Harvivek Singh Gahunia

artist | writer

WORK
BIO

Oneijah
STATUS
Complete. To be self-published. Late 2025 / Early 2026 Release.
ELEVATOR PITCH
Oneijah is the story of an unscrupulous mother of seven who, amid a genocide, must fight to keep her dreams and children alive.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
Dungeons & Dragons
Mother India(film), dir. Mehboob Khan
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Vagabond, Takehiko Inoue
The Fifth Child, Dorris Lessing
AUTHOR'S NOTE
First book in a long series. High and low elements of fantasy storytelling. A rough, tough read in more ways than one, though laced with unexpected humor. Oneijah and her children will burrow into you head, if not quite your heart.
Oneijah is a laborer in a hot, inhospitable terrain known as the Onkara Lands. That she’s a nascent mage must be concealed because she is unliked and unsanctioned. She burns to make more of herself. But she is terribly misanthropic, dogged by past failures, dark-complected, crippled with anxiety and weighted by the needs of seven children. One night the Murkhand, occult creatures from beyond the Onkara Lands, attack her village. When her magic fails her, her favorite son is killed. She and her five remaining children are the only survivors.
She musters the will to gather provisions and leave their homeland. Dangers accrue. A Murkhand is following them. A drug-addled deserter - an elite soldier of a lighter-complected, enemy race - has offered to guide them north. More difficult still, she must be mother to children whose grieving is no less malformed than her own. But she refuses to relent in her quest to become a more powerful mage, leading to choices that turnwise harden, alienate, diminish and enrage her children. Ambition and parenthood are continually at odds as she fights not only for their survival but a place for herself in a world set against her.
Psychometrics for the Soul
STATUS
Next up. In Progress.
ELEVATOR PITCH
An Indian-American couple’s failing marriage is set to a backdrop of a husband's rightward turn, a wife's professional ambition and the pandemic in its throes.
Extinction Love
STATUS
Complete. Looking to release as soon as possible, one way or another
ELEVATOR PITCH
When the false core of Jay Singh’s and Nazma Sidhu’s quiet marriage is explosively revealed, in sorting through the aftermath of personal devastation they find reason to cherish each other all the more.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
The Dead, James Joyce
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Life, Keith Richards
Dom Casmurro, Machado de Assis
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal
AUTHOR'S NOTE
A voice-y novel. Homage to the community I grew up in. No punches pulled. Deep-dive into a fascinating milieu, a Golden Age of Sikh-America. Humor and heart in abundance.
Jay’s an easy-going guy. But he’s uncomfortable at massive events like a Punjabi wedding. And here’s an especially big one between two blue bloods of mid-Atlantic Sikh communities. All that success, all that bling, he’s never been able to keep up. These are Nazma’s people anyways. She grew up with the father of the groom, Jeet. They have a romantic history, but that was long ago. And Jay’s not a jealous type. But he has other reasons to feel concerned about Nazma. Jeet’s wife, Rupinder, means to exclude her from wedding traditions where familial relations are assumed, which is a problem because Nazma’s love is oblivious and she sees herself as family.
Meanwhile, Jay meets Radhika. They flirt a little. All harmless until it isn’t. As bhangra remixes blare and the wedding’s rumpus comes to its highest pitch, it’s not his duplicity that’s revealed but Nazma’s. Yet in reckoning with one another’s betrayals, what colors their last months together isn’t anger or resentment but a tender reliving of their best of times.
Written in an easy, raconteur style, Extinction Love is a humorous, insider account of a couple’s compromised place in a newly formed American community. Touching on caste, colorism, sexual identity, hyphenated experiences and Sikh orthodoxy, what’s revealed in Jay’s retelling of this seminal weekend are not only buried truths but the complexity of Sikh-American life.
Firegate Four
STATUS
Soon... months...
ELEVATOR PITCH
As otherworldly abductions and murders mount in Philadelphia while the world nears the brink of World War III, the fates of three teenagers converge on their discovery of another dying world where they not only uncover the mystery of those crimes but who they are in this world and the other.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa
The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates
His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman
The Boy and the Heron(film), dir. Hayao Miyazaki
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hot mess but a wild ride. Fatalistic but cheerful. Ridiculously difficult to write. Took fifteen years. Long story there, still processing. It all comes together though. When society breaks along cultural/political/racial lines to whom does the American experience belong? For whom its culture? Its legacies? First book of three.
The right-wing National party is in power. The American fabric is changing, people are changing. Militias rule the streets. The Midnight Wars buffet the nation. The Drone Wars threaten to spur World War III. In Philadelphia, people are reported missing. But it's when gruesome murders mount that an alternate world bleeds into this one.
Almas Ananda Virk, 14, witnesses one such murder. Already she’s a paragon of DSM-IV symptomatology and, being Sikh-American, basically a presumed Muslim until proven innocent. She doesn't need any more crazy or undesirability than she's already got. But now her imaginary brother of yore has returned. She sees ghostly figures others don’t see. Then her mother goes missing.
Suleiman Harding, 15, is a runaway. Budget cuts have caused the closure of his foster home. His best friend, Natalie, left him with a codex before running away herself. The codex provides an account of an unlikely courtship between a free black woman and Tep Monnik, a man from an alternate world, during Philadelphia's Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. As Suleiman draws clues from the book for how he can reach that alternate world, he realizes that Tep Monnik’s story not only unveils his past but also hints why he may be the next tally in Philadelphia's murder count.
When Esti Ybarra, 16, discovers the dead body of one of Philadelphia's missing persons in her basement, she believes her father is responsible. Esti immigrated with her father to the US from Spain two years ago. He's voiced his support for the National Party but is otherwise a secretive man. As Esti investigates what these secrets might be, she’s shocked to learn how much they pertain to her, too.
As Almas searches for her mother, Suleiman seeks an understanding of his past and Esti looks for answers to her mysterious father, their paths intertwine and lead them to an alternate world that will unveil who they are and lure them to deeper mystery.
Oneijah
STATUS
Complete. To be self-published. Late 2025 / Early 2026 Release.
ELEVATOR PITCH
Oneijah is the story of an unscrupulous mother of seven who, amid a genocide, must fight to keep her dreams and children alive.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
Dungeons & Dragons
Mother India(film), dir. Mehboob Khan
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Vagabond, Takehiko Inoue
The Fifth Child, Dorris Lessing
AUTHOR'S NOTE
First book in a long series. High and low elements of fantasy storytelling. A rough, tough read in more ways than one, though laced with unexpected humor. Oneijah and her children will burrow into you head, if not quite your heart.
Oneijah is a laborer in a hot, inhospitable terrain known as the Onkara Lands. That she’s a nascent mage must be concealed because she is unliked and unsanctioned. She burns to make more of herself. But she is terribly misanthropic, dogged by past failures, dark-complected, crippled with anxiety and weighted by the needs of seven children. One night the Murkhand, occult creatures from beyond the Onkara Lands, attack her village. When her magic fails her, her favorite son is killed. She and her five remaining children are the only survivors.
She musters the will to gather provisions and leave their homeland. Dangers accrue. A Murkhand is following them. A drug-addled deserter - an elite soldier of a lighter-complected, enemy race - has offered to guide them north. More difficult still, she must be mother to children whose grieving is no less malformed than her own. But she refuses to relent in her quest to become a more powerful mage, leading to choices that turnwise harden, alienate, diminish and enrage her children. Ambition and parenthood are continually at odds as she fights not only for their survival but a place for herself in a world set against her.
Psychometrics for the Soul
STATUS
Next up. In Progress.
ELEVATOR PITCH
An Indian-American couple’s failing marriage is set to a backdrop of a husband's rightward turn, a wife's professional ambition and the pandemic in its throes.
Extinction Love
STATUS
Complete. Looking to release as soon as possible, one way or another
ELEVATOR PITCH
When the false core of Jay Singh’s and Nazma Sidhu’s quiet marriage is explosively revealed, in sorting through the aftermath of personal devastation they find reason to cherish each other all the more.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
