Or a maximum of two out of three.

It’s polarizing, to say the least.

I’ve blogged about my path to publishing now and then, but it’s only as the year soon comes to a close, that I realize its true significance.

If a picture could say a thousand words (or however many words this blog post will last), this picture of me would tell a story that goes like this…

…2011 began, and it was truly “the best of times and the worst of times.” Every day in January was either the euphoria of giving my heart away in the face of tough circumstances, or the fear of having it broken. It would’ve been a roller-coaster of adventure for people addicted to drama, but that’s not my addiction. I, as the years have shown, am addicted to happy endings.

As the year moved a little bit forward, I made the grandest of gestures, one that only a foolish main character in a chick-flick would do, because only on the precious reel of film, could a chance meeting and six months of addictive contact lead to hopping on a plane for one last whirlwind weekend, in the hopes of a happy ending.

That weekend remains, by far the biggest “up” of 2011.

But life’s not a movie, motherfuckers.

So then came the “down.”

In situations where one knows something is doomed but chases it anyway, one is left with two conflicting emotions:

-Sadness…and accomplishment

If one was in her early-to-mid twenties and hadn’t walked such a road before, one may have turned to the tempting comfort of chocolate, and the giant ass that would inevitably result.

But when one’s thirtieth birthday loomed near at the time of these two emotions, one instead said: “I will NOT force myself to buy a brand new wardrobe to prepare for my giant ass. I feel ACCOMPLISHED for laying it on the line, so I will go and make some art now, thank you very much.“

And that was April and May.

First it was “The Book of Awful”, which finally stopped being a half-finished thing that an agent didn’t like ’cause it was “weird,” and instead became a self-published book, on Amazon, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble.

Then came May and June (yes, I overlap in inspiration).

First it was the purchase of two books on screenwriting ( “Your Screenplay Sucks!”, “The Coffee-Break Screenwriter”), and then it was the creation of a screenplay, one that took its inspiration from a period of my life that felt so very much like a movie.

When my screenplay started advancing in competitions, I knew this special story wasn’t a fluke. It was more like a sign, and a story that seemed so perfect as the sequel to “Year of the Chick.”

And then came October.

After making a print version of “The Book of Awful,” and dusting off the first full-length novel I ever wrote (the one I’d given up on when an agent couldn’t sell it), I edited it for a month, and changed some things based on what I’d learned about writing in the last couple of years.

I sent this book called “Year of the Chick” into the world in late November.

Around the same time, I was hard at work creating a print version of “Year of the Chick,” a version I’ve now submitted for a blog tour in January, and a version that I’ve started selling locally, out of the back of a van in an alley (or more accurately, out of a cardboard box from underneath my desk).

Now we’re at the end of the year, and my grassroots marketing is only just beginning. I will sell my book in independent bookstores, I will leave random copies around town, and I will read out passages to anyone who will listen.

And the thought of all these things feels GREAT, so we’re back to the “up.”

What I won’t do now is give up. Ever. It’s a long and prickly and EXTREMELY UNLIKELY road to ever finding big success, but as I always say, small probabilities are no reason to quit. Especially when random readers from Australia or Texas or wherever buy my book and let me know they simply loved it. That’s enough reason to never give up, and it warms my heart like few other things (another “up”).

The only thing that concerns me as a new year looms is writing even more. I’m not short on ideas, but adapting my screenplay into the “Year of the Chick” sequel has implications, for how I’m viewed by the people in my life. What I mean is…when you make something artistic and you want people to care about it, at least some percentage of that art comes from a real place. If you risk nothing, it could mean nothing, and vice versa. My screenplay is rooted in the past, so to write a fresh novel out of THAT, means clinging to the past in some small way, for however long it takes to make some brand new art.

And that’s when your friends start to think you’re fucking crazy.

I’ve already felt it this year and will feel it even more in 2012. Their gentle urges to distract you from the long gone past, their nervous encouragement as they fear for your overall sanity…

This is the part of writing no one tells you about. The part where your dearest friends might quietly think you’re a lunatic.

