Zee Monodee's Latest Release: The Other Side

Title: The Other Side

Series: Book #1 in the Island Girls Trilogy

Author: Zee Monodee

Line: Ubuntu (geared to African Romance)

Publisher: Decadent Publishing, LLC

Release date: July 30, 2013

Genre: Contemporary Romance/ Romantic Comedy/ Interracial Multicultural Romance/ Bollywood

Length: 272 pages

Heat Level: Sensual/ 2 flames

Blurb:

Divorce paints a scarlet letter on her back when she returns to the culture-driven society of Mauritius. This same spotlight shines as a beacon of hope for the man who never stopped loving her. Can the second time around be the right one for these former teenage sweethearts?

Indian-origin Lara Reddy left London after her husband dumps her for a more accommodating uterus—at least, that’s what his desertion feels like. Bumping into him and his pregnant new missus doesn’t help matters any, and she thus jumps on a prestigious job offer. The kicker? The job is in Mauritius, the homeland of her parents, and a society she ran away from over a decade earlier.

But once there, Lara has no escape. Not from the gossip, the contempt, the harassing matchmaking...and certainly not from the man she hoped never to meet again. The boy she’d loved and lost—white Mauritian native, Eric Marivaux.

Back when they were teens, Eric left her, and Lara vowed she’d never let herself be hurt again. Today, they are both adults, and facing the same crossroads they’d stood at so many years earlier.

Lara now stands on the other side of Mauritian society. Will this be the impetus she needs to take a chance on Eric and love again? 

Buy Links:

Decadent Publishing http://www.decadentpublishing.com/product_info.php?products_id=817&osCsid=uk690a1muqacdt8v6csmtuo7d2 

Amazon (available at the discounted price of $2.99) http://www.amazon.com/Other-Side-Island-Girls-ebook/dp/B00E77XHG6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375035073&sr=8-1&keywords=the+other+side+zee+monodee 

Trailer:

Link http://youtu.be/kaUG05Sdypg 

About the author :

Zee Monodee

Stories about love, life, relationships... in a melting-pot of culture

Zee is an author who grew up on a fence – on one side there was modernity and the global world, on the other there was culture and traditions. Putting up with the culture for half of her life, one day she decided she'd stand tall on her wall and dip toes every now and then into both sides of her non-conventional upbringing.

From this resolution spanned a world of adaptation and learning to live on said wall. The realization also came that many other young women of the world were on their own fence.

This particular position became her favorite when she decided to pursue her lifelong dream of writing – her heroines all sit 'on a fence', whether cultural or societal, in today's world or in times past, and face dilemmas about life and love.

Hailing from the multicultural island of Mauritius, Zee is a degree holder in Communications Science. She is a head-over-heels wife, in-over-her-head mum to a tween son, best-buddy-stepmum to a teenage lad, an incompetent domestic goddess, eternal dreamer, and an absolute, shameless bookholic. When she isn’t penning more stories and/or managing the Ubuntu line at Decadent Publishing, you can bet you’ll find her with her nose in her tablet, ‘drinking in’ a good book. 

Tidbits about this book & series (please choose 1 or 2, whichever you feel more relevant for your blog): 

- The Island Girls trilogy follows the 3 Hemant sisters – Lara, Neha, Diya – over the span of the 2000-2010 decade, chronicling the changing face of the Mauritian society over that crucial period. 

- Book 2, Light My World, is Diya’s hilarious quest to find Prince Charming in the sea of frogs that is Mauritius (well, what it is according to her perception!). Follow her on this desperate mission in September 2013. 

- Book 3, Winds of Change, follows Neha as she must come to terms with widowhood and the fact that her marriage has always been a sham. In waltzes a man with the ability to make the perfect, ‘saintly’ widow she is burn with passion like she never suspected existed. Will the saint turn into a sinner, or find her rightful place simply as a woman? Find out in November 2013.

 

A Message for Ego-Stroking Authors

In my search for authors I might be interested in reading and ultimately interviewing, I visit a wide variety of social media sites. As such, I’ve been encountering some authors who openly refer to readers as ‘idiots, dolts, and dopes who should shut up and keep their opinions to themselves.’

Don’t get me wrong; the vast majority of authors are fantastic people. They write because they can’t stop. Every word, every story is a piece of these authors’ hearts and souls they gladly share with the world. But, being human, and an avid reader, I do notice the rotten apples spoiling on self-constructed podiums of deluded grandeur, shouting their disdain of the readers who have yet to comprehend the author’s magnificence.

So, here’s my personal message to any author who truly believes that stroking their ego is far more important than satisfying readers with the best story a writer can produce:

You’re an asshat.

Big Six or Big Five, Does it Really Matter? – by KevaD

The “Big Six” publishers are now officially the “Big Five.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/opinion/book-publishings-big-gamble.html?hp&_r=0 

Does it matter? Not in my opinion. At least, not by the way readers shop. 

Times have changed, which is exactly why the Big Five are changing.

