“I take on the baton of Blogchatter Ebook Carnival from  Blogchatter  who are celebrating release of thirty six ebooks in one go ! A world record of sorts in itself.”

Recently I published my first ever book of short stories 26 words : A to Z of Short Stories and a lot of people have been asking me how I did that. Well like many others, I also love to write and had always dreamed about writing a book one day. But that one day was not a decided day at all; I did not really know, when I would actually ‘sit’ down to do the deed. In my head, there was an idea that may be one day, when I retire, at 60 years old, I will probably sit down to it. And then the AtoZ challenge happened…

Well to write about my book journey, I first need to write down about my personal life and my journey of motherhood. After 5 years of being married we were finally ready to have a baby in 2015. We got duly pregnant (that was the easy part) and then I got the best ever job of my life. Well, you would say that was swell, right? Well, that was not the end of it, my husband promptly got relocated and moved to another city. Yeah yeah! Pregnancy happened, Baby happened and all the time hubby and me were away from each other. I spent my entire pregnancy alone, thankfully it was an easy peasy pregnancy apart from the fact that I DID NOT have any of the much touted “Glow”. In fact, third trimester on wards, I looked like a very tired and old and haggard penguin. Yes, not a cute penguin, waddling along, but an old, tired one.

Thankfully, I was working this whole time, in fact, I worked till 11:00 PM on the night before my son was born, and did not face any major discomforts during my pregnancy. Would you believe it, if I say that this was the first time I had ever lived alone? First time in my life I was living all alone and that I decided to do when I was pregnant. Yes, yes, true story, I did my entire schooling, right upto my MBA while living at home comfortably, with my parents. And once I got pregnant , I stayed alone in a city for 8 months.

Oct 2015, our sweet bundle of joy was brought along by the stork. And the one thing I am truly grateful for, is that the hubster was present, standing right beside me, to witness and share this blissful (read painful) moment with me; he had landed just an hour and a half before our son was born.

The next year was one of the most beautiful and yet the hardest one of our lives. The hubster spent half of the year on board flights; commuting every fortnight to and fro between Delhi and Bangalore. It was harder for him, not being able to be there continuously to watch our little tyke grow up. He worked harder than ever and I am so thankful to him for being so strong all through this, all the while while I was a busy being a large bag of emotions, bodily pains and coming to terms with motherhood.  It broke my heart to see him get up at 3:00 AM on the days he would be leaving for Delhi, after spending two weeks with us.  He would catch his flight at 6:00 AM and be at office by 10:00 AM. I was also back at work once my maternity leave of 3 months was over. I have to thank my parents specially, who spent an entire year with me, which was the reason I could rejoin and keep working. We spent the whole year like this, and soon enough our baby was one year old.

 2017, I moved to Delhi, after much deliberation, leaving the best job of my life behind. It was not making sense, living apart like this anymore. What ensued was a full blown depression and the blackest of times for me, I was at the lowest point of my life. I was not used to not working and staying at home (I had been working for the past 9 years), adjusting to a new place (place which I hated), and being a full time mom, (It is one of the hardest jobs on the planet, well, at least for me), more on it some other day. And then the AtoZ challenge came and saved me from myself. I jumped into it 5 days late and came out on the other end with a full book , which is now listed in the  Blogchatter Ebook Carnival . The links to my book are listed here My First Published book .

 I have to thank Blogchatter here immensly for giving me a frame, a timeline, a challenge, which proved to be the direction I needed to move forward. If I may say this, It was a true Catharsis for me. I had not heard about the AtoZ challenge before 4th April 2017, And I jumped in without a plan, without a framework, without any blog posts ready, just because I had thought up one story starting with the letter “A”.

 I learnt,  I grew and I realized so many things about myself this April. Sleepless nights mingling into the days and the constant rush to come up with my next story, which are 26 stories on topics of social problems, each starting with one letter of the alphabet and built around a prop with the same letter word. I truly can say that I was reborn again through this. Do read it and tell me how you feel about it.

“I pass on the Baton of Blogchatter Ebook Carnival to Roma Gupta Sinha whose Ebook The Fragrance of True Love is also a part of the mix.

About Roma’s Ebook: Priyam, an avid writer, is a girl who is haunted by her traumatic past but is determined to stay positive and works extremely hard to give herself and her family a happy and comfortable life. However, she is a lone traveller in her journey and she likes it that way. She has built strong walls around herself so that none can hurt her bruised heart ever again. But what happens when true love knocks at her door? Is she able to fight her inner demons and embrace life or she perishes unable to do away with her agonising past? Dive in to find out how Meer enters her heart in softest steps and what destiny has in store for the lovely duo. ”