Oh well.

So with one foot in the present and one foot in the past, I will look to the future and honour the name of my blog in my everyday life, with way more borderline “crazy” in 2012. As for the blog itself, writing another novel with a full-time job will be draining, especially word-count wise, so I may just come here for video blog updates (IF I can muster up the courage to be on screen…to be determined).

As a final note: a goal I’ve had my eye on for purely symbolic reasons, is to sell 1,000 copies of my book by the end of 2011. Sales are slowing down with Christmas preparations upon us, but with 13 days left and 996 sales, I’d say I have a very good shot. If it happens, you’ll hear me screaming about it from my Facebook Page…

…wear earplugs.

[UPDATE: I reached the goal on December 19th by 7pm and YES I screamed about it on my Facebook Page!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1,004 books sold in 2011 and counting... ]

And see you in 2012.

Therefore I must speak out:

-MOVEMBER SUCKS!

Before I get punched in the face, let it be known that cancer sucks too, and it’s great that men are banding together to raise awareness and funds for prostate cancer research.

But why effing moustaches? It’s not like moustaches grow on prostates, so what’s the connection?

Is it to support men’s health? Because a man in his natural manly and testosterone zenith, is capable of moustache thickness? And shaving it is unnatural?

Well that’s great for YOU, but what about womankind? Is it fair that for one month a year, we don’t have guys to flirt with at the bar, because we’ll never really know which one’s a pedophile and which one’s a supporter of “Movember”? Why are you robbing us of meeting “Mr. Right” for one month a year? What if women did that to YOU during October in breast cancer awareness month? What if we made ourselves so “natural” with extra hair and sagging boobs that you couldn’t stand to look at us let alone romance us during those brisk October nights? And say goodbye to slutty kitten costumes on October 31st, there would be none of that if we all played it  “natural” like you.

Instead we women embark on 5K or 10K runs to support our cause. In fact, almost all major causes raise ass-loads of money by having running events, yet the “man cause,” which is led by the gender that loves video games and armchair athletics, conveniently lacks a cardio portion.

Hmm.

So dear men: please stop being lazy, and please start working on your bodies instead of embodying “pedophile fashion 101.” Because if you don’t, we women won’t stop at complaining about your faces on our Facebook statuses. We will rebel, by watching more moustache-less romantic comedies than ever before, by eating more chocolate than ever before, by gaining more weight than ever before…

Oh wait.

Fuck.

Whatever.

Well even if I hate your methods, I support the cause, and you can too by supporting your male pals who are becoming more disgusting by the day. Sigh.

Movember home page (Canada)

Well now I’m going to ride this unicorn bitch into the sunset.

The fictional tale of “Year of the Chick” is ideal for anybody who’s ever felt out of place, or ever met a creep-face at a bar, or ever tried searching for love. In other words it’s mass appeal, but with never-before-seen kind of moments (like a tea-time family set up for arranged marriage doom). The story also includes some facts of life from the modern world we live in (like talking to a stranger on the Internet…and hoping he’s not a pedophile).

Now that this monster of a project is released, it feels like I just had a baby, except it’s measured in kilobytes instead of kilograms (PS: it will be measured in pages by December 1st, when the paperback version is released!).  Unlike a real baby though, my e-book hasn’t triggered a never-ending flow of lactation (or any lactation at all, to be clear—is this making you uncomfortable?).

So yeah, this diapered e-book baby is MINE, but if you want, it can also be yours as well.

“Year of the Chick” is book one in a trilogy. Book two is already complete in the form of a screenplay, which in the 2011 season has made it to the semi-finals or better in FIVE different screenplay competitions! (more details in the info section of my Facebook Author Page).  All of this means that 2012 will be the year of: turning a screenplay into a novel, releasing book two, and writing book three. Completion of these tasks will require a shit-ton of hours dedicated to writing in 2012.  With a full-time job. No biggie.

Please wish me luck in my continued quest to live two lives, for as long as I have to keep doing that!

