Shared History, Shared Culture

History helps us understand who we are and where we have come from. This, in turn, allows us to appreciate other races whose ancestors too may have come from afar. And all of us, their descendants, are lucky enough to meet and mingle on this soil which we call home. ... Our forebears may have journeyed here centuries ago but it is the inward journey, one of mutual respect and trust, we should continue today.

I wish a very happy Merdeka to all Malaysians today, despite the sadness that many feel (including but certainly not limited to this.) It is so nice to See Malaysian authors featured in the National Day Special Supplement in The Star today. Tunku Halim talks about how Malaysian history that belongs to all while Lydia Teh talks about food and festivals and the other things that make Malaysians of all races Different But Same. Incidentally, Hal has a fascinating Merdeka piece on his blog about how an Englishman Tuanku Simon Mackay was appointed Malaysia’s 10th Yang DiPertuan Agong.

The Merdeka Miracle

Three Malaysian writers, Robert Raymer, Tunku Halim and Lydia Teh have collaborated on a short story for the Malaysia Airlines in-flight magazine Going Places. The Merdeka Miracle was written to celebrate Malaysia's Independence Day and each writer took it in turns to contribute their paragraphs.

Shirley Ng of MPH was kind enough to send me scans of the pages which you can click up to size:

Bedlam at March Readings

Sorry for the late posting of the pictures from last Saturday's Readings@Seksan's - silly me lost the wire that connects my camera to my laptop and I didn't make it out to the shops to replace it till today.

It was a quieter affair than usual - the fact that it was the same day as Cheng Beng when the Chinese traditionally go to tend to the graves of ancestors and the terrible traffic jam in town probably deterred a few from coming.

Our first reader was Yvonne Foong who read a short piece from her book I'm Not Sick, Just a Bit Unwell, about her battle with neurofibromatosis. She'd chosen a passage about how it felt, after one of her many operations to remove tumours, to lose the ability to smile. In the face of the life and death struggle she constantly faces, a smile seems a small thing to lose - but then you think how devastating that must be for a normal teen-age girl, and how much we all take this ability for granted.

I was a bit worried about Yvonne reading - she is deaf, and now partially sighted - but she was an absolute star and read her words extremely well. She is now raising funds to remove a 5cm tumour at the base of her brain which threatens her remaining eyesight.

She asked me if I would post a link to this video in which she is talking about her condition, so here 'tis :




Here's Lydia Teh hamming it up with Azwan Ismail as they perform an extract from Do You Wear Suspenders? : The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim ... great fun!

and Rafil Elyas, "a carbon-based bipedal host to various entities". Usually he's a chemical engineer who likes to burn things. But here he's in the guise of The Senior Demon Mephistopheles of Perditia delivering his progress report on The State of Chaos. This piece appeared in the Merdeka edition of Off the Edge and is another wonderful piece of satire. Really I want more from this guy!

Ika Vanderkoeck leads a double life as a corporate writer by day, and a fantasy writer at night! She's just sold one of her short stories to an anthology, Ages of Wonder, published by Daw Books (an imprint of Penguin) in the US. She also received an honourable mention for a story published in another anthology, Polaris, published by Star books Inc.. She has one fantasy novel finished already, and is currently completing her second, which she hopes will be bought. Believe me this young lady is going places!

Gwen Smith was born in Britain, but came to live here after she married. She was a pediatrician for 40 years (Rafil at one point pointed at her and exclaimed "That woman's seen me naked!".) She is now Granny in Residence to twins of 4 and a brother aged 2, and helps in the Playcentre Library in PJ one morning a week.. She is writing books for children (and I really hope she can find an illustrator and a publisher soon - this is work that deserves to be out in the world). She has already published books on Child Care and Food for Children. And if you thought Malaysia's oldest blogger was Che Det, you need to reconsider!

Today she read a piece that she wrote in my writing class about a place from a childhood which was very special to her - a wonderfully evocative piece about a patch of land near her home, which has long since disappeared. She also read a funny rhyme, a child's eye view of Granny's bedroom.

