The Power of the Law of Attraction: Guest Post by Riyaz Baghadiya

Everything around us happens twice. First in the mind and then in action. From the day one of origin of this phenomenal world. Each and everything around us was first an idea or a blueprint in someone's mind. Later, it became a reality. A similar pattern is still followed and will continue to be followed in the future as well. So, first and foremost have an idea or prepare your mindset according to what you wish to happen in the near future.

The law of attraction simply says that if you think about something that you want to achieve, it can be a promotion, a healthy relationship or a healthy lifestyle, it all starts with just a thought in your mind. It’s like the butterfly effect. If a butterfly wills to cause a storm it could start the process just by flapping its wings.

Let's try to understand the power of the law of attraction with an interesting tale.

Once there was a man who started to walk. He kept on walking for hours and hours and somehow reached paradise. He was amazed by its beauty. Everything was peaceful and calm. As he had been walking for so long, he decided to take rest under a gigantic tree. He was hungry. He imagined all the delicious food he could and after some time all the food he imagined started to appear in front of him. He was happy and without even thinking he started to enjoy the delicious dishes. When his hunger was satisfied with the food, he thought," I wish I could get something to drink. I feel thirsty." Again, he was presented with the drinks of his choice. He slurped it quickly. With little alcohol in his bloodstream, the man thought there was something wrong about this place. Whatever I am thinking about is being manifested.

Now, the man imagined there might be some ghost nearby who is watching him and listening to all his mind’s chattering. Immediately, a pack of ghosts appeared and the man was scared. He now imagined he was definitely going to be tortured by these ghosts and killed by these ghosts. It happened as well.

Whatever the man thought in his mind with full concentration and dedication, it manifested. This, in short, is the essence of the law of attraction.

How to achieve this kind of concentration? It’s simple. Make your mindset so powerful that firstly it is under your own control. This can be solely achieved by mediation. Invest 5 – 10 minutes daily and abundance energy will radiate from you. Once you are ready to change these thoughts about negativity and drive your mindset towards positivity everything would manifest the way you want. If you wish, read this article on controlling the mindset on my blog.  

Always remember, you have to start with a thought, a thought of achievement, and work backwards as to where to start from. All the forces around, in fact, the entire universe will conspire and make sure your thought turns into reality. This is the secret followed by most of the spiritual gurus and entrepreneurs to achieve success and calmness into the lives.

-         ----- Riyaz Baghadhiya

For more interesting articles and book reviews that can impact your life in a positive way visit Riyaz’s blog: GoEpilogue.

The Vetala: A Novel of Undying Love [ Guest Post by Phillip Ernest]

The Vetala: Purchase Links
Publisher's Website
Amazon India
Amazon US
Amazon Canada

The Vetala, my first novel, arose out of my relationship with Pune like the return to consciousness of an almost forgotten love.

When I first saw Pune in 2005, I had already known for some years that I was destined to go there. While studying Sanskrit in my home city of Toronto, Canada, I became obsessed early on with the Mahabharata, and soon came to know that Pune was the home of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, historically the greatest centre of Mahabharata studies in the world. After my marriage to a Punekar in 2006, I had the honour of working in the Institute’s Mahabharata department for a couple of years, but was forced by necessity to take a more remunerative job at the nearby Dilip Oak Academy, just down Bhandarkar Road from the Institute. I was grateful for the job, but I knew I was losing touch with my svadharma. I could actually see the Institute from the Academy’s window, like a beloved ghost from a longed-for past. 

