When it all started
I wrote Part 2 of my book series in 2006, it is a story that I needed to write for myself to come to terms with what had happened to us at the birth of our first son.
Three years later, the year of my 50th birthday, my father passed away and I was back to a place I thought I’d boxed up and placed in the recesses of my mind.
Slowly but surely the story grew like a seed that was too dry to germinate, but like all seeds, it flourished from the small helping of nourishment it received from me, my pen.
Alas, life got in the way, my sons still needed help and support and I continued to work as a freelancer in TV Production. I got the bug to teach and retrained to become a teacher of Film and Media Studies in Secondary education. I enjoyed my job, but it left me with no time to process the feeling of loss and anxiety that had begun to gnaw in my mind again. I am envious of all the teachers out there and of those that I have worked with. They are committed individuals who give up so much of their time and money to do the best they can for their pupils. There’s a lot more I can say about the education system in the United Kingdom, but this is not the space to do it.
In 2016, I suffered my first anxiety attack, it was a shock. I didn’t have the courage to go back to work, I fought the urge to stay in bed all day every day and I didn’t want to leave my house.
I remember vividly what happened that day, how I managed to drive home but had to stop the car and call my GP, who provided me with a telephone consultation there and then and asked if I wanted to try talk therapy. I had tried it in the early ’90s and felt it didn’t help me at the time, but I also didn’t want to take drugs. So I went for my first appointment three weeks later and what was different about this session was that I was given a weekly calendar and asked to make a list of things that I needed to do, some necessary, some pleasurable. These sessions helped me process my thoughts and feelings. They told me that it was a natural thing to grieve for the people you’ve lost and I felt better. My counsellor told me to go back to my early chapters, the early recording of a difficult time in my life.
That was it, I got the bug to write this story and began to research, I read books by authors who wrote about situations that don’t have a happy ever after. I read blogs, I followed writers and developed my plot. But most of all I wrote, every time a dialogue or scene came into my mind I jotted it down in a notebook I kept with me.
My books, My Heart Sings Your Song and Where Have We Come has developed over a period of writes and re-writes and is a story of love, loss and family in two parts. If you like Jojo Moyes “Me Before You” then you’ll love my book, which is a romance based in the UK, between two British Asian from two different social background, who against all odds find their love for each is stronger than the tragedy that haunts them.
Excerpt:
“God Nik, it’s like a RK Studio film, Rich Boy, Poor Girl and you know what happens next?” I tried to lighten the mood, smiling up at him.
It has lots of references to Gujarati Indian culture, Bollywood films and songs, and Indian food. Please sign up to my newsletter, I will only send you my blog post and news of book release dates.