Monsoon Mystery: Harlequin/Mills & Boon's First Indian Author

Laura Vivanco

According to the Deccan Chronicle,

Shoma Narayanan is the first Indian author to become part of the Harlequin Mills & Boon banner, with her maiden novel Monsoon Wedding Fever. [...] Leaving a cushy financial background for the creative life of a writer has been quite a leap for Shoma. “I was a little apprehensive initially, but I had decided to follow my dream — which is to write,” she explains. Her novel, which is set in India, is quite contemporary. “I had to keep in mind what would sell with the global audience, which is why I decided to set the plot in India,” she says.

In an interview with The Awesome Sisters she explained how she came to be published:

I saw an ad at Crossword that said Mills and Boon was ‘auditioning’ for Indian authors – I went home and wrote a short story for them, and submitted it. My story went on to become one of the three shortlisted winners of the ‘Passions’ contest, and I was assigned an editor in the UK with whom I began working on the final novel. It was only when I’d almost finished the novel that Anna (my editor) told me that my book was going to be a global release – if Anna hadn’t been safely tucked away in a different continent, I’d have run across and hugged her – even over the phone, it took her around ten minutes to get me to calm down!

You can read an excerpt of Monsoon Wedding Fever here.

Unfortunately I can't work out when Monsoon Wedding Fever is going to be published or whether, in fact, it's already been published. I've managed to track down an image of the UK Mills & Boon cover and according to the details at The Book Depository this edition was published on 1 August 2012. Amazon UK shows the same cover, gives a publication date of 3 August 2012, but lists the book as "not yet released." The RIVA line's recently been reorganised and I can't find any details about the book on Mills & Boon's website.

The Harlequin edition is also something of a mystery. Amazon.com has it listed as due for publication on 30 October 2012 but it doesn't seem to be listed at Harlequin's website in the list of October novels in the Romance line.

Can anyone clear up the mystery? I hope so, because having seen the excerpt I'd like to read the rest. Or, given earlier discussions about cover art and the representation of non-white protagonists, does anyone fancy giving me their opinion of the covers?

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Rajagopal, Srinidhi. "Romancing the Quill." Deccan Chronicle. July 27, 2012.