots and looting for no real reason other than greed.
Businesses and homes set alight for no real reason other than to cause damage.
Violence spreading because thugs want to jump on the bandwagon.
Law abiding citizens sick to their stomach and scared to leave their own homes.

How on Earth can this happen?

What started off as a peaceful protest over a man who was shot by the police, later evolved into violence and looting, which took away from the original meaning of the gathering.
It was a crime of opportunity, there was even a case of people going into McDonalds and frying their own burgers. That's not a protest, that's just stupidity. They are looting places which would give them what they want, food, money, electronics, there were images of people literally ripping TVs off the walls.

Once people saw looters breaking into shops and stealing whatever they could, message spread around the capital saying that others should do the same. Many of them are saying that people could join the riots because they want free stuff, and who would say no to that?
Now, it has spread all over the country.

And if you thought it couldn't get any worse they were using the chaos of the situation to break into people's homes.

It's violent thugs who would use any excuse to cause disorder.

Come on, an 11 year old was arrested, what exactly does he have to be angry about?

These thugs cannot win. Telling them that they will feel "full force of the law" is not good enough in a country where people think that the legal system is a joke and not tough enough on criminals. This is especially true now, since there are planned police and budget cuts.

It's vile, it's disgusting, and we want our country back.

Awards, Summer Time, and Creeps

First of all, I was given a Seriously Cute Blog Award from Rachna's Scriptorium

 

Thank you very much Rachna! Even if I am really late in acknowledging it publicly on my blog. And from that I got one new follower. To all of you, I appreciate any and all plugging of my blog that leads to new followers *cough*

And for the rest of you. I give this blog award to all of you for sticking with me. All nine of you.

It's summer time! We had some glorious weather over the past couple of weeks, reaching 30C last week at it's peek. That slowed down the writing process a week or two, because ... because I wanted to enjoy the sunshine on the days that I didn't have to go into my part time work or college. Like I said before, when you have summer here in the UK, you better spend some time outside - otherwise it's a case of blink and you'll miss it.

[all reference to creeps have been removed now]