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Summertime

We are steadily progressing through May and before we know it, summer will strike. For many, it’s a much awaited time of the year but then, there are folks like me who cringe at the prospect of long days and very short nights.

I am a night owl. Nighttime holds a very special place in my routine. It’s the time when I can finally relax without having to answer to my boss’s calls or be annoyed by my loud neighbors. I can unhook my bra, throw it far away and lean into my pillows. Then, I pick up the book that’s been calling out to me the whole day. The moment when the book opens and the fragrance of its pages reach my nostrils, I know I am home.

Sometimes, the plot in the book is so good that it will keep me awake all night. Unless it’s summer. Summers barely give me a few hours to enjoy my books. By the time, I get into the good parts, the sun comes out and the birds begin to cry out. As if on cue, my annoying neighbors wake up to go for their walks and I can hear them arguing loudly about the declining state of our country. That is when I have to shut my book and wait for nighttime to come again, so I can go back to nirvana.

The weekends during summer are dedicated to walks in the park, barbecues in the backyard and may be to go on a vacation. Time for socializing increases, but my inner night owl hoots and shrieks to go back to my solitary bedroom where I can spend my free hours with my books, undisturbed and untroubled by norms of the society. It yearns to wear the most comfortable (ugliest, most faded) PJs and sip a warm cup of tea with cookies on the side.

So, while a majority of human kind will be enjoying their pool time activities, I’ll be staring out into the void with a frown on my face, waiting for autumn to come, to bring back the longer nights.

Men doing romance- How Ed Sheeran's songs changed my mindset

In between writing today, I headed over to YouTube (procrastination 101) and to my most pleasant surprise, there was a newly uploaded video on Ed Sheeran’s channel. It was titled ‘Galloway girl’ and it just took me back to the time I at university in Scotland. So, I hit play, the music starts and he goes “she played the fiddle in an Irish band and fell in love with an English man” and I was hooked.

I kept playing it on loop and the story in the whole video made me smile and cry at the same time. The places that he visits with the girl in a vibrant city like Galway or Dublin is filled with things that we have all done and perhaps, this is the reason it hit me so close to the heart. A night out with someone special. Even though you do something as mundane as hopping from pub to pub, you still feel excitement and joy because of the man or woman beside you.

As I sat sipping my tea, I thought back to his other popular songs like “Thinking Out Loud” and “Shape of You” and it hit me that these songs are all about love. It’s the kind of love that everyone has experienced at some point in their lives, whether you’re the romantic kind of girl or the girl who sweats it out at the gym or someone who just likes to have fun.

I am guilty of having a prejudice against romance books written by men. It came from a belief that men don’t really understand feelings, that they are not as deep as a woman’s but Ed Sheeran broke that perspective of mine today. All his songs are beautiful and make me feel so much love even though it is from the view point of a man.

So, from this day on I am going to be more open to reading romance novels written by men. I will make sure that it is the story description of the back that draws me to read the whole story instead of the name of the author.

Look ahead!

Sometimes in life, things don’t go our way and we can’t help but wonder if it’s just us.

For the past week, I have been trying to place an order on Fiverr to get an e-book cover done from an artist who assured me that she could do the kind of art that I really wanted, only for the price of five dollars. I even showed her examples of complicated beautiful designs and she insisted she could do one for me even better. She did not have a portfolio ready but I decided to trust her. Everyone has to start somewhere, right?

So, I eagerly hit the order button but to my disappointment my payment was not getting cleared. I wrote back to Fiverr and PayPal and then finally made trips to the bank to understand what was wrong with my account and my card. The woman told me that she was already done with the cover and I started feeling even more frustrated.

 All of a sudden, she attached the cover that she had done for me, asking me what revisions I wanted for it. Even though I did not download the picture because I had not paid for it yet but just looking at the image from the thumbnail told me that it was a stock photo with the title of my book slapped on it.

At that moment, I thanked the universe for halting me in my steps from making a big mistake. Even though it’s just a matter of five dollars, I would not use such a cover for my books even if they were offered for free.

I politely told the woman what I thought of her design, apologized to her for wasting her time and left it there. I am not going back to her again or answering her queries because she is definitely not a book cover designer. Slapping on a title and author name on a stock photo does not make it a book cover.

So even though, it felt like life was against me, it was actually working for me. Oftentimes we cannot see it or even want to believe it but life always wants to work for us, with us. It doesn’t matter where you are in your journey at the moment, if you keep your focus and work hard, you will make it.

Fates Unsealed - New paranormal fantasy series on its way