Tuesday, September 04, 2012

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

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.

6 comments:

  1. I'd love to read this too! Looks like we have to wait til November, according to Amazon! Thanks for the heads up on this one!

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    1. "Looks like we have to wait til November"

      I decided to pre-order it, in the hope that you're right.

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  2. That's strange. It was released in India on the 10th of July, at least that's what they said on the M&B India fb page. It was to be a global release. Got my copy last month but maybe it was because it was ordered in India.

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    1. There do seem to be some strange things going on at M&B UK. They took a break from publishing RIVAs for a while and now there may be some new ones out but, as far as I can tell, they're also reprinting quite a lot of backlist RIVA books with new "chick lit" style covers. I also remember reading that the US and UK offices have been trying to synchronise publication of various other lines, so perhaps that's got something to do with it too. I have a feeling the changeover's meant that some titles went straight to ebook in at least one of the markets and didn't appear in paperback.

      Maybe Monsoon Wedding Fever's been rescheduled as a result of these upheavals?

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. http://pageturnpublisher.com/ - do check out my website. I publish Indian romances...

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