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/
About the author: Living in Bromsgrove, Worcestershire Raj
Dhaliwal works as an accountant for the car manufacturing company Land Rover.
Happy Reading!
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