Important shout-out: I’d like to plant an open-mouthed kiss of gratitude on my Toshiba Satellite A100 laptop. This old clunker got me through two hundred (and one) blog posts, two separate book attempts I eventually shelved, the creation and completion of a full-length novel, the creation and completion of a humor essays novel, and one full screenplay (and lots of porn…just kidding). I’m not even annoyed that in the last two months my laptop took it upon itself to randomly die repeatedly at least three times a week, forcing me to save my novel every thirty seconds in the final stages of completion. Not to mention that the battery is completely fried. I’m not pissed at you at all, Toshiba A100, but I will throw you out the window in the very near future, paying no mind to the bystander’s head you smash into.

Which brings me to my other important quest for 2012: save up my pennies for a MacBook Pro!

PS: thank you to anyone who ever read the various versions of my blog since 2007, and anyone who ever encouraged me on this path to publication!

Toodles,

Details for “Year of the Chick:”

E-book available now at: Amazon US, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Smashwords (which is compatiable with most e-devices internationally)

E-book will be available by December 1st for:  iTunes, Barnes & Noble Nook, & Sony Reader

Paperback (!!!) will be available by December 1st

This time around, the funny idea I had whilst in the shower has been converted into thirty poems of awkward hot messes, in “NOT Love Poems For Real Life”  (available in ebook format on Amazon for 99 cents; if you don’t have a Kindle, google “Kindle for PC or Mac,” it’s free). I initially envisioned fifty poems, but once I gassed up my editing chainsaw (whilst wearing a scary “Jason” mask and flannel), it was evident that I didn’t connect to some of the poems on a personal level. Not embarrassing enough, not revealing enough, and therefore a little bit flat.

And so, much to my chagrin, I put my reputation on the line in the name of art….yay.

To the people who know me, this collection is a fun little exercise in figuring out which poems are about whom…ohhh the scandal! After which I’ll confirm it’s about no one, since something so vague with so much fiction mixed in could never be proven as fact. Besides, the only person who should be hiding in a corner is me, ’cause nobody gets an ego beating in this publication like yours truly. But I’m not exactly the hide-in-the-corner type.

To the people who DON’T know me, this collection is vindication, for every real and epic poet who forgot about the not-so-epic experiences; all the frogs you had to kiss, all the times you were someone else’s frog bitch, you know, the mistake that made him/her run to someone else (hooray!…umm). The teenage pursuits, the hot men in suits, the constant rejection, the creepy-ass stalkers…where are OUR stanzas?!

Right here.

Back to putting my reputation on the line, this isn’t a publication with a frame of reference; this can’t be compared to Twilight or Harry Potter or actually to any other “something” in existence, and that equals risk. “Shocked, appalled and offended” will probably happen as reactions. It was simply one of those things I had to do, before my brain would let me work on something else. I guess I just couldn’t face the thought of line-editing a book about finding love and blah, blah (i.e. Year of the Chick—which is not “blah”, I assure you!) before wrestling with some issues and being a little reckless. I guess it’s a side-project, like when Britney Spears tried out acting in the movie Crossroads. I have no further comment on that cinematic effort.

And so, if you read my blog and nothing I’ve said has offended you up until now, download away and have fun!

If you’re anybody else, I offer you this disclaimer:  This work is not intended for young audiences, due to strong language and mature themes. These mature themes include: sexy time, rejection, humiliation, and the fear of dying alone.

That will be all for today, and as a final note: if you read my work and like it, I encourage you to interact in the following ways, each of which assists “independents” like me; thanks!
Facebook Author Page
Twitter Page
A review on Amazon or Goodreads

Coming up next month…the one that started it all: based on the blog of the same name, one woman’s quest to find love in a year, all to avoid arranged marriage (cue dramatic music)…Year of the Chick! (I was trying to make that sound like a movie trailer, but it would’ve been more compelling if it randomly mentioned an epidemic, natural disaster or zombie attack…)

This is a one-time only affair, as being a weekly blogger isn’t realistic right now. I’m quite sure you’ll cope, as I’m not even sure who reads this blog anymore??? I mean there are lurkers of course (some of whom quietly go back and read all the archives…who are you?! And thank you!), but the blogging landscape feels a little unnatural at the moment…instead it’s been about the downloads and fancy e-devices.

