Category Archives: Double Happiness

Double Happiness – A masala love story – Prelaunch Information

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Dear Tributes and Fans,

Our Queen Vivienne and her entourage are honoured to announce:

“Double Happiness” is here to stay and “A masala love story” (Part 1 of 4) will soon be delivered throughout our kingdom by the major seller of electronic reading material (also known as amazon.com). (“Tatatataaaaa”)!

Check your amazon site on Friday, 13 December 2013. 

What a coincidence that a true amazon such as our Queen Vivienne will publish on amazon.

The queen replies: “There are no coincidences.”

(Vivienne M Sharma in “Double Happiness – A masala love story”)

"Double Happiness - A masala love story" Part 1 of 4

What you need to know about “Double Happiness – A masala love story” (before all your friends):

Vivienne M. Sharma, born in 2023, is the daughter of Vivienne Wardi and Arjun Sharma. She discovers her late mother’s diary at 12 years old and is drawn into an adventure spanning generations, her parents’ circle of friends, sisters and brother. The first part of the “Double Happiness” series “A masala love story“ starts out as a Bollywood-style love story and turns into a political drama that manifests a love which should never have existed.

Thank you from yours truly,

VMS

BTW: Please tell me if I am reading too much “GoT”.

 

How do you start your story?

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Today I just drove around and got lost on the highway. A flash woke me up “Shit” I thought. I drove more than 20 km too fast. This fine will be huge and I am already broke as hell. The whole day I had been thinking about writing but somehow I could not sit down.

There seemed to be too much to do around the house and even after an hour I still cleaned up. I went for a walk. Half an hour into my walk I started to observe some people and words started forming in my head. This looks like a start for a new story. I slid into it easily. Actually, I had nothing else to do and I moved. My brain worked after the walk.

 

I learnt about writing is that you need to start at some point. You might be the type like me who needs inspiration from the outside world. I cannot always come up with a story from my imagination but once I have the start I can sit down and write almost without a plan. With “Double Happiness” I started like my driving today. I had no aim and I am free to fail. I did not write this story to become a novel.

 

At one point in time I woke up out of my trance. My writing voice had taken over. I gave birth to Vivienne M Sharma in the dungeons of a wildlife park, a tiger resort. Again, I had nothing else to do that day so I wrote and wrote. At one point either Lara or Anna asked me “What are you doing?” “I am writing a story.”

 

If you feel the same way about writing but you do not know where to start pick any ordinary scene. You can get an idea how I started when you look into “A winter journey…”. Never mind the English. (I used Google Translate for this one and it is hard to translate from my mother tongue). Describe what is happening around you. Start to build a story around the people you see. Use all your stereotypes about a person and let them come to life. You can. You are a writer and they will not sue you unless you know their real names (and use them).

Hugs

Vivienne M Sharma

Are you a writer?

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IMG-20110719-00517At the fancy dinner party last night (where I decided to quit smoking for good) a nice lady from Venezuela asked me “Are you a writer?”. I smiled and said “At the moment I am just a writer, but hopefully in 2013 I will become an author.” She was keen on understanding what I mean by that. Many of us have a talent for writing as children. It is like painting which children do naturally. However, over the years of growing up we lose part of our talents and hide them in the deep space nine of our brains behind the wounds of broken relationships and other everyday worries that keep us from living a happy and fulfilled life.

In my case it was probably a trauma that pulled my energy for writing away and I only slowly rediscovered it through tweeting, blogging, articles and poetry. Now my writing is constantly in me and wants to come out. I write whenever I want and I have managed to draft a novel of four parts.

At this point it is a “quadrology” (wow the word “quadrology” actually exists but I should call it “tetralogy” if I want to be taken seriously going forward.), four stories belonging together and building up on each other. It does not really makes sense to read one of them only.

Anyway, my writing so far seems more like a hobby and when I talk about it to close friends, it seems like I am talking about a hobby. From what I have learnt the difference between being a writer and an author is that an author is published and writes to make a living. It would be nice to make a living from writing but it is a long way to get there. So if you feel like writing is just a hobby but you want to become a published writer you might want to follow me on this path of discovery. I am not sure I can help you because I am still a beginner at this as well. Plus reading “Raw Material” by JJ Marsh made me understand how much I still have to learn about writing. As you might know and see, English is not my native language and that means that you will lose out on elaborateness and play on words. In my first language there are words and sounds that just appear nice on paper but do not translate to an audience. So one of the first questions I ask you is: Who are you writing for?

Let’s talk about this more in 2013.

Hugs

VMS

 

My mother’s secret diary

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“Double Happiness” is based on the secret diary of my late mother Vivienne Wardi. I have sworn not to show it to my father Arjun, nor Samir. Samir is my mother’s first husband. The original diary is rather juicy and a little bit too personal for sharing but I thought I could give you a spice of it here. She never wrote any dates but I assume it was in June and July 2012.

Saturday

I did not feel like writing a diary through my India trip. I have so many wonderful memories. Now, Arjun has invited me for a surprise weekend in a houseboat. We are leaving soon and I cannot write when he is around me. It is too exciting.