The Vetala: a novel of undying love is itself a story of the remembering of a forgotten life, a love story that spans many rebirths. The protagonist, a woman professor of Sanskrit at the University of Zagreb, Croatia, has for more than twenty years been translating an obscure Sanskrit manuscript on the Vetala. In fact, it was a vetala that long ago killed Nada’s lover and fellow-scholar, setting her on this path of obsessive scholarly revenge with the goal of destroying the monster through the knowledge the book embodies. When her mentor and collaborator in Pune dies, the vetala suddenly reappears, emboldened, determined to seize the manuscript at last and neutralize the threat it poses. His opposition grows increasingly desperate as Nada nears the text’s conclusion, and with the help of an enigmatic pandita and two fellow-scholars struggles to decipher its climactic secret—a secret which would allow her to exorcise the vetala at last, and release not only the mysterious man whom he has possessed for centuries but also her own forgotten self, and its denied and forgotten love.

I now think that The Vetala unconsciously reflected my own longing: for a lost Pune of my past and my imagination, and more broadly, for the possibility of somehow reclaiming a life in which I had lost my way, and forgotten myself.

  One evening in 2014, as I was walking home from the Academy, I stopped at a raddi shop to check out their used books. Among the English books, there was almost a whole shelf of novels from the new generation of vampire fiction that had developed since I left Canada in 2004, and of which I knew almost nothing. I also saw Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I had actually never read. I left the shop without buying anything, but what I’d seen had stuck in my mind. Over the following days I found myself brooding: my academic ambitions had failed, my literary ambitions had failed, my life was going nowhere, I was a disappointment to myself and others... I had a sudden inspiration: maybe, from my strange perspective as a non-Indian sanskritist living in India, I could write an Indian novel of the supernatural that would appeal to readers everywhere. Maybe I could, after all, despite so much failure, finally achieve something.

I went back to the shop and bought Dracula, and began to read it in spare moments at work. One day, after reading a few pages, the essential plot of The Vetala came to me within a few minutes, almost automatically. But it didn’t seem to owe anything to Stoker’s novel. It arose instead out of my remembered experiences and dreams, and the Sanskrit literature that had never stopped obsessing me. And as I wrote it—for an hour a day before dawn—it surprised me to see how much love of Pune was coming out.

I had almost forgotten.

About the Author:

Phillip Ernest grew up in northern Canada and lived in Toronto until the age of thirty-four. He earned a BA in South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto and a PhD in Sanskrit at Cambridge University, England, where he met his future wife, a Punekar. Since their marriage in 2006, they have lived first in Pune and now in Bengaluru.

He blogs at https://phillipernest.weebly.com 

The 3 Whys Behind Writing Royal Romances Guest Post by Devika Fernando

Today we have Devika Fernando, one of my favourite romance writers, on the blog. She will answer one particular question her readers often ask her. Why does she write Royal Romances? Curious about what the answer is? 

Over to you Devika!

Thanks for having me on your blog, Preethi. Feels extra special because you write royal romances too.

Some people ask me why I chose this particular sub-genre of romance. I tell them that I didn’t choose it, it chose me. *wink* What I mean is that I suddenly had this idea begging to be written, and as I was aiming for a series anyway, I went ahead with it. Ever since, I’ve fallen in love with writing royal romance. Here are three reasons why.

1. Imagination meets reality

I love it when stories leave room for creativity but still read as if they could really happen. That’s exactly what’s so magical about a royal romance. These days, there are many real-life princes and princesses who find a partner among the ‘common people’. And somehow, that never loses its appeal. Perhaps because deep down, all of us want to believe that Cinderella’s dream is real.

2. Great potential for conflict

A book, even a romance novel, is only as good as its main conflict. And having a royal fall in love with a commoner is a great opportunity for conflict: What will the families think? Does the media get wind of it? Do they have dark secrets that could jeopardize everything? Will the rigorous rules ruin the budding love? Do they feel so out of their depth that they make grave mistakes? Can their affection and attraction withstand the burden of responsibility?

3. Fascinating settings

Royal romances give me the opportunity to make up a whole kingdom – or, as is the case with “The Indian Prince’s Scandalous Bride”, at least a palace and other settings. I get to decide on the rules, the landscape, the luxuries. Often, I imagine family members, histories and hierarchies for my royals too. It’s such fun, and I can let myself be inspired by real monarchies without being limited to actual facts.

