Book Blitz: THE MAGICIAN (The Tarot Trilogy Book 1) by Sonia Rao

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THE MAGICIAN 

(The Tarot Trilogy Book 1)
by 
Sonia Rao

Blurb

Fashion designer Sasha Kapoor always felt she'd missed out on love as she had an arranged marriage. And when her husband turns up at their 15th-anniversary party with a strange woman, she knows that her marriage is dying. With constant surprises and disasters to contend with, will Sasha ever get a chance at true love?

Shantha is much sought after for her tarot card readings on love, but can’t seem to help her own love life with a string of broken relationships behind her. Now, sparks are flying between her and a sexy bartender but will this relationship fizzle out too?

Young professionals Nilima and her husband are so besotted with each other, they give the word ‘soulmate’ a complex. Theirs is a match made in heaven…till tragedy strikes.

The Magician is a heart-warming story of these three dynamic women as they discover the meaning of true love through loss and longing.

Grab your copy @

Amazon.in | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk 

About the author

"Sonia Rao is a writer, editor, and award-winning blogger. Her fiction has appeared in many prestigious anthologies such as Voices Old, New and Jest Like That (edited by renowned editor-writer Shinie Anthony).

As NaNoWriMo’s Municipal Liaison for all-India and founder of the Wrimo India group on Facebook, Sonia has motivated thousands of people in India to write a novel every November since 2011. She has also curated and edited the first Wrimo India Anthology, Vengeance—A Sting In Every Tale.

Sonia likes to believe she is ‘high-minded’ but strangely, her fave hobby is thinking up torture devices for those autorickshawallahs who consider the roads to be their personal spittoon. Who knew?"

You can stalk her @

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Book Blitz: A DIARY OF CRIME STORIES by Sonia Rao

If you enjoy reading romances set in India,

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A DIARY OF CRIME STORIES: 

GUT-WRENCHING STORIES OF COLOURFUL
CHARACTERS AND SHOCKING TWISTS
by
Sonia Rao

Blurb

• Did or didn’t a 5-year-old boy, who cannot hear or speak, witness a murder? And if he did, how dangerous can it become for him?

• CCTV cameras prove that a robbery was committed by a young analyst. But if she didn’t, then who did it?

• Love brings together hearts, true! But did you know it could destroy lives too?

What is a diary? It can be described as a personal book or even a safe space in which one can record one’s experiences, thoughts and ideas of both one’s outer and inner worlds. What is around us affects us. One aspect of outer world includes crime. This can take many forms: assault of all types, murder, and even fraud. Be it a differently-abled child or a woman undergoing domestic abuse, obsessive love that can lead to fraud and breakup of lifelong friendships or then honour killing - because you are not allowed to decide whom you can love and marry. Be it a modern world, urban or rural, every crime story affects us collectively.

This Diary Of Crime Stories is a collection of 3 gut-wrenching crime-reads that will leave you on the edge of your seat, with their colourful characters and shocking twists & turns, asking for more.

Grab your copy @

Amazon.in | Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk 


About the author

"Sonia Rao is a writer, editor, and award-winning blogger. Her fiction has appeared in many prestigious anthologies such as Voices Old & New and Jest Like That (edited by renowned editor-writer Shinie Anthony).

As NaNoWriMo’s Municipal Liaison for all-India and founder of the Wrimo India group on Facebook, Sonia has motivated thousands of people in India to write a novel every November since 2011. She has also curated and edited the first Wrimo India Anthology, Vengeance—A Sting In Every Tale.

Sonia likes to believe she is ‘high-minded’ but strangely, her fave hobby is thinking up torture devices for those autorickshawallahs who consider the roads to be their personal spittoon. Who knew?"