The Dead, James Joyce
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Life, Keith Richards
Dom Casmurro, Machado de Assis
Second Place, Rachel Cusk
Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, Balli Kaur Jaswal
AUTHOR'S NOTE
A voice-y novel. Homage to the community I grew up in. No punches pulled. Deep-dive into a fascinating milieu, a Golden Age of Sikh-America. Humor and heart in abundance.
Jay’s an easy-going guy. But he’s uncomfortable at massive events like a Punjabi wedding. And here’s an especially big one between two blue bloods of mid-Atlantic Sikh communities. All that success, all that bling, he’s never been able to keep up. These are Nazma’s people anyways. She grew up with the father of the groom, Jeet. They have a romantic history, but that was long ago. And Jay’s not a jealous type. But he has other reasons to feel concerned about Nazma. Jeet’s wife, Rupinder, means to exclude her from wedding traditions where familial relations are assumed, which is a problem because Nazma’s love is oblivious and she sees herself as family.
Meanwhile, Jay meets Radhika. They flirt a little. All harmless until it isn’t. As bhangra remixes blare and the wedding’s rumpus comes to its highest pitch, it’s not his duplicity that’s revealed but Nazma’s. Yet in reckoning with one another’s betrayals, what colors their last months together isn’t anger or resentment but a tender reliving of their best of times.
Written in an easy, raconteur style, Extinction Love is a humorous, insider account of a couple’s compromised place in a newly formed American community. Touching on caste, colorism, sexual identity, hyphenated experiences and Sikh orthodoxy, what’s revealed in Jay’s retelling of this seminal weekend are not only buried truths but the complexity of Sikh-American life.
Firegate Four
STATUS
Soon... months...
ELEVATOR PITCH
As otherworldly abductions and murders mount in Philadelphia while the world nears the brink of World War III, the fates of three teenagers converge on their discovery of another dying world where they not only uncover the mystery of those crimes but who they are in this world and the other.
INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS
Fullmetal Alchemist, Hiromu Arakawa
The Water Dancer, Ta-Nehisi Coates
His Dark Materials, Phillip Pullman
The Boy and the Heron(film), dir. Hayao Miyazaki
AUTHOR'S NOTE
Hot mess but a wild ride. Fatalistic but cheerful. Ridiculously difficult to write. Took fifteen years. Long story there, still processing. It all comes together though. When society breaks along cultural/political/racial lines to whom does the American experience belong? For whom its culture? Its legacies? First book of three.
The right-wing National party is in power. The American fabric is changing, people are changing. Militias rule the streets. The Midnight Wars buffet the nation. The Drone Wars threaten to spur World War III. In Philadelphia, people are reported missing. But it's when gruesome murders mount that an alternate world bleeds into this one.
Almas Ananda Virk, 14, witnesses one such murder. Already she’s a paragon of DSM-IV symptomatology and, being Sikh-American, basically a presumed Muslim until proven innocent. She doesn't need any more crazy or undesirability than she's already got. But now her imaginary brother of yore has returned. She sees ghostly figures others don’t see. Then her mother goes missing.
Suleiman Harding, 15, is a runaway. Budget cuts have caused the closure of his foster home. His best friend, Natalie, left him with a codex before running away herself. The codex provides an account of an unlikely courtship between a free black woman and Tep Monnik, a man from an alternate world, during Philadelphia's Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. As Suleiman draws clues from the book for how he can reach that alternate world, he realizes that Tep Monnik’s story not only unveils his past but also hints why he may be the next tally in Philadelphia's murder count.
When Esti Ybarra, 16, discovers the dead body of one of Philadelphia's missing persons in her basement, she believes her father is responsible. Esti immigrated with her father to the US from Spain two years ago. He's voiced his support for the National Party but is otherwise a secretive man. As Esti investigates what these secrets might be, she’s shocked to learn how much they pertain to her, too.
As Almas searches for her mother, Suleiman seeks an understanding of his past and Esti looks for answers to her mysterious father, their paths intertwine and lead them to an alternate world that will unveil who they are and lure them to deeper mystery.

Harvivek Singh Gahunia

artist | writer

Extinction Love

STATUS

ELEVATOR PITCH

INFLUENCES / COMPARISONS

AUTHOR'S NOTE