And then these two crazy fellows, Rafil (the Lord Panda) and his sidekick Ben Liew (a.k.a General Panda (The))known collectively as The Panda Head Curry?* closed the proceedings. They had sent around a form earlier telling the audience it was from the WWF, and asking them to nomiate the wild animal they most wanted to be conserved. In the spirit of political incorrectness and utter bad taste, - they then launched in to their song Gator Farm, which was all about eating those endangered species ("Looks like chicken, tastes like chicken ..."). they followed this with a song about a certain politician and how he has nothing, no, absolutely nothing to do with Mongolia. He's never been to Ulan Batur. He doesn't eat Mongolian hotpot. Hasn't even heard of Ghengis Khan.

I tell you, the tone of this literary event was lowered to a depth from which we may never be able to recover it.

My thanks as always go to our brave readers, our lovely audience, Seksan for letting us use his lovely space, Shahril Nizam for designing our blog poster, and all those who helped out in some way.

I'm not sure if i will have time or energy to organise and April Readings - will let you know soon. Coming up though is a super-duper Readings@No Black Tie on June 7th ... and we have managed to snag ourselves ... Tash Aw!

(*Pronunciation note - the ? is silent)

Don't Keep Me in Suspenders

Lydia Teh's latest book Do You wear Suspenders : The Wordy Tales of Eh Poh Nim is now out and it has my blurb on the back (I seem to be making a profession of this!) :

Learners of English cannot be said to have a mastery of the language until they are able to use colloquial expressions with ease and familiarity and have a wide vocabulary. Acquiring this, of course, takes time. Lydia Teh’s very clever Eh Po Nym columns on the Mind Our English pages of The Star not only help learners build up their stock of language, but do it in a fun way and with a decidedly local flavour through the accounts of the adventures and misadventures of the eponymous hero.

Eponymous /Eh Poh Nym ... geddit?

If you want a taster, Lydia has archived some of her columns here.

And the always enterprising lady actually created this fun bookformercial to promote it:



And on her blog, Lydia has a competition with some tasty prizes - go see.

An aside. Lydia and I were debating this word "suspenders". In Malaysian English guys sometimes use the term to mean "underpants".

"That's wrong," said Lydia "it refers to the things that men keep their trousers up with."

"Nope," said I "It's the thingies that keep up ladies' stockings when they want to look sexy."

She was arguing for the American definition of the word (which seems to be the most widespread in Malaysia), and I was arguing for the British English definition.

I actually find it quite a hoot when Malaysians say they follow British English, because although the spelling system might follow the later, the accepted vocabulary is a mix of both - influenced strongly by the media. (There's a great academic study in there for someone ...)

But this diversity gives Malaysian English it's character ... something that the book celebrates very well indeed.

Award Winners and Joget in June

It was a huge turnout for Readings@Seksan yesterday despite the other exciting things going on in town (KLue's Urbanscapes, and the poetry slam later the same evening at KLPAC) and despite serious traffic disruptions caused by the trimming of trees in the area.

As you can see - our readers shared quite a number of literary awards between them!

Sri Lankan author Elmo Jayawardena started us off reading a (very) short extract from Sam's Story - his Graetian Prize winning novel told from the viewpoint of a mentally-retarded young man who came to work in Elmo's household. He had to hurry away after the reading to get back to the airport where he is training pilots on the flight simulator!

Most of us know Lydia Teh as a non-fiction writer, and indeed she recently won the Star-Popular award in that category for her hilarious take on Malaysian life Honk If You're Malaysian. But today she read a short story she had written, a very beautiful and magical tale called Moon Scars which was originally published in Yellow Post.

Award-winning journalist Jacqueline Ann Surin read from her new collection of her columns Shape of a Pocket, one of several opinion pieces that had been "spiked" i.e rejected by her editor for being too controversial.