Once upon a time it was commonplace to find at the end of a shopping aisle a revolving metal tree filled with a specific publisher’s books. Often, paperbacks were lined in wooden bins by the publisher and genre. Those days are gone. In the brick and mortar stores, books are housed by genre/category for the buyers’ convenience. Who the publisher is has become mostly irrelevant to shoppers. We only have to examine book covers to confirm that belief. Publisher logos have been reduced to the size of footnotes, a postage stamp advertising the delivery method if you will. 

The method of shopping has changed dramatically because of the Internet. Book covers are digital thumbnails potential buyers browse past in their search for a good story. Even Harlequin, a once testament to visual branding, is redesigning their covers to try and adjust to the split second of attention they have from potential Internet buyers. Bookstores rarely, these days, have the space to isolate a publisher’s books and now mix them on the shelves with other publishers by genre, not the brand name. Alphabetical listings are by the authors’ names, not the publisher. 

Yes, there are and will always be some readers who connect with a specific brand such as Harlequin. But the bulk of readership, inundated by the steady supply of books hitting the digital bookshelves from unknown and untested publishers, not to mention the self-publishing gold rush, has relegated the publisher’s importance to a ‘second thought’ status. That said, there is an area of reader importance publishers still hold a fingernail grasp over – genres not yet considered mainstream. 

Readers looking for books such as same sex stories, erotica, or extreme mental/visual images such

as gore, still tend to migrate to publishers focused on providing high levels of editing and a ready stable of skilled authors in a specific genre. However, as the smaller indie publishers vie for a foothold, these indie publishers aren’t the least bit shy about expanding their interests to swaying genre readers to their own book lists. Few “romance” publishers now limit their inventory to strictly vanilla heterosexual tales. They want those erotica and same sex readers, those book buyers, to give their authors a try, too. 

Young Adult (YA) and MM (men with men) books are two of the hottest rising genres. Simply put, there’s money to be made. Wiley publishers are quickly adjusting their strategies to accommodate those readers and expanding their once rigid publication interests. Many MM publishers now have a YA division. The reverse is also true. And, there’s nothing wrong with that. Publishing is a business – a constantly shifting business still whirling in a funnel of confusion brought on by the Internet and its endless opportunities for entrepreneurs. To survive, publishers have to sell books, and that means finding readers willing to invest in their product. And, due to the waterfall of books gushing into the daily pipeline of availability, publishers have to spread their literary nets to gather in all the potential customers they can. The same holds true for authors. Few limit themselves to one publisher and aren’t afraid of self-publishing should a publisher quaver on a project. Authors understand they need to keep their own supply of books flowing to readers or risk becoming yesterday’s news. As I said, publishing is a business, and authors depend on the sales of their books to pay the bills. 

And there it is in a nutshell. The methods of selling books have changed. Authors have no choice but to compete by keeping their names and books in front of readers. The publishers who understand this have kicked their production lines into high gear in order to compete against indie publishers and the self-publishing industry. One person, one self-published author, can make a difference; a financial difference publishers must offer high paying contracts to in order to corral that author’s fans. 

There will, hopefully, always be those large, big-named, pie in the sky publishers authors dream about. However, readers just aren’t that worried about who published the book they love anymore. My generation, the one raised with bestselling books lined up below racks of camera film at the end of grocery store checkout lanes, is fading. New generations of readers are finding their own way to shop utilizing the palm-held technology they are being raised with. Where I thought my first AM portable radio was a public symbol of my growth into puberty, there are now some teens who don’t know what AM radios were. It is quite possible a generation that will never hold a print book in their hands beyond curiosity at how their ancestors used to read may be a mere decade or two away from being born. 

How can publishers adjust? Some already have. Kensington Books, a publisher I believe has yet to receive the industry respect it deserves, has opened an e-publishing division. Even Trident Media Group, a renowned literary agency representing authors, has opened an e-publishing division with hundreds of books available to consumers. 

Many authors, my daydreamer self included, will continue to hold a contract with a Big Five publisher to be the holy grail of writing. For those who achieve that perceived pinnacle of success, their author friends will congratulate them with toasts of digital champagne. But the reality is, while we authors continue to gravitate to publishers who can provide professional editing, marketing and help generate sales, readers will simply ask, “When’s your next book coming out?”. 

Welcome to the future.

 

By the way…. HC Brown and I recently signed a contract with Steam EReads, a romance publisher located in Australia, to publish our co-written erotic romance trilogy DEAR K. We’re really excited about this partnering and hope readers will be too. Look for DEAR K this August.

http://steamereads.com.au/

 

A Not So Random Musing

I'm officially fed up with authors who believe they live on a golden mountain and the only purpose readers serve is to keep that mountain growing.

The majority of authors I've encountered are kind, wonderful people, just like the readers. Then there are those who think readers should swallow whatever the author decides to feed them, and the readers should fork over their money and shut up until the next book.

Readers deserve no less than the best work an author can produce. Anything less is disrespectful.