Monday

No man has ever made me feel so loved. Arjun is always so gentle and romantic. He looks at me with his dark eyes, smiles and I always see hunger inside them. Yesterday, before we went to sleep he sang my favorite bollywood song for me. It is from “Fanaa” and I cannot even say how it is called. I think it is “Mere Haath Mein”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIG1m9cMOAU
When we came home from the houseboat last night he asked me if we wanted to go for dinner. We wanted to a hotel in the city. I was freezing. We even tried a red wine called Sula. Arjun said he had never tried red wine before. We took a rikshaw home because it was pouring. He kissed me on the backseat. I felt his erection and I was a bit embarrassed because of the driver.
When we got home he did not want to have sex. He just looked at me while I slowly took my wet clothes off. He liked my new red panties that I had bought for this occasion (even though I did not realize the occasion would come so soon). He sat on the sofa and asked me to come closer. I only wore my underwear. He turned me around and pulled me on his lap. Then he kissed his way up my spine. His hands rested on my hips. He opened the bra with his teeth and then his hands moved up to pull the bra off. He took both breasts in his hands and massaged them. 
…

My mother’s secret diary

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I found a beautiful poem in my mother’s secret diary. She dedicated it to my father but she called him “Cookie”…

I FELL IN LOVEChandini – a Poem for Cookie

Nothing can capture the beauty
of a full moon’s night
I feel drawn to you like
a moth to a flickering candle.
Your name like a grape ready
to melt in my mouth,
Lips so soft, a smile that
lights a thousands stars in my heart.

Winter at my grandma’s

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Dearest friends,

For those of you who had a chance to read “Double Happiness” already you will already know that I like to spend my winters in Switzerland, where my grandmother lives. So this year we are also spending a winter in Switzerland, enjoy the mulled wines and cookies. Grandma is already worried about our Christmas dinner and as you can imagine I have not gotten all the presents together yet.

Some of you told me to give a bit more information around my plans with “Double Happiness”. Well, as you know we are still in the early days. “Double Happiness” is my first novel and I had no idea how many rewrites and edits are needed until you have a story together. So at the moment my editor and I are reviewing Part 1. I assume we will not publish before spring 2013. There are certain time constraints as my publishers have a lot of other stuff going on. I would hope that some of you have told your friends about the book and that you and your friends subscribe to my newsletter.

I am not going to give you ideas how to write your own book but you can take a look at the blogroll. Some of these authors have already published and they know what they are talking about. Enjoy the winter season and the holidays if you are celebrating.

Big hugs

VMS

 

Damian

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Damian is not only my uncle but he will also be my father-in-law soon. As per Indian tradition I shall move to the house of my in-laws soon. Damian is a real Aussie man with tattoos, white skin and blond hair. He loves fishing, motorbikes and loud music. I can imagine him young on a surf board or scuba diving but when I met him he had been a bit more settled already. He came to our house often when I was a kid. Then we moved to Mumbai and we could not hang out so often. What I would say about uncle Damian is that he is a lot deeper than you would think at first sight. He needs a few drinks (kingfishers) before he opens ups but then he can actually be quite chatty and charming. I would say he is a manly man with a soft touch. My sister Leyla told me he cried at my mum’s funeral. Well, that shows how much he valued her friendship and that he missed her.

 

Astrid

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“Auntie” (and soon-to-be my mother-in-law) Astrid has always been a very strong help in my life. Since I never met my mother, Astrid was the female role model that I needed when growing up. She is strong, intelligent and very warm. Astrid left her family together with her husband Damian in 2012 when they started a world trip from Australia. Who would have thought that they would fall in love with Kerala and return to live there?

If you wonder why she is my soon-to-be mother in law I recommend you start reading the first chapters of Double Happiness. You might find an indication there.

Big hugs

VMS

I am about to faint

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Last night I had a few glasses of champagne after an important event. On my way home I received an invite to send Ranbir Kapoor a friend request on Facebook. I still do not know if it is genuine or if in a few weeks I will be spammed, my computer will be full of viruses etc.

I told him that I have the perfect role for him (Raj). Once in a while believing in magic has helped. So what if he is the real RK? I could tell, I was a bit excited about this idea. He is such a big star and I am now one of his groupies. He replied to me. I have had the same excitement when I joined Twitter and could suddenly send messages to stars. At the end of the day he is also just a human being who wants to bathe in the love of his true fans once in a while. So maybe he really wants to have those fans and if it is not him this person is really convincing.

Maybe one day my biggest dream will come true and I will write a screenplay for the bollywood movie of “Double Happiness” and then I will ask Ranbir to show me some cool moves.

hugs and kisses

VMS

Ganesh

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The Amber Palace in Jaipur

Uncle Ganesh is a friend of the family. He is becoming an important friend for my mother and Lara in the first part of “Double Happiness”. Ganesh is running a tour through India (Jaipur is one of the stops) where my mother Vivi and Lara meet. He is married and has a little daughter. He lives in Delhi and his sister Gitanjali wants to get married too. Ganesh is an open person who deals with a lot of different people. He is an extrovert and becomes a successful business man later in his life.