The piece opens with a personal story about how she has to argue to get the words "No religion" on her MyKad, in a country where all citizens are expected to be neatly pigeonholed by religious belief and race. She then goes on to talk about the difficulties faced by Muslim Malaysians in changing their religion if they so wish, taking in, along the way, of course, the famous Lina Joy case.

The second half of the afternoon was nicely bracketed with some traditional music with attitude from the lads of Dewangga Sakti. Was it only me who wanted to get up and joget?

I really would like musical interludes like this to become a regular feature, so if you are a (good!) musician and would like to play for us, unplugged, get in touch with me.

I was so glad that Shahriza Hussein felt well enough to come along. I've just started reading his historical novel Legacy and am greatly impressed with its ability to transport me back to (19th Perak. The research is impeccable and the writing very good indeed. (Will let you know more about it when I'm further along.) Shahriza did correct me with a twinkle in his eye when I said (based on the press coverage so far) that this was a novel partly based on his own family history. It is entirely fiction, he declares. Which is fine because we really only need to enjoy the book!

(I still have some copies for sale for just RM30 - let me know if you want one.)

Koo Yew Lie did the reading for Shahriza as he had a bad cough. She read an extract from the beginning where British Resident J.W.W. Birch and his party are taking a break (complete with china teapot!) on a journey up the Perak River in a small flotilla of three boats. The next day they will be in the territory of a certain Datuk Maharaja Lela ... (Malaysian readers know what comes next!)

Two little asides here :

1) Yew Lie was a friend I made when she came over to the U.K. college (Marjons) where I was teaching, and until yesterday we hadn't seen each other for 18 years. She's now an associate professor at UKM.

2) It's interesting, isn't it that both Shahriza's book and Chew-Siah Tei's Little Hut of Leaping Fishes open at virtually the same point of time (Autumn, 1875)?

I was extremely grateful to Clarissa Tan for making this long journey up by bus especially for this event. She is an amazing young writer and a couple of my friends afterwards confessed that they had felt themselves tearing up as she read her piece, The Visit, that won the Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize : the absolute honesty of the piece touched hearts.

Clarissa says that she is now at work on her first novel and I am really look forward to seeing that.

Star-Popular Award runner-up in the fiction category for Confessions of An Old Boy: The Dato Hamid Adventures, Kam Raslan has been continuing the stories each month on the pages of Off the Edge. He had us all laughing again at Hamid's musings on the Tin Mine disco (which was at the KL Hilton and the place to hang out in the '80's).

Kam is soon off to the Byron Bay Writer's Festival, sponsored partly by the Australian High Commission. (Bless 'em.) The world needs to meet Dato Hamid.

It was a great afternoon. I really thank all who came and cheered on writers, all who read their work, all who played wonderful music, all who helped set up and clear up. I particularly thank Seksan for use of his lovely space, and Shahril Nizam for designing our blog poster.

Our next Readings@Seksan will be July 26th, and the line up (I hope!) will include Fahmi Fadzil and Azmyl Yunor performing their famous Wayang Buku.

Shifting the Course Over Tea

Got invited to be a forum panelist at MPH's Saturday event - the annual Hi Tea for Local Authors. It was a great chance to meet friends and make new ones - even though some of the folks I'd hoped would be there couldn't make it.
 The panel discusion. The question before us:

What is the direction of the local industry based on current developments? Is this where we want to head, or should we collectively shift the course of things to come?

A whopping big question. Janet Tay (above, far right) chaired the discussion. The rest of us grabbed a bit of the elephant to describe.

Nisah Haron (below, holding the mic) talked about the problem of lack of promotion of especially for Malay writers and the need for an "Oprah Bookclub" on TV. Nafisah Ahamad of the National Library (in blue below) gave some good news about the development of 425 rural libraries, and said that 14,000 titles had been published locally so far this year.

I talked a bit too long and I'm not sure how interested everyone was in my tuppence worth because I wanted to focus more on fiction. (A genre not much talked about at these kind of events.)

