Anna Bushi

Title Reveal

Thanks to your votes, I’ve chosen the title Broken King! I appreciate everyone who participated and shared their thoughts. Your input has been invaluable, and I’m excited to share this story with you.

Remember King Dushyant, my protagonist from King in Hiding? Broken King is a novella about his parents, and I’m excited to share it with you later this year.

Princess Neela faces the unbearable prospect of marrying a man old enough to be her father. Desperate to escape her fate, she turns to the only person who can help—King Bhodar, a ruler drowning in sorrow and toddy. Initially repulsed by his drunken conduct, Neela discovers a kind heart beneath his troubled exterior and slowly begins to see the man he could be. As they draw closer, Neela becomes determined to heal his wounds and help him reclaim his strength. But time is running out, and she must discover if love can truly conquer all and set them both free before it’s too late.

Will Neela and Bhodar find salvation in each other, or will their pasts forever bind them to lives they never wanted?

While waiting for this story, please read the first romance novel in this series. It is a stand-alone happily ever after tale, featuring a king who has captured an enemy on the battlefield and allows his heart to be captured by the daughter of his prisoner.

Read King in hiding

Audiobook Coming This November!

I have some thrilling news that I just couldn’t wait to share with you! The journey through the enchanting world of Child of the River is about to get even more immersive. I am excited to announce that the audiobook version, narrated by the incredible duo Nikita Mirpuri and Shawn Jain, is coming this November!

Stay tuned for more updates as we approach the release date. Thank you for being such a passionate part of my reader community!

Where Waters Meet

This is the author’s first book in English, and I believe she has added richness to the language through her writing: “Auntie Mei dispensed the truth sparingly, as if it were a tube of toothpaste.” What a great way to describe someone who is used to a life of hardship when even toothpaste was a luxury.

This is the story of a mother and daughter, spanning China and Canada, and moving between the present and the past. We learn about the daughter’s sacrifices early in the book. The mother’s sacrifices, however, are revealed as the story unfolds, with the biggest revelation saved for the end.

The bottle the daughter finds in her mother’s memory box—what a shocking story lies behind it. And the photo of Meng Long… I loved how the author reveals this story piece by piece.

“For himself, the last bullet”—this quote appears early in the book, and only later do we discover the circumstances under which it occurred.

We have to wait until the very end to get to the bottom of the toothpaste. Recommend for fans of historical fiction who enjoy a slowly unfolding drama.

Protect your memory

After watching the US Presidential debate, if you are panicking about the candidates, I cannot help you there. But if you want to know how to protect your memory as you age, I have an easy tip.

Read more novels to protect your memory.

One early indicator of memory issues, according to Dr. Restak, is giving up on fiction. “People, when they begin to have memory difficulties, tend to switch to reading nonfiction,” he said.

Over his decades of treating patients, Dr. Restak has noticed that fiction requires active engagement with the text, starting at the beginning and working through to the end. “You have to remember what the character did on Page 3 by the time you get to Page 11,” he said.

Here is the link to the NYT article that discusses this in detail. You can also read my earlier blog that describes other benefits of reading fiction.

It is not too late to start reading fiction. Start with a standalone novel like King in Hiding. Once you finish that, then move on to series like my Land of Magadha series.

Where can I sign up for this tour?

Do they take middle-aged moms?

I love books where the setting is almost a third character, and this was one such book.

Tara, after a traumatic senior year, has graduated from high school and is ready to wipe her slate clean. Silas wants to connect with his roots by tracing his moms’ journey through India. Both are junior guides for a pilgrimage tour with rising high school freshmen.

Tara and Silas’s relationship is fairly mature for two eighteen-year-olds. The food they eat throughout the trip is one of the highlights of this novel. I can almost smell the fragrance of ginger and other spices as the author describes the delicious street food. Warning: do not read this book while you are hungry.

One tiny nitpick: I wish we learned more about Tara’s mother’s motivations and the reason for her father’s lack of support for his girls.

Recommend for lovers of YA contemporary romance.

My protagonist is a poet

So I am writing poetry.

My protagonist, Prince Giridhar, is masquerading as a playwright. He falls in love with the poems of a local poet and uses them in his play.

Here are the opening lines of the draft poem:

She shone like a star in the sky

Sparkling like a diamond from up high

What do you think of this verse penned by our princess?

Princess Suryavati has a secret. She loves to write poems, and until recently, she had no audience for them. Can you imagine her thrill when Giridhar builds a play around her poems? But she lets him think the poet is a man, though her heart races each time he is near.

I enjoy writing their story, except for the poetry. That is kicking my rear. I will share more soon. In the meantime, please read the first romance novel in this series. It is a stand-alone happily ever after tale, featuring a king who has captured an enemy on the battlefield and allows his heart to be captured by the daughter of his prisoner.

Dark and twisted

This book reminded me of the Lord of the Flies, another novel filled with unsympathetic characters. This is a dark book, and our protagonist Alys is selfish and cruel, a hard person to root for.

Alys is only sixteen for most of the story, and some of her sense of survival is understandable. I turned the pages like I was reading a horror novel, afraid of what mad scheme Aly would embark on next to save her skin.

The novel, set in the Henry VIII Tudor period, highlights how little power women had in those times, pitting them against one another to win the favor of the lord of the castle. It was a difficult time to be a Wise Woman.

Can I tell you a Funny story?

I love reading Emily Henry novels, and I liked Funny Story a tad better than Happy Place, my last Emily Henry read.

Emily Henry created two wonderful, flawed characters in Daphne and Miles. Her writing makes us fall in love, along with her protagonists. Michigan comes to life in this book, and I want to visit the lakefront beach on a beautiful summer day and dip my toes in the cold water.

Recommend it for contemporary romance readers.

Favorite quotes

It’s a library, Daphne. If you can’t be a human here, where can you?

So many decisions I made were based on the fear of what could go wrong, instead of my hopes for what might go right.

What am I writing?

I have started working on book two of my historical romance series.

My protagonist, Prince Giridhar, is masquerading as a playwright. He falls in love with the poems of a local poet and uses them in his play.

Princess Suryavati has a secret. She loves to write poems, and until recently, she had no audience for her work. Can you imagine her thrill when Giridhar builds a play around her poems? But she lets him think the poet is a man.

Their love of words brings them together, each unaware of the other’s true identity. Is there a happily ever after for them? Only after I make them suffer for three-quarters of the book.

Read King of Hiding while waiting for this novel.

Kindle Unlimited Subscribers can borrow this novel as part of their subscription.

My Happy Place

My happy place is when I am reading a book. I love Emily Henry’s ability to make us feel her character’s joy and pain. Her language is pure poetry.

The best second-chance romance novel, in my opinion, is Persuasion. Written two centuries ago, we still connect with Anne Elliot and Captain. Wentworth. Their motivations make sense, and their love for each other seeps through the pages.

In Happy Place, while Harriet and Wyn’s love for each other is apparent, their reason for breaking up does not quite make sense. I also did not understand Harriet’s reason for abandoning her dreams after all these years of hard work. So, for the last part of the novel, I was yelling at Harriet (in my head) for making the wrong decision.

In a historical romance, the kind I write, it is easy to come up with reasons why the couple cannot be together. Society and culture put up many barriers. In the modern day, the reasons depend on the individuals themselves, so I wish we got more of why Harriet let Wyn go after eight years of being together.

Still, a wonderful and warm novel for a cold winter day.