SANDHYA MENON’S INTERVIEW || AUTHORS’ INTERVIEW.

Hello people. I am here to welcome you to the much-awaited interview of Sandhya Menon, an author who wrote many books like When Dimple Met Rishi series, From Twinkle, with Love and many more awesome books. I was given the opportunity to interview her, so here I am with the interview questions. So without any further ado let’s start with today’s post, shall we?

There will be 3 parts of this post:

1. Introduction to the author.
2. Post related to the author.
3. The interview questions.

So let’s start with the introduction to the author.

• About Sandhya Menon.

Sandhya Menon is an Indian American author based in Colorado, USA. She is the author of New York Times bestseller When Dimple Met Rishi and From Twinkle, with Love. Menon grew up in India and is a die-hard fan of Bollywood films. She moved to the US from India when she was fifteen years old. She had a hard time growing up in two different cultures and says that she always wanted to be a writer, but her family pressured her to study medicine.

Menon writes young adult fiction for teenagers and rom-coms, often with Indian-American protagonists. Her first book When Dimple Met Rishi was published in 2017. The book was published by Hachette and was a New York Times bestseller. Her rom-com debut, Make-Up Break Up, about an Indian-American entrepreneur and her matchmaking business, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2021. (I am dying to read it)

Menon now lives in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with her husband and two children, a son and a daughter.

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• Posts Related To Author:

I was doing 3 sets of this post with a review, how it happened and the main review. The links of the specific posts are given below, go and check them out.

As Kismet Would Have It || Riveted Team Book Review.

How It Happened || Sandhya Menon’s Interview.

These are the post I recently did on my blog, go check them out to read more about the author and her books.

• The Interview:

1. What are your favourite topics that you usually talk about?

Besides writing (of course!), I’m very passionate about psychology/mental health, nutrition, fitness, and dogs (golden retrievers in particular!).

2. Which books do you like to read?? 

I read across a wide variety of genres, including: memoirs, adult romance, fantasy, science fiction, and literary fiction.

3. Who is your favourite author?? 

So hard to pick! A few I admire and enjoy are: Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, Mackenzi Lee, Becky Albertalli, Samira Ahmed, Sophie Kinsella, and Kat Howard.

4. Who are your mentors and inspirations?? 

Definitely all the authors I listed above, including so many more women who are taking their respective career fields by storm and/or being kind humans who make the world a better place.

5. Please tell us about your upcoming book and how did you get the idea of that specific content?? 

I just released Of Curses and Kisses, which is the first book in my St. Rosetta’s Academy series. It’s a modern-day Beauty and the Beast retelling, and it’s set at a very elite, glamorous boarding school in Colorado. The main characters are an Indian princess (Jaya) and the misanthropic British aristocrat (Grey) she’s determined to fake falling in love with in order to break his heart. I was absolutely enthralled by the idea of a Beauty and the Beast story that revolved around an ancient curse and was set at a boarding school! I got the inspiration while binge-watching Gossip Girl and Once Upon a Time on Netflix to avoid my deadlines… Procrastination works (sometimes)! 🙂

My next book is 10 Things I Hate about Pinky, which comes out on June 30th, 2020. It’s the third book in the Dimpleverse and I’m so happy to be able to tell another story in this universe! I absolutely love fake dating stories, and I knew I had to use that trope for Pinky and Samir’s story. At the time of writing, I was also very interested in lake houses, and so I had the book take place there!

6. Whatever you write in your books have you taken it from someone’s experience or are they your own experience?? 

A little bit of both. I don’t write directly about my experiences, but rather use the emotions that came from my experience and translate it into a parallel character experience. For instance, the first kiss scenes in my books aren’t replicas of my first kiss experiences. Instead, I use a lot of the feelings that came from my experiences and write those from my characters’ perspectives!

7. What are your future plans?

I plan to release two books a year starting this year (2020), so I’m very excited about that! My very first adult rom-com Make Up Break Up comes out next year, in 2021, and I can’t wait to share that with readers. It features an Indian-American app developer Annika who goes head-to-head with a rival app developer Hudson (who happens to be dashingly and devastatingly handsome, naturally) in a prestigious pitch contest. Annika’s app is all about bringing lovers together and giving them their happily-ever-afters, while Hudson’s has been dubbed the “Uber for breakups”! It’s full of enemies-to-lovers hijinks and was such a blast to write!

8. I write blogs about the anti-body-shaming campaign, it’s a serious disaster to the world’s new generation. What are your thoughts on this topic?? 

I wrote a whole book about fatphobia and body positivity (There’s Something about Sweetie) because I feel so strongly about this. I absolutely abhor the message that unless you look like a model in a catalogue, you’re somehow less than. Women certainly bear the brunt of this harmful message, but it affects men, too. I think we need to start talking about body positivity early on with children so they can fight the insidiously harmful messages they’ll inevitably get from the media and society at large.

9. I am starting a new blog series named INDIA, FROM THE EYES OF AN NRI, So my question to you is how do you feel about children being pressured for studying harder and forced to pursue careers giving more monetary benefits?? 

Great idea for a blog series! 

I think pressuring children to do anything is usually a bad idea. I’m a huge fan of respecting other people’s agency and letting them figure out their own paths. Of course, as parents, we should provide a gentle guiding hand (the keyword being gentle). But after that, we have to respect our children’s autonomies and let them figure out who they want to be.

10. Growing up in two different countries, how hard was it for you to manage your life?? 

It was difficult in the beginning, as a teenager immigrating from India. But now that I’m in my late thirties, I’ve settled into life in the diaspora very well and enjoy being an Indian-American.

11. Lastly, would you like to add something to all the people who adore you and your lovely books?? 

Thank you for reading my books and telling your friends about them! You’re the only reason I get to do what I love to do.

xoxo, Sandhya

Those were the questions I asked and she answered them very gracefully. I personally love her books and her books do give me a unique and lovely concept to discuss. She is my mentor and inspiration and if you haven’t read her books then I don’t know what you are doing with your life, people. Her books are the perfect blend of romance and comedy. I hate romantic books that get all mushy mushy but she provides a story that you know can happen to you in real life.

I will say this again that it was an honour working with her and she is a unique and amazing author. If you get the chance, do try out her novels. I bet you will love them. For now, that’s all I can say and provide you with. The interview concept is done and I am glad I did something like this.

So that’s it for today, I hope you enjoyed this post. I will be back with more author interviews but for now, follow my blog and check out the latest posts.

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