I talked about the need to develop and encourage new writing talent while raising critical standards. (Hobby horse lah!)

I also wagged a stern finger school-marmishly at those who put out work which is badly edited and proofread, and told 'em that that their competitors were not the other authors in the room, but also every author from overseas whose books hit the shelves. You have to be as good as: not merely good enough for the local market, I said. And I had to slip in something about the overseas published novelists (and also Kam, published locally) raising the bar too. (Wonder if local authors wanted to hear any of this??)

Datuk Ng Tieh Chuan CEO of MPH (above centre) gave a very interesting speech. We don't have a direction, he said, we are quite lost and writers are too left to fend for themselves.

Nevertheless he said, we are ready for the global market. MPH is planning to set up an export division to make available the work of local writers regionally and globally. He also talked of the need to form a guild for local writers to provide advice and practical support.

Then there was a Q&A. Antares talked about US protectionism; CEan about the high cost of postage on books from Malaysia (there needs to be a books postal rate!); an author called Rozita (?) had more to say about the shops not promoting her book and not reordering when stock ran out. Several more authors made observations or asked questions, but the discussion slipped away from the big picture to the small one: the me-and-my-book. Understandable. The big picture is so big that it would merit a conference to thrash out issues properly.

Datuk Mohd. Zaid Ibrahim, (MP for Kota Bharu) who has just launched his new book In Good Faith said a few words before rushing off to his next appointment, and then Datuk Ng invited Rehman Rashid to say a few words. He told the story of the publication of A Malaysian Journey, and the way it continues to resonate with the Malaysian public.

Then the formal part was over. Authors posed for group photos. Hugs were exchanged, curry puffs were eaten, photos snapped.

Here's one I love, of Nisah and baby. We're friends who have met through blogs and by e-mail but never in the real world before. I also met Choong Kwee Kim, another online friend who materialised in the flesh!

Rehman (the handsome one), Lydia Teh (the little one) and me (the one with the inane grin) with Gerald Chuah (the one who looks like Rocky) in the background.

Thanks MPH for inviting me.

MPH Literary Tatler

Am playing catch-up with some pictures of a couple of MPH events that I meant to post earlier. what can I say ... my hard-disk crashed so I couldn't post them immediately ... and then so many other things got in the way. (And I was a little lazy too ...)

Anyway, if you missed last month's Writers' Circle (held at 1 Utama, 13 March) kick yourselves because there was so much in the talk for writers of creative non-fiction!

Invited speakers Larry Parr (co-author of business tycoon Tan Chin Nam's Never Say I Assume!) and Balan Moses (author of Brickfields: A Place, A Time, A Memory) talked about the researching and writing of their books.


American author Larry Parr had forgotten the first time we met some years ago. I was wandering around the Sucasa very early one morning looking for a decent cup of coffee. (I was due to observe one of my students teaching in the school opposite but needed a caffeine fix first! School canteens don't have Americanas!) I bumped into Larry who told me that there was no coffee available, but there was a small newsagents which also sold second-hand books very cheaply for charity. (Damn! Wasn't going to let that slip!)

We got talking about books (as one does!) and it turned out that Larry collects old novels written about Malaya which he's bought from second-hand bookshops here and in the States. I'm actually quite envious! He told me then that he was going to be working with tycoon Tan Chin Nam on his autobiography and it seemed a really interesting project. We exchanged cards, but I didn't see him again until the Writers' Circle at MPH 1 Utama when he talked about the finished book and the challenges of writing the story of this very important businessman, whose life story parallels the history of the country.

Larry is a fascinating speaker. (This wikipedia article contains some inaccuracies e.g date of birth and number of kids.) He was an expert in Soviet affairs and the editor of Glasnost magazine, and he also edited Chess Life magazine, the official publication of the United States Chess Federation.

(And he's going to be co-writing a thriller, but it's all top secret for now!)

