Dreams Inspired Duty & Desire -- Author Anju Gattani Shares

Today's guest, Anju Gattani, is a woman of the world. A freelance journalist, she's lived in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia and different parts of America. I met her on the wonderful Yahoo group Authors of Asian Novels and instantly clicked because we are both from the Indian-subcontinent and we both love stories.

Her debut novel, Duty & Desire, is releasing tomorrow. WooHoo!

Check out her book blurb:


How Can Happiness Survive When Duty Clashes With Desire?


Sheetal Prasad has it all: youth, beauty, wealth, and education. But when this modern Indian woman surrenders love for honor and marries into India’s most glamorous “royal family,” those very advantages turn against her.


Meet the Dhanrajs—a powerful family bound together by a web of lies where infidelity, greed, secrets, and hidden identities lurk beneath the lush tapestry. The Dhanrajs will do whatever is necessary to mask the truth from the world.
As Sheetal peels back the layers of deceit in the glittering world of Indian mega- wealth—and struggles to control her own fate—she is threatened by the rage she harbors and the blazes of passion she ignites.


Thanks Anju for visiting with us and sharing what inspired you to write your story! Now, heeeeere's Anju:

The inspiration for the story – and I call it a story because I later learned I was writing a series – goes back to Nov 2001, shortly after we moved from Singapore to New Jersey, USA.  Our kids (both boys) were 6 & 2 then.  I was taking my cat nap one afternoon when I saw a scene from (what I thought was) a movie.  It was dynamic do or die situation and when I woke up I was holding my breath and gasping for air.  I realized it was a dream, not a movie, and I started researching on ‘writing the novel’. 

With my mom’s and husband’s encouragement I put pen to paper in Jan 2002 and the story started writing itself.  All I knew was I had to keep holding the pen and get to The End (the dream scene); I just didn’t know how.  Pounding out the original manuscript took 1.5 years.

The determination to keep going and not give up goes back to my characters.  They would haunt me in my dreams at night (not day dreams anymore!) if I seriously thought of abandoning the story.  In my dreams, I’ve talked to them, seen them and even read their minds – hmm… am I officially nuts now?  Their message was the same every time – “If you abandon us (characters), we die.  Then who will tell the world our story and our plight?”

As I rewrote, cut in two, and revised DUTY AND DESIRE (and the 2^nd book in the series), I realized it wasn’t just one woman’s story… but possibly the stories, in bits and pieces, of women (and men) around the world.  Rewrites also made me realize the plights of my characters are universal... world-wide. And I often stop and wonder… Is that why Duty and Desire is a world-wide release?     

Oh btw…my kids are now 15 and 11 – uggh! I feel old again!  

Duty and Desire is currently available for preorder in trade paperback at Barnes & Noble and Amazon. 

Eformat: Kindle, Nook, Sony, Apple, PDF Acrobat Reader, and Kobo. 

Anju would love for readers to review the book on those sites and share it with others! If you want to learn more about Anju check out this wonderful article from the Milton Herald.

So anyone else inspired by dreams? Anyone know how to interpret dreams?