You can stalk her @

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
  

  This Tour is Hosted by 

Facebook | Website | Blog Tours | Twitter | | Linkedin

We Promote So That You Can Write 

Book Blitz: VENGEANCE - A STING IN EVERY TALE edited by Sonia Rao

Designed by Neil D'Silva 

Vengeance - A Sting in Every Tale 

A WRIMO INDIA anthology

edited by

Sonia Rao 

Disclaimer: All proceeds from the sale of this anthology will be donated to NaNoWriMo

Designed by Sujata Patnaik 

Blurb 

A reply to a perceived injustice can take many forms one of which is vengeance. An eye for an eye can only end up making the whole world blind, is what Mahatma Gandhi once said. And it seems to be coming quite true, if latest events world-wide are an indication.

Is there any hope or are we hurtling towards extinction?

Hopefully, the stories will explore some of these questions. But that is on the macro level. It might be easy to look at things objectively, in black and white, when it is other nations involved. Or even other people. We are able to be more forgiving of transgressions when they don’t involve us personally.

But how would one react if they found themselves in the maelstrom of situations that do fall somewhere in the grey area of life? With no definite black and white answers?

How would a jilted lover react in face of infidelity? Or how would a friend avenge the murder of her best friend? Or, is it fair to be punished for a crime that you were not brave enough to prevent?

These and many more questions connected to vengeance have been grappled with in this anthology.

created by Archana Sarat 

EXCERPT OF FIRST CHAPTER

Bus number 131 whirred away, pulling its own weight unwillingly. It was one of the many buses to pass through the Relief road, a busy road in the old part of Ahmedabad. Shazia had an option, the crowed 88 or the overcrowded 131. She preferred to be 30 minutes before time to board 131. Her choice was motivated by her love for the palindromic 1-3-1. Her undying infatuation with prime numbers was inexplicable. Nineteen year old Shazia loved numbers, and to be more precise, she adored Mathematics in all its form. She also loved the rules, the principles, the working theorems, the equations which tried to make sense of the majestic menagerie of numbers. She was fascinated even by the mere shape of numbers. She did not remember when or even how her romance with Maths began. But in her earliest memories, she preferred practicing her numbers over the alphabet, she remembered that she recited tables better than her nursery rhymes. She was short and a bit stocky. Also, a couple of shades darker than was acceptable in the marriage market. However, her looks never bothered her, nor did she ever yearn for fairer skin, or thinner body. What she craved was a disheveled mass of hair, for some uncanny resemblance to Einstein, the only pop icon modern science managed to have produced. But her mother plaited her hair, dashing her hopes to ground. She also longed for a pair of spectacles with glasses so thick that it blurred her eyeballs, indicating the wearer’s brilliance. But she, despite getting checked for vision from her mother’s ophthalmologist, was denied the hallowed implement. Thrice. Shazia valued her bus ride a lot. She had to convince Papa to allow her to commute to her college on her own. She had concealed her indignation about needing her father's permission for every little trifle, even after being categorised as an adult by the Government of India. Papa consented only after he was told that Noor too would start using the bus if Shazia were to give her company.

Buy @

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ABOUT THE EDITOR SONIA RAO

The editor of the Anthology, Sonia Rao (writer-editor-awardwinningblogger) is the NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison for All-India region. The stories which are part of the anthology are written by Wrimos homed in to Asia::India region. Most of them are also published writers of short fiction and novels.She blogs @ https://soniaraowrites.wordpress.com/ 

Find out more about Wrimo India @

Wrimo India on FB:  https://www.facebook.com/NaNoWriMo.India/

Wrimo India on Twitter:  https://twitter.com/wrimosindia 

Wrimo India blog: https://wrimoindiawrites.wordpress.com/ 

NaNoWriMo:  http://nanowrimo.org/

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Blog Tour: SPOTLIGHTS for MEGHNA

The Book Club organised a Blog Tour for my second self-published novel MEGHNA. A number of people offered to do the Spotlight for the tour and I felt overwhelmed. This blog is dedicated to these six people.

Adite Banerjie

I met Adite Banerjie through The Book Club. Adite has two published romances to her name through Harlequin. I loved reading both her works.