Balan Moses is the news editor of the New Straits Times and has spent all his working life with the newspaper. His book on Brickfields is a loving portrait of an area of the city with a very distinctive history that's rapidly changing out of all recognition. And into the history and geography of the place, Balan weaves personal recollection and portraits of the inhabitants ... as well as mouthwatering descriptions of the food to be found there. It is in many ways a guide book to an area that tourists seldom travel too, but which yields as much (or more) cultural interest as the more famous haunts.

The book is apparently selling very well, and small wonder because I feel it's one that KLites, and particularly Brickfieldsians (!) must surely take to their hearts. I heard from friends who attended a talk that Balan gave at the Commonwealth Club, that members of the audience virtually hijacked the meeting to talk about their own reminiscences of the area and suggest what should go into the next volume!

You can catch Balan at the "Readings" in May. (More about that later.)

The other MPH event was the second Breakfast Club for the Litbloggers held at the Bangsar Village branch on March 24th with Mrs. Good (Lydia Teh) slugging it out with Mrs. Dark Side (Xeus). I'm joking of course ... it was a lovely morning spent with friends chatting about writing and getting published. Both Xeus and Lydia are very good speakers and kept the crowd well entertained.

Xeus (whose very full account of the event can be found here) gave some excellent writing advice.

Lydia Teh was just hilarious. She turned up with a horn so she really could honk! And I loved the piece she read from her book which was a glossary of expressions translated from standard English read into "Manglish" (Malaysian English).

It was Kak Teh's (Zahara Othman) birthday and it was lovely that we were able to celebrate it with her. I like this not yet posed, informal shot. Left to right: Chet, Xeus, me (tangled up with the ficus plant), Lydia, Kak Teh blowing out her candles, Eric Forbes and Janet Teh.

Do come along to the next one this coming Saturday. If you missed Larry Parr, you have a chance to see him again. The mind-expanding Farish Noor will also be along, as will I Am Muslim author Dina Zaman (whom I am introducing).

I must add a silent prayer that the irrepressible and irrelevant questioner behaves himself. Still Kenny will be moderating the session, so we know we're in safe hands. (He will restrain me as ... )

Oh ... and if you do come along, do stay in Bangsar and come along to "Readings" afterwards!

Honk!

If you happen to be in Midvalley Megamall this afternoon do drop by and give Lydia your support.

Have been enjoying her book in little coffee-break sized nibbles and every now and then I find myself laughing out loud when I find myself in a typical Lydia moment e.g. observing myself and other drivers finding ways to kill time whicle waiting for the lights to change!

Here's the blurb I wrote for the back cover:

These short essays blend information and anecdote, flights of fancy and slices of careful observation as Lydia Teh chronicles the quirks and eccentricities of contemporary urban life in Malaysia. Written with affection and humour, the book covers an enormous range of topics from MRT (Malaysian Rubber Time), the etiquette of kissing in public, and advice on how to gainfully spend your time tin traffic jams to decorating tips for the interior of your car and how to make sure your kids erasers don’t go astray. Locals will find themselves between the pages for sure. Great fun!

Lydia writes very well but I would love to mess her hair up, metaphorically speaking. I'm sure there must be a mad bad vampish Lydia inside the cheerful highly competent mum and housewife and I'd love to hear her voice.

(It's terrible how I have the urge to lead perfectly nice people, like Lydia, like Nic, off the straight and narrow just so they will write more dangerously ...)

Good Stuff On Elsewhere Blogs

This is where I suck you all in to a whirling vortex of local litblog news and spin you out in all directions again.

Deepika is just back from the Galle Literary Festival in Sri Lanka (here and here ... with more to come) where she interviewed Booker winner Kiran Desai.

Another Malaysian writer has begun blogging - master of horror Tunku Halim. I met him for the first time at MPH Writer's Circle the other day, and he wasn't at all what I expected ... much younger and a lot less spooky. Am looking forward to reading his new collection of stories, due to be launched soon.

