Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar's Blog, page 23
February 17, 2013
Inside the Writer’s Studio with Steven Vincent
This week, I’m featuring an author outside of my normal reading genre. Crossing genres is not only healthy, it’s important to keep your creative juices flowing. Think of it kind of like rotating crops on a field. Your mind needs the variety. Steven Vincent tells tales that are between Fantasy and Science Fiction. As a [...]
February 13, 2013
Love Your Neighbor or Even a Stranger
When I was a graduate teaching assistant, I had a small speech I would give before Valentine’s Day. “A day when men hate women for being materialistic and women hate men for being unoriginal.” “Bitter,” a blonde undergrad muttered underneath her breath from the front row. “I’m not,” I insisted. “I resent the pressure to [...]
February 11, 2013
Scribehead: The Next Big Thing in Social Media
To take a break from writing, I’ve been exploring other ways of telling stories. Film has been a wonderful outlet for me to get away from the words on the page and into the visceral quality of an image. As the law of serendipity would have it, the more short films I make, the more [...]
February 10, 2013
Secrets to a Film Script: Sign up for an Intensive Weekend
I founded the Doha Writers’ Workshop in 2006 out of sheer desperation. The desert landscape is hard on the physical body but also on the creative mind. By placing a free ad in the local Qatar Happening magazine, I found others, of varying levels, who were interested in working on a range of writing projects [...]
February 6, 2013
Wordless Wednesday: Vashti the Early Feminist
I love supporting fellow creatives. This week I’m delighted to host the Vashti project which is the collaboration of musician David Homan and choreographer Ariel Grossman/Ariel Rivka Dance. Not only are they young twenty-somethings-turning-thirty, David grew up in my hometown of Gainesville, Fl and is now producing performances in the Big Apple. Can’t get much [...]
February 4, 2013
Inside the Writer’s Studio with Rachelle Ayala
We are back in the writer’s studio this week with novelist Rachelle Ayala, author of Michal’s Window, as well as a new release, Hidden Under Her Heart. All of her projects tackle sensitive issues related to women’s lives. She was a software engineer until she discovered storytelling works better in fiction than real code. Rachelle [...]
January 30, 2013
Wordless Wednesday: Nanny Diaries, the Doha Edition
The first in my 52 films series, this is Rodelyn’s story of how she came to Qatar. I hope to interview many more women who work as domestics here in Doha as the real life stories behind my third novel, The Dohmestics. These women are very shy but I hope more will come forward to [...]
January 28, 2013
Torn Together
As writers, we sometimes focus on our own craft to the point of ignoring everyone else. This January I’ve felt the burnout from that singularity of purpose and offset the workaholic effects by reading as much as I can. When you’ve been away from the pleasure of reading someone else’s polished prose, the pages of [...]
January 25, 2013
Romance Madness Blog Hop: Historical Romance
I’m participating in a romance blog hop because this past July I wrote my first contemporary romance, Love Comes Later. From January 25 to 29 those who hop to other blogs can get great recommendations on romance reads. My novel is set in Qatar and has as much to do with culture as it does [...]
January 23, 2013
Wordless Wednesday: Shame on Facebook
I’m not guaranteed a clear radio signal in my car in Qatar for the two channels that broadcast the BCC World Service. When the moisture in the air and frequencies do cooperate, however, driving the hectic byways is transformed from the mundane to the educational. Exactly the case today when this episode of “Slut Shaming” [...]