About Adite:

Adite Banerjie has been writing professionally ever since she graduated from college. After an exciting and fulfilling career as a business journalist, she turned to freelance writing, crunched numbers and wrote reports about consumer behavior and social development issues. Somewhere along the way she got on to the screenwriting bandwagon and wrote scripts for documentaries and spec screenplays for feature films. She was hired by a filmmaker to write a feature script based on a true story. When she penned her first romantic short story she won the 2012 Harlequin Passions Aspiring Authors Contest. Two of her books, The Indian Tycoon's Marriage Deal and Trouble Has a New Name have been published by Harlequin India. And she is currently under contract to write two more for the same publisher. She lives in Greater Noida, on the outskirts of New Delhi, India, with her writer husband. She loves to connect with readers and writers.

Thank you so much Adite Banerjie for hosting my book on your blog.

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Usha Narayanan

I met Usha Narayanan also through The Book Club. Usha has authored a thriller that’s been published by Leadstart. 

About Usha Narayanan in her own words:

“Be crazy, be creative. That’s been my mantra as a writer and a creative director ― in advertising, radio, corpcomm and web-writing. I turned up the craziness a notch by becoming a novelist, with the freedom to write exactly what I wanted. I started a romcom, changed it into a thriller and sweated and slogged to get the pieces to work together. Research, cliffhangers, suspense, clues, red herrings ― my brain was in a tizzy for days and months. 
Done, dusted off, dispatched. A few rejections, heartbreak. A contract from Leadstart, bliss. Creating a spooky book trailer with images and music I bought online. A tweak here and there, with my editor. Poring over images for the cover. Suggesting the artist turn ‘The’ in the title sideways. The book comes out on FLIPKART and Amazon first. And after some nail-biting suspense, in bookstores. Organised a launch with Suhasini Maniratnam and Rudra Krishna. Great media reviews. Lovely, wonderful blogger friends. I love being an author.”

Thank you so much Usha Narayanan for hosting my book on your blog. I am more grateful that you went the extra mile to create a spotlight all by yourself as the HTML created by The Book Club does not suit your website. 

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Adiana Ray

Adiana Ray is a published author from Indireads. I met her through the publisher. Rapid Falls is the book Adiana has authored. 

About Adiana Ray: 

Adiana Ray believes in the Zen tenet ‘each state has a 1000 truths’. Every person brings their own unique experiences to a situation, which makes them see things differently and interpret it in their own way.

This is what inspires her to write; trying to see each relationship in a different light, and always having a new story to tell for it. When she writes, her tale could well be a fantasy, but it will be a believable one. Something that could happen to anyone of us or to someone we know. Her focus, above all, is to entertain the reader.

Thank you so much Adiana Ray for hosting my book on your blog.

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Dola Basu Singh

I met Dola Basu Singh via The Book Club. She was kind enough to read and review my book The Malhotra Bride. 

About Dola in her own words:

"My name is Dola and I live in a small and picturesque village in Punjab, India. I am a high school teacher by profession and a writer by passion. I am also pursuing my Masters degree in Computer Applications. Being a lover of books, that’s what I am surrounded by most of the day. Except when I find myself in between the toy-battlefield of my seven year old, or when I am gulping down details of Bey Blades and Transformers, that is."

Thank you so much Dola Basu Singh for hosting my book on your blog.

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Reet Singh

I met Reet Singh through The Book Club. A Harlequin author, I loved reading her published work.

About Reet Singh:

Reet has a romantic soul, partly genetic, but certainly attributable to the romantic fiction she devours by the kilo. When she's not watching romcoms, or doing creative things with wool and a crochet hook, or playing Scrabble, she can be found in the kitchen putting together her 'world-famous' one-pot meals.

Married for three decades, her prototypical tall, handsome, and sensitive hero-husband still makes her heart skip a beat. Writing about love and happy endings feeds her romantic soul; hearing from her readers thrills her.

