Kootenai River in NW Montana, near Canadian Border

Kootenai River in NW Montana, near Canadian Border
photo by Gene Tunick of Eureka, Montana

Thursday, September 6, 2012

Tip O'Day #391 - An Author's Blog Tour

Guest blogger Malika Gandhi on Writing Her Novel – the Past, Present and Future.
Dixon says: Some aspiring authors have only a vague idea what a blog tour is. With more and more book stores vanishing, and some of the remaining ones being hostile to Indie writers, online blog tours have taken the place of "real" book tours in which newly published authors would travel from store to store, reading excerpts from their works and signing copies for purchasers. In this case, Malika Gandhi has arranged to appear in writers, readers and reviewers blogs each day during this month. (US readers may notice a few different spellings, as the author is British.) I was flattered to be asked to participate, and I hope you enjoy the following.

In Freedom of the Monsoon, I wrote about India and its history, spurred on by the violence during British colonisation. As I researched the subject and read accounts of Indian citizens who survived that dangerous and frightening era, I felt anger and frustration. I felt fascination too.

I wanted readers around the world to know what happened during the time of the Quit India Movement and how it affected the Indian population.

Looking into the details. Details were searched for this book. Emotions and actions were a large part. I looked into the souls of these people as I read what they went through, how they were treated and how they saw the British Empire. Some took life as it was and were satisfied, if not happy about the way they lived. They didn’t see or chose to ignore the bad treatment of their fellow neighbours and carried on life regardless. But there were people out there who wanted to see the British out, to see justice done.

I was lucky to stumble upon a website where real experiences of the riots and killings were told. These people told of their fear.

Writing Freedom of the Monsoon. I began to write Freedom of the Monsoon. I portrayed the violence, the romances and the day-to-day life through five individuals, whose lives were very different from one another. These five were Rakesh, a freedom fighter, Dev, a griever and confused man, Pooja, a head strong girl who was dealt a worse than death fate, Amit, a lovely soul who fell in love with the wrong girl and Sunil, an engaged young man who tried to deal with what he witnessed.

Freedom of the Monsoon was published but I had another job to do. I had to carry on writing – I needed a sequel, which told of the aftermath of Indian Independence – the partition of India which became India and Pakistan. Book two is currently being written.

Publication. News of the book’s publication travelled throughout Leicester’s Indian community, to India and to Canada and the States. As both Indian and non-Indian citizens read the book, it led to more research for some. I was delighted with the response and so I began a blog. This site was to be the base of Freedom of the Monsoon, which then evolved into more. It began to carry more information in article form about the period of colonisation; it told of India’s history in detail. It brought culture to the readers.

The Present and Future? What does the present hold for Freedom of the Monsoon? Great reviews and comments and recognition are brilliant. The future will hopefully bring more awareness of India’s crucial and horrendous history.

There have been great novels on the Independence of India in different contexts. May Freedom of the Monsoon join those ranks.

Malika’s book is available as both eBook and paperback, and you can find it at Amazon.com or Amazon.uk. She blogs at http://malikagandhi.wordpress.com/.

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