Wattpad brings you a guest post from Romi Moondi, author of Year of the Chick:
Love.
Having it. Losing it. Obsessing about not having it. Looking for it again. Finding something real. Trying to make it last.
What I’m saying is…I think about love every day.
Do you?
When I was deepest in my phase of “obsessing about not having it,” I started a blog called “Year of the Chick.” In keeping with the title, this blog ran for all of 2008, and it was a quest to find love in a year to avoid arranged marriage.
(Oh yeah, I have an Indian-Canadian background and super-strict parents; did I mention that?)
This blog covered everything from picking up guys in grocery stores, to dealing with slick investment bankers at the fanciest bars in Toronto. Sometimes it was true, and sometimes it was ridiculous, which is exactly how I’d describe my novel “Year of the Chick.” This book is inspired by my blog in many ways, as it follows an Indian-Canadian girl’s mission to find true love…or some love…or any love. It’s all to avoid spending the rest of her life with some man her parents search for on websites and in newspapers (yes, there are arranged-marriage classified ads).
As a side note, this book is totally fictional and not the least bit autobiographical…ahem.
I finished this “Year of the Chick” in 2010, and published it last year via digital book retailers everywhere. The response has been great via Amazon reviews and reader comments, so now I’d like to share it with the Wattpad community. I hope readers far and wide will enjoy the cultural aspects, and also relate to modern issues like meeting a man on the Internet (yes, that happens in this book!). I’m also happy to say that a sequel called “Last-Minute Love” was published just over a month ago. So if you like what you read in “Year of the Chick,” there’s plenty more in book two, and a third book to come in 2013!
Before I go, I’d like to thank the fine people at Wattpad for letting me guest-post here. I’d also like to tell all the writers out there to never give up! I know that sounds cheesy but I really mean it. When I first decided to write a novel, I felt somewhat alone in the process, both because it was a weird thing to pursue with a full-time corporate job, and because my parents thought (and sometimes still think) it was a waste of time. There was no “Wattpad” when I started out (am I aging myself? Be quiet, I’m not that old), but now we have this incredible community where you can post stories as inspiration comes, and get a ton of encouragement along the way! So keep up with it, because there’s no rule that says dreams expire by a certain age (I’m aging myself again).
Happy writing and happy reading, because I hope you’ll enjoy my humourous tale of love (and Internet obsession, haha)!
Sincerely,
Romi
PS: I also love interacting with readers, so feel free to leave Wattpad comments and I will respond!
Start reading Year of the Chick on Wattpad!
An awkward family homecoming at Christmas.
A humiliating public weigh-in, with two judging parents as the audience.
The announcement of a deadline for arranged marriage doom. And that’s just the first two chapters.
In “Year of the Chick,” Romi Narindra must find love before her parents find her a husband. But this is North America, not Calcutta! Who lets their parents choose their husbands?! Easy to say, less easy to live through, as this book takes you deep inside “awkward Indian living in the West.” To escape her fate, Romi wades through the waters of secret-dating, where self-consciousness is at an all-time high, and experience at an all-time low. It’s the sort of thing that would turn almost anyone into a man-crazy freak with romance tunnel-vision, and that’s exactly what happens to her. All the while, a lack of inspiration in her corporate job leads Romi to her love of writing, in what quickly becomes a man-quest play-by-play.
From whiskey-breath scum bags to uni-brow creeps and everything in between, Romi and her wingmen come up empty time after time. And that’s when she meets a fellow writer. On the Internet. So will it be arranged marriage doom, or an Internet affair that’s not as creepy as “To Catch a Predator”? Time will tell in the “year of the chick,” a twelve-month quest to find love.
Tick-tock.
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“Year of the Chick” is book one of a series, and book two is available now at Amazon! LENGTH: 74,000 words or 284 pages DISCLAIMER: this book contains profanities, blunt accounts of the dating scene, and many awkward family moments. Enjoy!