Having a mother that read to her, she paid it forward, telling bedtime stories to her sons and nieces until they grew too old too fast. As a reaction to them growing up before she knew what was happening, she began writing for older children, and has published children's books on Amazon, for Kindle.

Thank you so much Reet Singh for hosting my book on your blog.

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Sonia Rao

I met Sonia Rao also through The Book Club. I was super-thrilled when Sonia interviewed me on her website. 

About Sonia Rao: 

Sonia Rao is the NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison (ML) for India region and she loves nothing more than motivating Wrimos to complete the mandatory 50K words of a novel to become NaNo winners because, with four first drafts of novels under her belt, she knows that the thrill of completing a first draft of a novel is unparalleled.

Thank you so much Sonia Rao for hosting my book on your blog.

Click Here to check out her spotlight for Meghna....

Sharing: BLOG TOUR WITH THE BOOK CLUB

I am sure each member of The Book Club has been reading all their lives and can afford to buy their own books. Despite that, they were ready and willing to write about my book and do my interviews – all from the heart.

When Rubina Ramesh suggested a Blog Tour for my book DOUBLE JEOPARDY, I vigorously nodded my head and agreed, not quite understanding what she meant in totality. As I had mentioned before, the woman is a go-getter. What I had not mentioned is that she is a Superwoman! I have been through a whirlwind over the past 10 days and have enjoyed every minute of it thoroughly.

For those who came in late, about Rubina Ramesh in her own words:

“RUBINA RAMESH is an avid book reader and book critic currently based in Phoenix, Arizona. Born in Bihar, India to a Bengali family, she has been a constant traveler - Bangalore London, The Netherlands, Malaysia, Houston and now Phoenix. In all these her constant companion has been books which turned her into a regular blogger on various sites and also led to her own blog of book reviews. Currently she is working on her book's manuscript while she looks towards bridging the gap between Indian and western authors and promote Indian authors in the western blog hops. Her book reviews can be read at http://rubinaramesh.blogspot.com/”

I would like to share my learning and experience during the blog tour. There are three parts to this, namely, Spotlight, Review & Interview. Let me explain in terms of my book.

A Spotlight is when a member displays the information about my book along with author information, pictures and banners on his/her blog. Adite Banerjie & Dola Basu Singh did that for me on their blogs. Thank you ladies!

Click Here for Adite’s Blog Link

Click Here for Dola’s Blog Link

We all understand what a Review is, of course. What happened during the blog tour was that Rubina brought together a number of writers and bloggers to review my book. They all gave me their honest views and gave my book exposure among all their blog readers, facebook friends and twitter followers. Some of them put up their posts on PinIt and other social media networks, increasing the viewers by a number of times.

What is even better is that this group of reviewers posted their reviews on Amazon, Flipkart, Goodreads, etc. where my book is on sale. Rubina Ramesh, Neelesh Gajanan Inamdar, Vishwas Manjula Byrappa, Sumeetha Manikandan, Sridevi Datta & Jaibala Rao reviewed my book. Thank you so much Guys!

Click Here to read Rubina’s review

Click Here to read Neelesh’s review

Click Here to read Vishwas’s review

Click Here to read Sumeetha’s review

Click Here to read Sridevi’s review

Click Here to read Jaibala’s review

The Interviews were a class apart. I feel quite thrilled that so many people wanted to interview me to begin with. And the questions were all different and very interesting – I am sure for many of the readers and especially aspiring authors too. Thank you Rubina Ramesh, Sonia Rao, Ruchi Vasudeva, Jaibala Rao & The Tales Pensieve for those interviews.

Click Here to read Rubina’s interview

Click Here to read Sonia’s interview

Click Here to read Ruchi’s interview

Click Here to read Jaibala’s interview

Click Here to read The Tales Pensieve’s interview (also by Rubina Ramesh)

RESULTS OF THE BLOG TOUR

Now, coming to the most important part of the blog tour. Social Media Marketing is here to stay. As I had mentioned to someone the other day, it’s like distributing free cups of Nescafe to sell tons of it. It’s as simple as that.