Which brings me to part one.

I’ll begin with the hilarious. Not as in “I, Romi, am hilarious and let me count the ways,” but as in me, staring at something, pointing at it, and laughing. Right now I’m laughing at “The Book of Awful,” which almost five months into release  still somehow sells! It was preposterous to me that more than thirty people in total would ever buy my book (i.e. my friends; hell ya I have thirty friends! Are you jealous?), but now, as I eclipse five hundred sales (which granted is still tiny in the grand scheme of things)…I friggin’ laugh at it. I can’t imagine any one human cozying up with their Kindle or iPad to read my book, but those actual humans exist…somewhere.

Those human readers make me glad I never changed my style of writing to follow the mainstream rules. Just today I was looking at my (rare, will tumble by tomorrow) #3 ranking on Amazon’s Parody Top 100, to find that once again the Zombie parodies elude me at #1 and #2. But that was fine with me.  I mean I never even thought that being such a wayward and awkward and strange and demented writer would help me crack a top 10 of anything…but it did, and I never had to write about zombies to get there!

And that’s the evil part of me. What I mean is…at least fifty percent of my inspiration for what I write is…cold, wayward and borderline evil.

But the other half of the time…I’m good.

Like that screenplay I wrote a few months ago.

There is nothing mean or demented or wayward in that script I wrote; it’s a star-crossed love story of doom (not exactly the ideal tagline but it’s the truth!). There’s some humor in the dialogue, but it’s humor with heart, followed by romantic doom. I’m not sure what kind of sick progression it is to follow something as twisted as “The Book of Awful” with a love story of all things, but that was simply the chronology of my brain/heart/soul. The strangest thing after that…was that the script didn’t totally suck. I read all the warnings in the “how to write a screenplay” books, the “your first twenty screenplays will be terrible and embarrassing” prophecies of doom (so much doom!). Even so, I allowed myself to face the scrutiny of judges in screenwriting contests…and I didn’t completely suck! I advanced in a few contests, and will hear back from a few more right up until December.

To be honest, it doesn’t really matter what happens after what has already…happened; nothing will beat the tears of satisfaction, upon discovering that someone outside of my friend group read my screenplay and didn’t think it sucked. Maybe one day I’ll get an expert story doctor to help me fix it up and submit it to “the biz.” Or maybe not. But the personal satisfaction of facing the scary “your screenplay will probably suck” odds and coming out alive was worth it.

So yeah…for most of the summer I was good and had a heart, but then I turned all evil again, when I had my next book idea.

If you follow me on Twitter you’ll notice I change the book’s title almost once a week, but right now my work-in-progress is called: “NOT Love Poems For Real Life.”

I can’t remember the exact moment when I came up with this wayward idea, but let it be known that I find good poetry to be remarkable, it’s a literary gift.

But then I get all evil again, when I think about the gap in the poetry market. You’ll understand it too, when you consider the greatest love poets in history; these poets have taken us through the zenith of being in love as well as the agony of losing it all. But what exactly happens in-between the two? I’m pretty sure at least fifty percent of life is the search for love before you ever find it, with the percentage ever-growing as the failures pile up. How many frogs do you have to kiss before you get a prince? A shit-ton! So where the eff is all the “frog poetry”?

Ahem…that’s where I come in.

See? Why is my brain like this? The human race has done just fine up ’till now without a collection of love mishaps/frog poetry, but noooo, I just HAVE to come along and screw up all the harmony with my concept.

Once I finish this collection and release it in the end of September, there is a very good chance it’ll bomb and readers will hate it.

But of course I must do it anyway.

