He Said Books Or Me: Guest Post: The Love Lottery

Hi Everyone!

Excited to be here today to bring you a guest post from Raj Dhaliwal. Please help me by giving a warm welcome!
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Inspiration behind the book:

There are times when I wish I had a really interesting, riveting and original story behind how The Love Lottery came to fruition.

The opportunity to have someone sit back, raise their hands to their cheeks (on their face) and just exclaim ‘wow!’ would be a dream, but I’m afraid the story is more a sombre one.

The saying ‘when someone or something is too good to be true, then it’s normally the case’ had proven itself to be just so with me.

I had not long been dumped by a lady who fell into that aforementioned category. Naturally, I then became surrounded by the whirlwind of emotions that can envelope post breakup. Albeit I had only known her for about three months but met up regularly and spent, upon reflection, long periods of time on the phone. It was I felt lost, confused and wondering what I had said or done, or not said or done even. The usual stuff that most of may feel or think about.

The Love Lottery was formed as part of a rant.

One evening, I had been checking my social media account (Facebook) just to kill time and see what the world and its friends were up to when I saw a message from a friend who I used to work with. Who would have thought that a simple line like ‘Hi Raj!, how’s it going?’ would have been the catalyst to spark off a rant turning into a book?

The reply started off with the usual.

‘Hi, yes all is well here’ followed by ‘well, actually it’s not! All Women possess the evil gene!’ immediately followed by ‘I have just had my time wasted by a Window Shopper!’

I then proceeded to describe the type of person a dating Window Shopper would actually be.

Then bingo! It was like I had a huge weight lifted from my shoulders! This felt good, really good in fact. I then started to expand on the description of the Window Shopper. As I typed away, the thought that the lady in question who had made me feel this shit about myself may have actually been a Miss Must Do Better or a dating ladder climber if you will.

So…I started to type out the Must Do Better characteristic.

This whole process was starting to feel therapeutic almost. I then stopped suddenly and took a look at the email.

I could not send my friend this! Too much info and possibly too deep. So I copied and pasted the message into a Word document.

I then focused my attention back on the original email and typed ‘Hey! All is good here! Must catch up as and when you are over in this neck of the woods’. Send. Job done.

Now back to the rant. Only this was not a rant anymore. This became a little more than that, well at least to me at that point.

I had just described someone and given them a name based on a characteristic or two they possessed. This then got me thinking. What other types of females had I not only dated, but also encountered? Did they possess the same characteristics? Can the sweeping generalisation that all men/ women are the same be applied? We are all after unicorns but now and again get donkeys?

I then sat back and started to think, reflect, reminisce and ponder. This could be a way of ascertaining where I could be going wrong. Am I going for the wrong types of women? Is there such a thing as the wrong type or have just been unlucky?

I decided from that point to start evaluating my past relationships and encounters.

The plan was simple, I would do this at the end of the day before bed. I didn’t want this to encroach on any part of my life as I deemed to be dwelling on it too much rather than a self-evaluating exercise.

Whilst in meetings at work, I would sometimes day dream if it was not my turn to present and think of experiences to write about. Whilst talking about my lack of love life with friends and colleagues I would get to hear of experiences not too dissimilar to my own. I am not alone!

I would often find myself talking aloud in the car on the way home and formulating what to write about that evening. Whether it be a new chapter or going back to something constructed in the prior week to expand upon it as I remembered an experience and thought it pertinent.

Basically, what had started out as a couple of lines in a rant, had expanded into a couple of paragraphs and then slowly evolved into a document that then became a finished book with chapters.

The intention was never to write a book, but merely to evaluate where I had come from in terms of relationships and where the future could be going forwards. The fact that it then became a book was coincidental as I am not an author. I am simply an accountant at a luxury car manufacturer.

Have I learnt anything from self-evaluation? Only time and the pleasure of searching for the one will tell.

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Thanks for the post! :)

More information about the book:

The Love Lottery: a comic tale of lessons in life, love, dating and the odd samosa party

In our fast-paced digital age, never has finding the one felt more like playing the lottery. If anyone knows about the cruelty and chaos of dating in the 21st century it’s Raj Dhaliwal; accountant by day, hopeless romantic by night. By his own admission, Raj is a tax wizard but a clumsy disaster area when it comes to matters of the heart. This book charts his misadventures in the art of looking for love in an age when a man’s best intentions can be coldly dismissed by a swipe to the left. The Love Lottery: a comic tale of lessons in life, love, dating and the odd samosa party explores the emotional rollercoaster of dating, charting the epic excitement and anticipation, highs, lows and disappointments of our ever optimistic search for romance. As a British-born Indian gent, Raj compares and contrasts the social and cultural distinctions between his family, his friends and the women he meets on the dating scene; a route to romance that’s littered with speed dating, online dating and feverish matchmaking, in this funny and heart-warming book. As self-appointed United Nations Love Ambassador, Raj has made it his mission to date the weird and the wonderful in the pursuit of lasting love. Want to play The Love Lottery? Then read on.

Purchase from Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Lottery-lessons-dating-samosa-ebook/dp/B0794MX61G/