I share some copies of my book with writers, authors and bloggers. In return, they give me their valuable feedback while getting their blog readers to know about my book. Great exchange, I feel. More than that, they post their reviews on Amazon, Flipkart and some of the other websites where my book is on sale. Fabulous deal!

As I mentioned before, the interviews were a different ballgame altogether. The questions were varied – each one talking to me from a different angle. Amazing interactions!

I must say it was a roller-coaster ride the past ten days that I thoroughly enjoyed. The best result was when my Twitter followers increased tremendously. I was – am – amazed at the response to the promotions.

The sales – well, I will know the actual effect after a couple of months. I am not worried. I have done my best to promote my book. God, I am sure, is taking care of the rest.

The selfless work that has gone into this is by this great team of The Book Club. I am sure each of them has been reading all their lives and can afford to buy their own books. Despite that, they were ready and willing to write about my book and do my interviews – all from the heart.

I THANK THEM ALL FROM THE DEPTH OF MY HEART! Love You Guys! HUGS!

Blog Tour: INTERVIEW BY SONIA RAO

Sonia Rao

I bless the moment when Rubina Ramesh was struck with the idea of a Blog Tour on her blog The Book Club. I feel so lucky that DOUBLE JEOPARDY was first in line for this idea. Today, it is Sonia Rao's turn to interview me. Sonia asked me some wonderful questions and I hope I have given the answers that she was seeking. Thank you Sonia Rao!

About Sonia Rao, in her own words:

"Sonia Rao is the NaNoWriMo Municipal Liaison (ML) for India region and she loves nothing more than motivating  (okay, goading even, sometimes) Wrimos to complete the mandatory 50K words of a novel to become NaNo winners because, with four first drafts of novels under her belt (or rather,  in her PC), she knows that the thrill of completing a first draft of a novel is unparalleled (yeah, even beats slurping on that big bar of Cadbury’s Silk).

Sonia Rao’s idea of paradise is a beautiful garden full of different types of gel pens and writing paper and a muse ‘on call’.  Sadly, such a paradise does not exist (it does not!!!) except in her vivid imagination and so if you should talk to her and find her ‘spaced out’ don’t worry too much or send out for reinforcements. She must be on one of her ‘trips’.  And she’s hopeful that those trips will result in some worthwhile writings.  You see, she loves to write about ‘Writing’, when she’s not working on her novel.

On Planet Earth, though, Sonia lives in the busiest of cities, Mumbai, which gives her innumerable opportunities to observe people and learn more about life; and then share this knowledge. Do check out her sometimes-humorous and sometimes-poignant view of life in Mumbai in ‘life in the city’ collection.

Sonia likes to believe she is ‘high-minded’ but strangely, her fave hobby is thinking up torture devices for those autorickshawallahs who consider the roads to be their personal spittoon. Who knew?"

Author Interview

Even though, once upon a time, a day was not complete if I had not read 2-3 Mills&Boon, the craving had petered off once higher studies and other mundane activities of living took over. So, it was with mixed emotions that I came to Double Jeopardy and then, could not put down the book till I reached the end. Let’s just say, for the inveterate romantic that I am, this book was a treat. If you are one, too, then read this book. Even if you are not, still read Double Jeopardy. You might discover you actually are one.

Let us know more, then,  about the person behind Double Jeopardy, the author, Sundari Venkatraman.

Sonia Rao (SR): Sundari, you’ve mentioned “you got home one evening after your walk and took some sheets of paper and began writing. And that was how your first novel was born.”  Tell us what happened on that walk.

Sundari Venkatraman (SV): I was actually in a very disturbed state of mind, Sonia, when I left home for the walk as I had no sense of direction in my life. I had quit my job a few months earlier and was quite fed up of only reading books. I had to do something, I thought. I am huge a fan of Mills & Boon and I used to keep visualizing Indian heroes and heroines in many of the scenes. As I was brooding about my life, it suddenly struck me that I should put my imagination into words on paper. I had never written before – unless my arm was twisted, of course. And that too was for essays in school and college. My walk home was pretty fast for me as I felt compelled to write the book. Writing fiction was like a dam burst. I loved it. I still do.