It’s like “The Book of Awful.” That book is friggin’ weird and it seems that readers either love it or hate it. In fact, I think one reviewer actually called me a horrific excuse for a writer (I’m paraphrasing). But that’s art, bitches. It’s better to have a polarizing reaction of love/hate, versus a bunch of people who think you’re “pretty good” or “just okay” because you never rocked the boat. So that’s my advice to all the children out there (good lord, I hope no child ever reads this blog). You may spend your whole life being labeled as weird or “unpalatable” as an artist, but you can never lie about what inspires you. Look at my beloved Van Gogh, who sold maybe only three of his two thousand works before he died? His spirit now lives on as the pimp daddy of art, and I’m pretty sure my heart almost exploded with joy when I saw the real “Starry Night” in New York this past winter. Epic.

Where was I going with any of that? I don’t know, see, I’m rusty at this blogging thing! All I know is I’m having way too much fun writing humorous poetry about not-so-romantic mishaps, so it will be published by the end of September. God help me.

Back to me climbing the  mountain from evil to goodness. Last week I re-wrote and published two collections of my memoirs from India, which started out as posts from this very blog! See, this is why I will forever pay homage to my blog relic and return to it whenever I can. The blog was the start of all my grown-up writing exploits. Praise WordPress and my early blogging friends.  Back to the memoirs: because they originated in some form on my blog, my memoirs are totally free, everywhere except Amazon (I’m working on that so DON’T pay for it on Amazon, it will be free eventually!). I guess I figured why should these memoirs die on the blog, when I can give them a second life with thousands of free downloads? Hooray for reincarnation! The Hindus had it right.

Speaking of blogs and having a heart (this post refuses to end!), the cherry on top of my quest to have a heart is my full-length novel “Year of the Chick.” That too needs dusting off like an unused lady part, as it’s been hiding in my hard drive untouched for a year and a half. It’s incredible that a whole novel started out as a blog, and in honour of that I’ll be re-writing some old “Year of the Chick” posts and releasing a free version of “Year of the Chick Diaries”  in mid-October, a week before the e-book release. Print version to follow in late November…yes, print!

So yay for blogs! They’re basically like the hunched-over early evolution ape-version of Romi, which gave way to my eventual upright walking writer form.

As for being good or evil, all I can say is that my soul is in the hands of two Chinese men playing badminton. Please, let me explain. One of the short-shorts-knee-high-socks -wearing Chinese badminton enthusiasts is all dressed in black, the other in white. They represent good and evil, and they forever whip the shuttlecock that is me (what?) from one side to the next, never letting me settle on a good or evil writer’s path.

But maybe I don’t want to ever settle on a single style. Maybe I will always be evil on some days, then sweet and precious on Wednesdays (or Sundays). Maybe that’s what being “Romi” is.

Now’s a good time to stop abusing readers with my longest post ever. Oh, and here’s one free poem from my upcoming book that will likely disturb the masses. This poem is basically about every morning on the train, when the quest for a hottie seatmate almost always falls short.

—–

I gazed out the window,

Another blue sky.

Would I meet him today,

My precious dream guy?

*

On a train straight for work,

It didn’t seem likely.

So I sighed once again,

And closed my eyes tightly.

*

I dreamed of sweet man slaves,

Shirtless and ripped.

Fetching drinks,

Brushing hair,

Should I leave them a tip?

*

But the dream had to end,

So I opened my eyes.

And inches away,

Was a nasty surprise.

*

Pervy eyes,

Pedo moustache,

A big hairy rube.

He looked horny and sweaty,

As he ogled my boobs.

*

Learned a lesson that day,

Far beyond love and riches.

If you’re sleeping on trains,

Button up your shirts, bitches.

***

And….in summation:

Awkward Memoirs From Little India (free): available now

Awkward Memoirs From Actual India (free): available now

NOT Love Poems For Real Life: coming soon, late Sept

Year of the Chick Diaries (free): coming soon, mid Oct

Year of the Chick, a novel: coming soon, late Oct (print version in late Nov)

Happy Autumn, dear readers.

Toodles!