I forget THIS all the time

Plus, The Writer Gal Novella

Mahalo,

I’m listening to The Script’s Talk You Down which is #2 in my spanking new story’s playlist as I write this edition of The Writer Gal Letter on my spanking new Macbook Air. She has been knighted Lulu. The first song is one I’ll tell you about in just a few days. Because the song is very important to one of the characters in the book.

I have to admit I did not anticipate the way I ended Blaze (you know what I’m talking about if you’ve read it and if you haven’t I won’t spoil it for you), but I thought my brooding horse-obsessed hero and his childhood pal turned curvy hot surgeon heroine would be easy to wrangle, since they have known each other forever. A la Heathcliff and Catherine. But then…I did THAT. I brought him in and there went my plans for an easy, simple love story.

Now it is hot and achy and messed up and FORBIDDEN since she isn’t even technically single at the end of Blaze… And then, there is the whole estranged siblings’ relationship with their dysfunctional dead father I have to untangle to my own satisfaction along with the bad guy plotting to take over a billion-dollar Thoroughbred racing operation for the land…yum, yum in all the best ways!

I’m also re-sharing the gorgeous cover of this incredibly twisty and hot story I am going to BLIND you with, just because I love looking at it so much.

But, before I talk about the next Ruthless Billionaires book (which guess who has finished halfway plotting!) I want to let you in on a little failing of mine.

But before THAT even I’d like to assure you, Postmate, most emphatically, that the time of woe-ing and weeping? It is at an end. I have finished (dear GOD I hope I have) moping over the various ways my life has actually and metaphorically fallen apart over the last few months and bloomed into a beautiful thing I am grateful to live each day.

So, you have your Writer Gal back. FINALLY! (Scroll on down to the end of this edition to find 2023’s first giveaway and a teeny survey I’d love for you to fill out!)

Now, onto the failing.

I regularly forget important dates. Especially birthdays and anniversaries. Like, I KNOW it is Valentine’s Day tomorrow and, as a romance writer, I should be making a deal out of this but ….I am pretty sure I’ll forget about it tomorrow as I plot Nashit and Pehel’s achingly beautiful childhood friends to adult enemies to reluctant partners to incendiary lovers story… And that is as it should be. My true love is, after all, the ability to create layered stories with people who seem as real to you as I can make them.

So, the way this failing is relevant to this edition of TWGL?

PUBLIVERSARY #5 HAS COME (back in January)

POSTMATE! I am on Year 5 of this incredible INCREDIBLE journey of telling all the stories you’ll read from me from January 8 (when I first published You Won’t Be Mine (Filthy Rich Geeks 1) in 2018)! Which I COMPLETELY forgot about in the chaos of moving and unpacking and all the things I’ve chewed your ear off with over the last few editions of TWGL.

But, let’s pause, shall we? Take a breath and let this sink in.

Five freaking years. Nearly FORTY books and millions in page reads with thousands of copies sold, one Tedx Talk, USA Today Bestseller, AMAZON US Top 110, Amazon INDIA Top 20, my books going to the actual pretty moon, and a screen adaptation deal… Wow! If someone had told me when I started with no freaking clue of how I was to do what I wanted to, that this is what my life would look like in the next few years I’d have burst into tears over the unrealness of it all.

But, it isn’t unreal, Postmate. You, YOU make it all real for me. Every single damn day. Mere words cannot express what it means to me to have this life word by word with you but I hope to fucking try from today.

I did a little soul-searching of the past few years, to understand what happened over the last two years when I supposedly did not write as much (I wrote a LOT actually) and the answer was absurdly simple. I was spending a lot of my time looking at other, wonderful people on the internet who were acing things I struggled with and making myself feel constantly feel bad about who I was. When I should have been celebrating how far I’ve come with you and doing more of the things I loved doing and ONLY that.

So, a HUGE thing I’ve done this year is stepped majorly back from social media, specifically Instagram, and it feels GLORIOUS. I got my mind back and started hearing my beautiful messed-up people talking to me.

The other thing that was absolutely missing over the last two years, at least, I think so, is that I spent a lot of time trying to be perfect. Perfect in my launches. In my storytelling. In the posts I crafted. I wasted, yes, wasted a lot of time worrying about being perfect in an environment completely out of my control. I wasn’t worried about being perfect with you, Postmate, which should tell you all you need to know about how important you are to me. :)

The only thing in my control?

Telling the best possible, real-est story I could tell about people who are extremely real to me. To give you a world that makes you breathless and hopeful and excited all at the same time.

So, my mission (I use that word with the full weight of what it means) is to ONLY do that from here on out. Spend ALL my time crafting the best possible story I can give you.

So, if you find me hanging on social media anywhere, shoo me off and order me back to the keyboard, okay? :P

Now, onto this month’s chapter of The Writer Gal Novella.

No Other Love - Chapter 9

Now, without any more fuss, let me share the next chapter of my sweetly angsty, second chance, marriage in trouble, small-town romance novella starring a desperately nerdy doctor and his feisty surgeon wife!

Author’s Note: I’ll be writing down the English translations of the Indian words to this story, as I introduce you to Indian culture :) If you’d like to read the previous chapter, click here.