CLICK HERE to read the complete interview....

THE BOOK CLUB BLOG TOUR

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL MY READERS! I have some great news to share here 

Double Jeopardy by Sundari Venkatraman

The Blurb

Sanya doesn’t just have trouble, she has double trouble. Twins Arth and Ansh Sharma, are rich, sexy and sinfully handsome – what’s a girl to do?

Sanya last saw the twins when she was ten years old. Now, all grown up, she has come looking for gentle Arth, the twin she has loved ever since she can remember. But instead, she is confronted with fiery Ansh, who is hell-bent on seducing her. And what’s worse, she can’t seem to stop herself from responding to him.

As she chases Arth and is chased by Ansh, Sanya finds herself on a crazy roller coaster ride with no way of getting off. How will she deal with these two very different men in her life? Will she be able to convince one twin that she loves the other?

Meet the author

Even as a kid, she absolutely loved the 'lived happily ever after' syndrome as Sundari grew up reading all the fairy tales she could lay her hands on, Phantom comics, Mandrake comics and the like. It was always about good triumphing over evil and a happy end. Soon, into her teens, she switched her attention from fairy tales to Mills & Boon. While she loved reading both of these, she kept visualising what would have happened if there were similar situations happening in India; to a local hero and heroine. 

Her imagination took flight and she always lived in a rosy cocoon of romance over the years. Then came the writing – a true bolt out of the blue! She could never string two sentences together. While her spoken English had always been excellent – thanks to her Grandpa – she could not write to save her life. She was bad at writing essays in both school and college. Later, when it was time to teach her kids, she could manage everything from Science to Mathematics and History & Geography. 

When it came to writing compositions, her kids found her of no help at all. All this changed suddenly one fine day in the year 2000. She had just quit her job at a school’s office and did not know what to do with her life. She was saturated with simply reading books. That’s when she got home one evening after her walk and took some sheets of paper and began writing. It was like watching a movie that was running in her head – all those years of visualising Indian heroes and heroines needed an outlet and had to be put into words. That’s how her first novel, The Malhotra Bride, took shape. 

While she felt discouraged when publishing did not happen, it was her husband who kept encouraging her not to give up. There was no looking back after that. While publishing took a long time happening, Sundari continued to write novels and then short stories and had them published in her blogs. Her luck turned when Indireads approached her to write for them and Double Jeopardy was born.

You can stalk her @

                 

                   

Blog Tour Schedule

1Jan-11 Jan 2014

(The Blog links will be live as and when the posts come up)

2nd Jan 2014

Adite Banerjie  (Spotlight)

aditebanerjie

3rd Jan 2014

Rubina Ramesh (Review)

The Book Club

4th Jan 2014

Rubina Ramesh (Interview)

The Book Club

5th Jan 2014

Sridevi Datta (Review)

THE WRITE JOURNEY

7th Jan 2014

Vishwas Byrappa (Review)

Byrappa's notes

7th Jan 2014

Ruchi Vasudeva(Interview)

Ruchi Vasudeva Author's nook

8th Jan 2014

Sonia Rao(Interview)

soniaraowrites

9th Jan 2014

Neelesh Gajanan Inamdar (Review)

From the Heart - Neel

10th Jan 2014

Dola Basu Singh (Spotlight)

Shiuli

10th Jan 2014

Sumeetha Manikandan (Review)

Book Reviews by Sumi

11th Jan 2014

Jaibala Rao (Review/Interview)

My School Of Thought

11th Jan 2014

The Tales Pensieve (Interview)

The Tales Pensieve

You can buy DOUBLE JEOPARDY on these websites

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Flipkart

Smashwords

Indigo

Diesel eBooks

Bookworld

All Romance Books

Indireads