Facebook helpfully showed me this image and told me this was 8 years ago! A Royal Wedding was the first book that I wrote under my real name. It was a commission (IP project) and was written and published at breakneck speed to coincide with a certain royal wedding. By the time the paperback came out, the cover was different, the title was changed to ‘Christmas At the Palace’ and a Christmas portion was added.
It started my ‘Jeevani Charika’ era!
It marked a (slight)change in direction from writing as Rhoda Baxter – even though I never made any secret about my ethinicity, having a white sounding name seemed to make a difference, for the obvious reasons. (At one point, I got added to a Goodreads list titled ‘white feminist writers’ … which was interesting. I don’t think I’m on the list anymore. Although I think my books are still pretty feminist friendly).
The IP project for this book came about because the editors were looking for a woman of colour to write about woman of colour who married a prince. It just so happened that my agent was at some drinks do when this came up. She called me the next day and said ‘can you write book book in 3 months?’. I had never written a book that quickly before, but I said ‘I can try’.
I learned a LOT writing that book:
- I learned that I COULD plot, when I really needed to.
- I learned that writing fast was hard work (for me), but that I got into the flow state easier when I was forcing myself to keep going.
- I learned that my writing voice did not change, despite writing at twice the normal speed – this was, honestly, a revelation to me. I assumed that there would be noticeable differences. There weren’t. My voice is just my voice.
- I also learned some stuff about working with publishers and how I feel about sharing creative control.
The main thing that came out of this project, though, was the use of my real name. I was finally writing books with brown (specifically, Sri Lankan diaspora) characters where their ethinicity is only incidental and not part of the plot.
All the books I’ve written since have been similar – regular romances about regular people, who happen to not all be white. Books like these were rare 8 years ago. There are a lot more of them now (non-coincidentally, since Black Lives Matter) and the ones I’ve read have been so much fun. Brown women and men get to be romance main characters too!
I now have 8 books out under my real name, with book number 9 coming out this July. (Of those 8 books, 4 have been shortlisted for RoNA awards). I think celebratory chocolate is in order.
If you want to read my latest (RoNA award shortlisted) book written as Jeevani Charika, you can find How Can I Resist You in all the usual bookshops. You can also request it from your local lending library!
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