Published!

So, here am I holding the book in which one of my stories has got published, and finally I can claim to be an author, though it sounds a bit hollow, probably it will always, so I let myself not be too worried about it. The Curtain Raiser was actually the very first short story I wrote for a contest in my company. It didn’t win anything, and our friends got together to make a short film out of it too. So, it was done and dusted for all practical purposes.  Until I saw Dinesh’s post on Indiblogger where he was asking for stories to be published in his anthology of inspirational short stories, Blank Space.

People who know me would also know that I’m the last person they come to if they need inspiration of any sort, but the story having been written at a time my personality was still in its forming stage, seemed to work for the editors and I got a mail immediately that they liked the story and are willing to publish it with a few changes. I told them it’s alright and lo and behold, I have The Curtain Raiser in print now. 

I always dreamed of becoming a published author, like every other blogger I read or know, but when it actually happened, the feeling of elation or relief was not easy to come. I think that’s coz this book was not my own entirely, but still this is a start. I started reading the other stories in the book, and to be frank, I read only 15 of them till date, even though I got the book 2 weeks ago. I bought 10 more books along with my author copy, and announced on Facebook, that I will be distributing them for free on a First Come First Serve basis. I have to start delivering them now.

This post is not complete, unless I thank IndiBlogger as profusely as I want to, coz this platform has given me a lot recently, so much so that, I spent as much time on IB, if not more, as I do on Facebook. I thank all my readers and Dinesh from Propel Steps especially for considering my story worthy enough to be granted a place in his anthology. 

The book is only on Amazon, as of now and here is the link to buy it. Do read it, and let me know how you find it. 

PS: My story is at Pg 156.

Top Post on IndiBlogger

Ever since I first saw the “Top Post on IndiBlogger” badge, awarded to ten of the most voted posts in a 24 hour time period from the time the post is submitted to IndiVine, I wanted to have one. I was kind of obsessed about it in a sort of silly way, but I can be quite fussy about these sorts of things. I played the snake game on Nokia 1100 mobile all night, and was literally heartbroken when I could not break one of my friends’ records. I still remember being devastated at losing a game of chess once while I was in my engineering. It gave me so much grief that I stopped playing the game with others for a very long time. It took me a long time to have it on my blog, but this is one of those guilty pleasures I take immense satisfaction in.

I don’t think that this is any validation to the presence or the content of my blog, nor I consider this an endorsement of my social networking skills. I have seen many authors having this badge who do not even care about its existence, who will probably laugh their backsides off at my ridiculous analysis about the right time to post, days where number of votes required to win the badge would be minimum, weekend trends of voting and many such weird stats, but for me it was always something that I wanted to have, or worth throwing a tantrum about not having it. It is like wanting to have a funky cap at a fair, which can only be won by throwing a ring around it. It might take a hundred attempts, and you might end up spending more than what the cap would cost, but at the end of the day if you do not return to your home winning it, you feel sad. Sure, you can buy the same cap from one of the stores outside, but it’s not the same feeling is it?

There is a terminology inside IndiBlogger Forum called Shameless Self Promotion, which basically discourages anyone to go around and spam people to read their stuff, which would make their posts visible and guarantee votes. I never wanted to indulge in it, but when I came really close to getting the required number of votes for the badge, I could not resist myself from being shameless and promoted my post all over the place. I have been helped, rather gamely, by a lot of regulars on the forum like Knitha, Vijay, Ranjith, CyberKid, DS and some of my regular readers too, and I’m thankful to them for making my dream come true.

Other thing that I’m equally thankful about is that, this badge would give me one lesser thing to worry about, and concentrate on some of the stuff I have been planning for a long while. I don’t know if this has been weighing me down subconsciously, but going by the relief it gave me, I welcome this badge with utmost pertinence.

I’m quite heartless in disregarding my own achievements, just because they wont hold the same prominence for me after some time. I think the same future awaits this badge too, as it has been for the “Tangy Tuesday Picks” and “Spicy Saturday Picks” of BlogAdda. Note that I was quite obsessed with them too at that time when I didn’t have them, but only till I got them and got them out of my way. Those two were considerably easy, at least in comparison to this one, so this badge might be cherished for a while, and then again I might laugh it off and disregard it the first thing tomorrow.  Tcha.

The post that won the badge, a 55-word short story, in itself is not a great piece of writing, nor is it something I’m very proud of. It certainly isn’t the one, which I wanted to adorn the badge with, but it was in the right place at the right time. It is like throwing a blind one after all your concentration didn’t work, and voila, winning that cap. No regrets whatsoever.