Thank you, Devika! That was an intriguing post.

Have you checked out her latest Royal Romance?

Check it out here:

The purchase link is: mybooks.to/royalromance4 (universal Amazon link)

Balancing Humour and Drama in a Rom-com: A Guest Post by author Adite Banerjie #MyFriendAlexa Post No.7

Have you ever wondered about the struggles an author goes through while writing a book?

Author Adite Banerjie shares her experience or rather the 'How I did it' details about her recent bestseller rom-com, 'Bombay Heights'. 

If you are a writer or an aspiring writer, I am sure you will find this post extremely valuable.

Romantic comedies are my favourite genre of movies to watch and I have always enjoyed reading chick-lit books with a liberal dose of humour.  So when I started writing Bombay Heights I was consciously aiming at a premise where my two lead protagonists Ash and Sanjana would be constantly in each other’s way and providing a few laughs for the reader. As neighbours who also turn out to be colleagues, it was a neat way to have them exchanging banter as they play the romance game.

While plotting the story flow, it seemed easy enough. However, writing is rarely seamless and glitch-free. My story almost came to a standstill at a crucial scene in the final act of the story. The scene is set in a restaurant where Chetan (Sanjana’s ex) is expected to make an important announcement. Nearly the entire cast of characters of the book – Sanjana, Ash, Sanjana’s dad and her two siblings and Chetan – are dining at a posh restaurant. Sanjana is a bundle of nerves as she has her own announcement to make and is unsure of how her family is going to react to it. Besides, both her ex and current love interest are present.  The stage is set for drama. However, how can a rom-com not have a streak of comedy running through it?

And that’s where it was all beginning to unravel for me. Maintaining the balance between drama and comedy was turning out to be more difficult than I’d imagined. I struggled with it for days but was dissatisfied with the outcome no matter how many times or how many different ways I rewrote the scene. I was ready to throw in the towel – at one point I even thought of splitting the scene into two with the announcements happening in different scenes with a smaller cast of characters. While that was an option, it would not have the same impact.

Finally, I decided to write the scene in a screenplay formal: with minimal descriptions and keeping the dialogues up front and centre. That gave me enough scope to see how one character’s dialogue would impact the others. It was a bit like setting off a chain reaction where dialogues would trigger action and emotion.

Once I started writing the scene with only the characters’ dialogues, it all began to come together though it ended up as a 25-page scene! But at least I could see how the scene would unfold. It helped me visualise the emotions and reactions of each character. Once the dialogues were in place, I layered in the action or description lines and followed it up with emotion/innermost thoughts (wherever necessary). 

Finally, the scene was working: it combined emotion, back and forth dialogue as well as some slapstick action (complete with a plate of pasta flying off the table). Every character was contributing in some way to the chaos, drama, emotion and comedy. Then, it was just a question of trimming the scene, cutting out unnecessary dialogue and it was ready to go!  

Whoever thought writing a breezy rom-com would be so draining! Phew!

- Adite Banerjie

Intrigued? Here’s a blurb for Bombay Heights

A feel-good romantic comedy

Small town girl Sanjana Kale wants a fresh start in Mumbai. A challenging job and some much-needed distance from her ludicrously over-protective family could get her life under control.

Forced to team up with video game designer Ashwin Deo, who is too attractive for his own good, she finds life becoming a whole lot more complicated when he turns out to be her new neighbour.  How can she maintain a professional distance with this charming troublemaker who believes in getting up close and personal?

To make matters worse, her ex tries to manipulate her loved ones to work his way back into her life. Hysterical siblings, a cantankerous client, an ex who will not take no for an answer, and a blow hot blow cold neighbour... Sanjana is sleepless in the City of Dreams! Can she do what Ashwin dares her to--create a few ripples even if it upsets her family?

Buy your copy at AmazonIN 

I am taking my blog to the next level with #MyFriendAlexa campaign by Blogchatter