S2E14: Not So Fake (Dating) with Special Guest Tashie Bhuiyan

Debut author alert! You won't want to miss this conversation with Tashie Bhuiyan about her debut novel, Counting Down With You, a YA Romance coming out on May 4, 2021. Tashie's story features fake dating, a grandmother/granddaughter relationship, a chaotic friend group, anxiety representation, Bangladeshi and Muslim representation, and the journey of navigating family struggles and first love to find independence. Learn more about Tashie and how this wonderful book came together in this episode of Write Away.

EPISODE RECAP

You'll hear about all this and more:

• What inspired Tashie to write this story about family and cultural struggles

• Advice for writing YA - how to stay in touch with the current generation and how to write three-dimensional adult characters when they're not the main focus

• The virtues and vices of TikTok

• What representation means to Tashie and why she wrote the author's note at the beginning of the book

• How to cover a tattoo

• The wildest publishing journey WE'VE heard yet

• Tashie's favorite romance trope and why

• Which scenes she had to wait until last to write

IMPORTANT LINKS FROM THE SHOW

• Pre-order Counting Down With You on Tashie's website

• Check out reviews - and leave one yourself - on Goodreads

• Follow Tashie on Twitter, Instagram, Goodreads and Pinterest

• Consider supporting indie bookstores by ordering your books through bookshop.org. And if you're an audiobook person, libro.fm supports indie bookstores, too.

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One more episode left in Season 2...Let us know if there’s anything you want to hear about in Season 3 when we return from hiatus in September 2021. Until then...