Lakshmi Raj Sharma's Blog: www.lakshmirajsharma.in.blog/

Get a free copy of this story collection

If you want to travel to India through stories that are both funny and sad, you can opt for a copy of MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN INDIA by visiting:
lakshmirajsharma.com

Get a FREE copy by visiting the above website.

Traditional Publishing or Self-publishing? That's the Question

We have come to a pass when it becomes so difficult to choose between traditional and self-publishing. I have the privilege of having been published by traditional publishers like Penguin. But I have turned to self-publishing for my new novella, Saba & Nisha: A Love Story, in the hope that this will better my prospects of publishing for my upcoming novel, To India for Love, in Jan. 2018. I will get the chance to see how my self-published novella performs before I take the vital decision for my novel's publication.

Saba & Nisha: A Love Story

My novella is a literary thriller, with the imprint of an Indian setting. It is about how the reticent Indian handles love. But there is a criminal who has worked his way into the plot and is after the heroine’s virginity.
The young and handsome Rahul Joshi has fainted in a bank where two classmates, Saba and Nisha, are present. Saba is disturbed and does everything to have a doctor called in whereas Nisha thinks she’s not supposed to indulge in this social service.
Saba demands an answer from her mother, Meher, about who her father is and why she has always kept it a secret. She discovers that her father is not a Muslim like her and her mother; he is a Hindu. She discovers that she is a child of nature whose actual identity her mother has hidden from the people.
Nisha decides to hook up Rahul and the two begin to come close. But life seems to intervene and takes Rahul towards Saba. Then comes the psychic Rajul Agnihotri, thirsting for Saba. There are several complications and criminal acts and there are two deaths in the process.
What happens ultimately is anyone’s guess.

Intriguing Women

Intriguing Women is Lakshmi Raj Sharma’s third work of fiction. After the success of his debut novel The Tailor’s Needle and his first book of short stories Marriages Are Made In India, Sharma now publishes a second, masterly collection of stories about women in all their infinite – and intriguing – variety. Male readers may learn something useful too…

The stories have international and Indian settings. We visit Europe, we travel to Afghanistan and we celebrate the rich variety of the Indian continent. These are women who may seem superficially normal, but might not be, and women who strive for normality at all costs. Sharma also raises questions; can a woman reconcile herself to terrorism? How do we react to a woman who kills several of her husbands? Definitions of femininity are examined and magnified through the prism of fiction.

We meet women who despite years of oppression, are smart enough to ride the 21st century successfully, while others are left behind, unable to handle the complexities of modern life. These stories report, reflect and examine the feminine nature.

What is it like to be born a woman, most particularly an Indian woman?
Intriguing stories indeed…