KARMA

ABOUT KARMA

I was a raging tornado when I first started writing KARMA a year ago.

Now, I'm more like a simmering, threatening storm, about to make landfall.

KARMA was my first book on Wattpad.

I was a reader long before I became a writer.

I remember getting more and more frustrated with the books I was reading. Why was every female protagonist so pathetic? The women were almost indistinguishable; names changed from one book to the next, but each character was virtually the same, cut from the same cloth --- the kind you laid on the ground, the kind that the disgusting, abusive males in the books trampled on, fraying and unravelling in self-esteem and self-worth, yet stupidly, mindnumbingly, clinging to the same mantra, repeated over and over and over and over in almost every single book I read: "I love him. He is so hot, and I love him so much."

I remember sitting on my couch on a December morning, and going, "F*ck this miserable drivel. I'm going to WRITE MY OWN TAKE ON A CHEATING STORY. I didn't care that I would have zero reads. I just wanted to vent out my frustration.

And that was how KARMA was created, out of fury, at the degradation that women were subjected to in the books I had read, and out of outrage that my fellow sisters, bold, beautiful, formidable women of the world everywhere, were being disrespected in these books. I wanted these women to be accorded respect and treated like the queens they are.

KARMA became an incredible hit, and messages were pouring in almost every day, thanking me for writing a book that respected a woman.

I was floored, and so moved by what readers shared with me. Some were so personal, and so, so brave I was moved to tears by what they had experienced in real life, and how they had dealt --- were still dealing, in many instances, scarred but still soldiering on, so, so courageously --- with the devastating consequences of betrayal.

KARMA was plagarised, and I was so sick at the realization that some unscrupulous reader had copied my book word for word, and was making money out of it. Money has never ever entered the equation for me. I wrote to share my story. I wanted my story to be free. The very idea of someone making money out of my book sickened me to the core.

I deleted my account, and my books with it.

I saved my books in my old tablet, which has unfortunately, died.

Many wonderful readers have saved KARMA in their offline accounts, and sent me the links. Unfortunately, it didn't work when I clicked on the links.

The first five chapters of KARMA are from the old version, with very slight editing. They were what I could salvage from the original version.

I am rewriting the rest of KARMA again, starting with Chapter 6. Some parts will be totally new, others a mix of the old and the new.

All the best,

Ashleigh