Ebook Description
After her arranged marriage, Medha and her new husband move to the city to be closer to his work. She’s focused on being a homemaker, but their new apartment leaves much to be desired. Of course, Medha plans to face everything with a positive attitude.
Until strange, inexplicable and frightful things begin happening.
As she grows increasingly unsettled and fearful in her tiny apartment, she tries to find comfort in her husband. But he won’t listen to her. Left to face reality alone, Medha’s terror grows. Certain there’s a curse on her home or dark spirits are out to harm her, she’s torn between being a good wife and running for her life…
Read an excerpt here: https://sandhyajoseph.com/excerpt-from-the-novella-the-shadows/
Get a copy on amazon: IN, US, UK, CA, AU, DE, FR, ES, MX
Story Inspiration
I happened to be surfing the net one day and I was reading about and listening to true and inexplicable encounters experienced by regular people. It was a sunny secure day… because lily-livered and skittish Sandy prefers to not read or write about ghost or demon stuff at night!
Anyway, I came across a rather short paragraph describing an incident where a woman claimed she woke up one night and, for a brief instant, she believed she saw a shadow figure standing beside or floating above her husband. Honestly, I can no longer remember the exact details of her experience or where I read about this incident. But on that day I was under a writing spell and I wondered… Now can I create a short story around this idea/concept?
This story was originally planned as a short work of 2000-3000 words. Of course, it later grew into a novella of over 15000 words… Why? Because I tried to keep filling plot holes and provide feasible character motivation for the protagonist and others to behave the way they do in the story.
I kept asking-“Given this particular set of circumstances, what will Medha do next? How will she behave? How can she behave? Who are the people most likely to come to her aid? How would they react when the protagonist told them about the paranormal occurrences ?” Answering these questions caused the short story idea to turn into a novella.
The Setting
The story is set in Maharashtra, India, and the names of different regions of this state are mentioned in the course of the narrative. Why? I guess I didn’t overthink reasons to justify setting the story in this region. The story needed to move from a small town type neighbourhood to a large city. I have neighbours and acquaintances who hail from this region of India… and I had classmates and colleagues whose families originally came from this state. Therefore, I have heard mention of various localities and descriptions of many neighbourhoods of this state, over the years. And, I understand just a tiny bit of the Marathi Language too. I can’t speak the language. But because I have heard the language used frequently around me, I can pick up on the meanings of many words used in regular conversation.
Artists/ Freelancers
(Who were part of the publishing process)
The ebook was copyedited by Meghalee Mitra
The internal ebook formatting was done by Vick Singh
Dani (who goes by the username covercreations) helped with wording the product description.
Anshu Agarwal created an illustrated drawing that served as the primary template for the book cover. The actual final book cover was created by Daniela Liberona. Daniela delivered a piece of artwork with lots of intricated details, shades and texture effects. Check out more of her work here.