It's July!

I can't believe it's July already! However, it's certainly staying lighter later, and I did turn the ceiling fans on for the first time this year, so the context definitely fits the definition of July. And of course the big news is that Indian Summer is almost here--nine more days and it is go for launch.

Thus, in spirit of the upcoming book launch, I present to you a bit of a countdown to the release. Every day I will present some little tantalizing treat related to Indian Summer. That's right; for the next eight days, I will present a blog that shows something that inspired the novel, or at least something that has to do with me writing the novel.

Here on Day One, I present the two Bollywood scenes that first got me hooked on "action musicals" and that ultimately led to me writing Indian Summer.

In the first scene, two young men profess their love for their mother in song. This is about five minutes into the 1995 film Karan Arjun, the first Indian film I ever saw, and I have to say I wasn't very impressed at this point:

But then, five minutes later, this is how those two young men end up (thanks to an evil uncle):

Wow--I wasn't expecting that. The following two hours of the film are, like many Bollywood films, a mixture of many things: action, songs, drama, comedy, etc. I loved it, although maybe not so much as Don, one of the main characters in the novel... By the way, don't worry about the two men in the movie; they are immediately reincarnated so that they can come back and kick Uncle Durjan's butt.