I hadn't realised that short-story writer and long-term Malaysian resident Robert Raymer has a website, until one of his former students (Yan Yi at Marshall-Cavendish) told me about it. Robert previously taught creative writing at Universiti Sains Malaysia, and is now based in Sarawak. He was the editor of Silverfish New Writing 4 and has a collection of short fiction, Lovers and Strangers Revisited (both avaialble from Silverfish). Robert has put up some very useful tips and exercises for writers.

Eric, as always, has much good stuff on his blog, but this superb list of reading recommendations for the short story is well worth printing off and keeping as checklist.

Daphne Lee has had her first four children's books published (congrats!) and is taking criticism on the chin.

Ted gets steamed up about the ignorance of local teenagers who haven't realised that - yes, there actually is a writing scene here. There is! There is!

Lydia reacts to a comment made by Glenda's daughter that writers websites tend to be self-absorbed and whiny.

Amir is spot on when he talks about how to read like a writer. (Caution though, easily offended sensitivities and young minds should stay clear of this blog entirely.)

Then there are book reviews: YTSL has applauds Adibah Amin's new novel This End of the Rainbow. I was surprised to see a book review on Malaysian Medical Resources, a consistently informative and yes, even entertaining blog. Palmdoc recommends Michael Crichton's Next for stressed out doctors and medical student in need of a good diversion from work!

Okay then, what bookish things have I missed? Fill me in in the comments.

Oh, the frustrations of posting here at the moment! I began this post several days ago but my internet connection kept going down. My internet provider I am rechristening Screamyx. Is it still that cable problem? Very inconsiderate of the Taiwanese to host an earthquake.

Guilt-Free Low-Lit

This is for Lydia who confessed the other day that she suffers from a disease called 'Low-Lit'. It comes from the foreword of Nick Hornby's The Complete Polysyllabic Spree , a collection of his very enjoyable columns on books and readings for The Believer (the latest column is here).

One of the problems, it seems to me, is that we've got it into our heads that books should be hard work, and that unless they're hard work, they're not doing us any good.

... If reading books is to survive as a leisure activity - and there are statistics which show that this is by no means assured - then we have to promote the joys of reading, rather than the (dubious) benefits. I would never attempt to dissuade anyone from reading a book. but please, if you're reading a book that's killing you, put it down and read something else, just as you would reach for the remote if you weren't enjoying a TV programme. Your failure to enjoy a highly rated novel doesn't mean you're dim. ... All I know is that you can get very little from a book that is making you weep with the effort of reading it.

... reading for enjoyment is what we all should be doing. I don't mean we should all be reading chick lit or thrillers (although if that's what you want to read, it's fine by me, because here's something no one will ever tell you: if you don't read the classics or the novel that won this year's Booker Prize, then nothing bad will happen to you; more importantly, nothing good will happen to you if you do); I simply mean that turning pages should not be like walking through thick mud. the whole purpose of books is that we read them, and ifyou find you can't, it might not be your inadequacy that's to blame. 'Good' books can be pretty awful sometimes.

In each column Hornby lists his books read and books bought and discusses his reading, so I'll do the same:

My books most recently bought:

Silverfish New Writing 6 - ed. Dipika Mukherjee
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree - Nick Hornby
The Book of Lost Books - Stuart Kelly
The New York Trilogy, Oracle Nights - Paul Auster

Books Read:

None finished this week. Book hopping. Am reading simulataneously Auster's New York Trilogy, Silverfish New Writing 6, Filipino writer Jessica Zafra's collection of short fiction Manananggal Terrorizes Manila (many thanks, Sky) and Ziauddin Sardar's Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim (thanks Zia).

So ... how about you?