Fun fact: This novella is actually set in a town founded by one of my oldest friends. I’ve been fascinated with Aronda since I heard her talk about it back when we studied together and wanted to set a story here forever! Vikrant and Anika’s is the one finally. :D

This time, a gentle hand shook her awake. Warm and reassuring. Essential. She snuggled into the palm, resting her cheek against it. And she thought she felt hot lips brush against her temple. But when she opened her eyes, Vikrant was sitting at the very edge of the bed, his face half in shadow in the lamplight. 

Completely expressionless. As remote and untouchable as a statue god, but so alive in his sleeveless  and track pants. 

Anika ached to touch him, to crawl into him and stay there. 

‘Did I wake you?’ She sat up, drawing the covers over her legs and waist. She’d kicked them off in her tumultuous sleep. 

He shook his head. ‘No. I was reading up on a case study.’

‘Oh.’ She dropped her eyes and took a steadying breath. 

‘It sounded like you were having a nightmare.’ 

‘I wasn’t.’ Anika raised her eyes and confessed the truth. ‘I was dreaming about you.’ 

‘I see.’ 

And then it came out. The question that tormented her even now. ‘Why did you never finish our counseling sessions, Vik? I know I rescheduled the first two times but that was because I was in surgery. You know I can’t leave my spot at the OT. Those intern piranhas would have eaten me alive. But you didn’t bother responding to any of the other times the counsellor called us. Why?’ 

She sniffed, appalled at how close to tears she was. 

Vikrant gripped one hand with the other, and in the shadowed moonlight she could see the hair dotting his forearms. 

She wanted to touch that too. Just the hair on his wrist and arms. 

Anika swallowed back a sob. Coming here had been such a bad idea. 

####

‘Why won’t you say something?’ 

God, she had zero pride where this man was concerned. 

Vikrant swallowed, it looked a bleak motion. But she was projecting her own emotions onto him. That much basic psychology even Anika had attended back at school. 

‘The first time after you rescheduled, I called up the counselor and told her I was driving down to do the session in person. That I had things to say to you and to her.’

‘What things?’ Anika held her breath.

‘It’s not important now, Ani,’ he sounded so certain. ‘The thing is, I drove fourteen hours straight and I came to the hospital to pick you up and I saw you at the nurses’ station.’ 

Vibrant’s voice was gruff with remembered emotion. ‘You were consulting on a case – the baby was seven months old with a bowel obstruction of some kind. You were telling the senior surgeon what kind of path to take and you were right. You belonged there,’ he said softly.

‘Vik--’

‘You belonged there like you never could with me. I am a simple physician,’ he said simply,  ‘and I’m happy with it. You’re meant to save little kids from certain death. And you were right. I couldn’t stand in the way of that. Not if I cared about you.’ 

Anika sniffed some more because it sounded so noble and heroic, what he was saying. In reality, it sucked. Because it meant she couldn’t be with him. 

‘So you gave up on us?’ 

Vikrant shook his head, looking as ravaged as she felt on the inside. ‘I realized the things you wanted and I wanted were mutually exclusive so I did the right thing. Without making it harder for you.’ 

‘It wasn’t your decision to make.’

And he countered her logical argument with one of his own. ‘Are you telling me you would have been happy moving here to Aronda and playing at being a doctor when you could be a surgical god in Mumbai?’ 

####

She had no answer to that simple question. And it wasn’t fair to tell him he should have given her the choice. She would have resented him for it, if only when her parents came to visit them once in a blue moon and her father reminded her of all that she could have been. 

Either way, she’d have felt trapped and resentful. And he wasn’t to blame for it. Not really. That much she’d understood in the year they’d been apart. 

‘We were happy, weren’t we?’ She sounded so hopelessly naïve, but Anika couldn’t help it. She wanted to know. Needed to know that, before the end, they had been happy. They had been together. 

It hadn’t all been in her head. 

He evaded the question. ‘Get some sleep, Ani. We have a full day ahead of us tomorrow.’ 

Vikrant stood up and Anika watched his loose-hipped walk helplessly. He switched off the lamp and sat down in the middle of the couch. Continued looking at his hands. 

She lay back in bed, knowing this was all he would share tonight. And it was more than she’d expected to get from him. Anika stared at the ceiling and willed herself to go back to sleep. Then she heard it.

Her name.

In Vikrant’s rusty whisper.

Anika. 

‘Yes?’ She turned to face him, barely able to make out his silhouette now that the room was completely dark.

‘I dream about you too.’ 

No Other Love will return next month! I promise!

A Reader Fave Genre Survey Giveaway

It’s super simple really. Answer the questions on the survey by clicking on the shiny pink button. Enter the giveaway for a $10 Amazon Gift Card.

I’ll pick a winner by the end of the month and you win some book money.

The survey is about your favorite genres that you absolutely die to read (I’ve listed all of my personal faves) and please feel free to add more to the list. :) Can’t wait to hear from you, Postmate.

That is it from me for this edition of The Writer Gal Letter, Postmate. I’ll be back next week with the freebies of the two awesome book clubs I’m part of (yes, they get their own TWGL edition) and, later on, some news about how I’m changing parts of the book business that directly affect you. Thank you for being you and so awesome.

Till then stay safe and in the light.

Xx

Aarti