Elle’s Comments (group member since Feb 13, 2011)

Elle’s comments from the Q&A with K.C. Lauer group.

I understand a little of what your friend must be feeling. Indians are very warm emotionally demonstrative; my driver still e-mails me from time to time just to say hello. When he left us at the airport after being with us for a month, he actually got teary-eyed.

Also, India is very, very crowded and the American concept of personal space is about two feet farther away than it is in India. You keep backing up and they keep moving forward. And the crowding also makes life very public. You see people by the side of the road, maybe under a tree, taking naps, eating, wrestling, singing, braiding each other's hair, cremating Uncle Habib...

America must feel cold and sterile to someone raised in India.

The Sandalwood Tree will be on Amazon and in bookstores April 5.

I am passionate about writing and travel, so that's what I do. My first book, The Book of Unholy Mischief, was set in Renaissance Venice and since I was already very familiar with Venice (having lived in Europe for seven years) I only needed to do the research.

I try not to let anything hold me back from living my dreams. After 25 years of rejections from publishers and agents, I self-published Unholy Mischief and did an Internet promotion for people to buy it on Amazon. I couldn't afford it: not the self-publishing or the expensive course on Internet marketing. I put it all on plastic. That's why God created credit cards, isn't it? So we could reach for our dreams?

Well, about 400 people bought my self-published book and so did Simon and Schuster in a two-book deal.

My new book, The Sandalwood Tree, is set in northern India, so I spent a month roaming around northern India. That one required a boatload of research, but it was fascinating.

The Sandalwood Tree is about an American mom in a strained marriage, trying to be a mom in India in 1947, the year the Brits left and the country erupted into civil war. It's too dangerous to travel so she is stranded in a colonial bungalow, where she discovers letters written by a young Englishwoman who lived in that house 100 years earlier. Slowly she pieces together the Victorian love story with found letters and journals because she senses that their story can help her save her marriage.
The Sandalwood Tree will be out in April.

The Book of Unholy Mischief is being re-titled as The Chef's Apprentice. It has a lot of metaphorical recipes in it, but my recipe for success is simple: Find something you love and do the hell out of it.