Postscript:

Lydia's right (in the comments) ... I really should have linked Daphne Lee's very nice piece on much the same topic in Starmag yesterday: she talks about Daniel Pennac's The Rights of the Reader, and provides a link to a lovely downloadable poster with illustrations by Quentin Blake (right). And this she says to parents:

... don’t even think in terms of knowledge-gained, increased-vocabulary or improved reading-skills. All that will come, I assure you, but don’t make it the reason you buy your kids books or encourage them to read. You don’t want your children to view books with apprehension, but with joy. You want them to see reading as an enjoyable activity. ... The list of rights says that the reader is the only one who has a say in what, where, when and how he reads. It says it’s OK to relax with a book; it’s OK to be lazy with a book; it’s OK to escape into a book; be loud with a book; and be silent with a book. It’s all good so long as you’re having a good time.

Postscript 2:

cw posted an interesting response to this post.

Authors for Tea and Rumours of E

(E-publishing that is!)

Went along to MPH's annual Hi-Tea with Local Authors yesterday, part of the book chain's Support Local Authors Month. (Turned up a bit late because I had to take a cat to the vet first, in case anyone was wondering why the grand entrance half an hour into the session!) There turned out to be a discussion about e-books in progress with writers Shoba Mano (below left) and Lydia Teh (centre, chairing the discussion), and editor Eric Forbes. And the Booker room was absolutely packed.

I'd already missed Shoba's talk which should have been interesting because she uses e-books (as well as print copies) to distribute her work and is clearly passionate about the possibilities. Eric and Lydia had clearly done their reseach but had less personal experience to draw on. The drift of discussion seemed to be, this possibility is out there, but it doesn't seem to be influencing our buying choices in Malaysia just yet. (Indeed, the biggest battle is to get anyone to read anything - e or non-e!)

Sad. Because I reckon that many local authors could sell their work (non-fiction especially) to an overseas market in this format. How many of them, though, have even established an online presence?

After that the session seemed to lose focus somewhat. (Shoba sent round an e-mail later which expressed her dissatisfaction on a number of counts. I can sympathise, though perhaps she could have been more diplomatic.) I think it wasn't really a topic that local authors and audience couldn't really relate to, and perhaps better kept for a writer's circle meeting.

Feng-Shui diva, Lillian Too (whose books have transformed me into an expert in balancing yin and yang, and the redeeming powers of nine goldfish in a pond) added words of wisdom about writing and getting published, before having to make an early exit:

Make sure you have a damned good book and it's properly edited

she exorted. (What charisma! I want to hear this lady speak again!)

Dato' Ng, CEO of the MPH publishing group, putting discussion back on track, highlighted the Ministry of Education's failed e-book project and predicted that e-books will come, but never take over from the printed word.

(My personal prediction is that print-on-demand books, where you go into a bookshop to get a physical book made from a digitally stored source, will become an increasingly important part of the book trade. And yes, the demand for e-books will grow as the technology becomes cheaper and the idea catches on.)

The tea afterwards was an excellent opportunity to meet up with writing friends and make new contacts. (Pictured above, the local authors.) Afterwards, I bought books (how could I not?) and then had a lovely long bookchat with Eric over frosty lemon tea at Delicious.

Postscript:

Do read Lydia's account of the event.

You might like to check out the account on Ted's blog of the previous week's fun and games and intrigues at Sembang-Sembang Bersama Penulis Melayu: MPH's event for Malay writers. Nisah Haron's account of the same event is here.

Conclusion: interesting things happen when you stick a whole lot of writers of very different genres in a room together! (And it isn't always pretty.)

Lydia's Title

Lydia needs a title for her new book, and offers an autographed copy. Find out more here.

The Power to Publish

Was so busy tending to the sick on Monday that I missed the very useful article in the Star about self-publishing in the local context by Lee Tse Ling.

She also does a good job of weighing up the pros and cons and asks whether self-publishing is "faux publishing".

Surprised though that she did not talk about print-on-demand as this makes self-publishing much more affordable and accessible for those who need a smaller print run.



And talking about author photos as we were the other day, Lydia Teh's should be the one that launches a thousand copies!