Social Networking, the Bookstore, and the Bloggers

I have novelist Yang-May Ooi's latest book* in my hand ... but this time it isn't fiction. With co-writer Silvia Cambié, she has written International Communications Strategy : Developments in Cross-Cultural Cummunications and Social Media and is published by Kogan Page. (Listen to the authors talking about how they came to write the book here.) And I got such a surprise when I came to the chapter called Authenticity and Trust, because one of the case studies ... was about MPH Breakfast Club and how it brought together bloggers and writers and bookstore in an extremely positive way, connecting both online and in the real world. (Here's Tang-May's blog entry about the events she took part in.) I love this description of Eric Forbes :

He is clearly regarded as a local expert of publishing, writing and high-quality literature and has become widely known through his blog. In person he is approachable and unpretentious, reflecting the style and tone of his blog ...

Quite! Also mentioned (ahem!) :

Other literary events, such as 'Readings' run by Sharon Bakar, have also been thriving both on the blogs and in other trendy venues around Kuala Lumpur. Would-be writers encourage each other and enterprising young publishers have been forming new imprints to showcase local short stories and essays. many new writers have added their works to the body of Malaysian writing and a few more have been publsihed overseas. ... The key to success has been strong personal networks ... strengthened by the social media.

It's really good when someone recognises what you are doing, as well as the way that a terrific network of encouragment and support exists in KL now. I wonder where Breakfast Club has got to, though? Now that MPH in BV2 has closed, does it still have a home? (*Thanks a lot Yang-May for the copy.)

Writer Entrepreneurs

Yang-May Ooi is starting a a new series about self-publishing on her writing and arts blog Fusion View, which you might find interesting. She writes:

Starting on Tuesday 10 July over four consecutive days, I will be posting up my interviews with three self-published authors and a book publishing insider on what it takes to self-publish your novel and act as publisher, sales director and publicist to get your product out to the great reading public. This project is in conjunction with Mslexia, the quarterly journal for women writers - Mslexia is publishing my article on The Writer as Entrepreneur in this month's issue of the magazine and in an innovative initiative, they - and my interviewees - have agreed to my making my research for that article available online at Fusion View.

Also, are you an "enterprising writer"? Have you worked hard to self-publish, market and sell your book? Or perhaps you've been published the traditional way but you've gone beyond the call of duty to market your book? On Tuesday, I will be inviting submissions from Enterprising Writers to share your story on Fusion View - come back on Tuesday to find out more!
I hope you'll enjoy the project!

Regards
Yang-May

Sinker Stinkers

Writers are you up for this? Yang May Ooi wrote with a fun idea:

All the furore about Hal's book started me thinking - why don't you get as many writers as you can to donate one bad review of their book? To start you off, here is one review of my first novel The Flame Tree that has nothing good to say AT ALL. The reviewer misses the point, though, that the book is not a whodunnit but that's just me being picky...

"The opening lines reads straight out of a sex thriller by Jackie Collins. Its a put- off. Extolling the virtues of the rapid development in Malaysia and a devoted paragraph to Malaysia's first car the Proton Saga, reads like an article straight from the Far Eastern Economic Review and a government propaganda piece. The plot-line gets completely lost and the build-up to the murder and corruption that the author is trying desperately to lead the reader to the end, does not capture the reader's imagination or interest.The murder takes place at page 219, but the whodunit is no where in sight and the plot gets completely lost in the heat and jungle. The author's attempts to introduce Malaysia to the rest of the world, with excerpts on its history, a former British colony etc - reads like a Lonely Planet Guide. We don't need such trite information. The Flame Tree is nothing more than a cheap soap opera and it fails badly. For her first novel written in 18 months, she needs to go back to the drawing board."

The reviewer is of course anonymous and something tells me he/ she is a Malaysian.... I wonder what gives that away?

You can see it for yourself on Amazon.co.uk - where, luckily, there are also other reviews that are more favourable (which saved me from slitting my wrists right there and then...).

Enjoy!

Yang-May

I'd say that no matter who you are and how good your work, if you're talking about reviews on Amazon, someone is bound to rubbish your work (if you are lucky enough to get reviews in the first place!). Sift through the reviews of any Booker prize winner and you'll see what I mean.

And to be honest I've expressed my own frustrations about certain books on Amazon in less than kindly terms, though never anonymously (and it is not possible to do so anymore).

Anyway, if do you have a review that's a stinker, do post it here.

Yang-May on the Beeb

Malaysian novelist turned blogger and podcaster Yang May Ooi has this piece of exciting news to share:

Hi All

Fusion View seems to be making a splash in the world of blogging. I was taken out to lunch today by Chris Vallance, the presenter of BBC Radio 5's Pods and Blogs progamme. He wanted to meet me as he was keen to feature Fusion View on the programme. ...The slot will most likely be in next week's programme - on the radio it's at 2am (GMT +1) on Tuesdays (UK) and online it will be available for a week (International). I'm thrilled as the programme has around 1 million listeners via AM and FM combined even though it's on at such a strange time in the night! I'll let you know when it's broadcast so you can check it out.

Yang-May

I had a head-slapping moment when I thought about Yang-May. Remember how we put our heads together to suggest the books by local authors she should put in her suitcase, way back? Well I forgot to link to her post where she wrote about what she actually did carry back!

Blur? Sotong got nothing on me lah.

All of a Twitter in 140 Characters!

Yang-May Ooi is certainly quickly at home with new technology. While she was in Malaysia, she phone blogged her adventures. And now she's all of a twitter over a (relatively) new mini-blogging and messaging facility called ... Twitter.

Excited by the possibilities of this new medium, she is asking readers if they can be creative in 140 characters (like in an SMS message) to produce Twitter mini-flash fiction or digital haiku:

What I would really love to see are Twitterers who can write something interesting or thought-provoking in 140 characters so that I can have something worthwhile to read on my mobile phone - when I'm on the bus or hanging around waiting in between real-life events. So here's a challenge to all you flash fiction writers and haiku poets, can you Twitter interestingly, uniquely, fascinatingly, challengingly to entertain, bewitch, bedazzle and enthrall the masses on their phones? Let me know if you have such a Twitter account and I'll feature you on Fusion View!

She reckons that my local readership should go for this as Malaysians have short attention spans ... (now where was I?) ... and are joined at the hip to their handphones ... (just excuse me while I answer that ...)

140 characters! We thought we were pushing the limits with six-word stories, the other day!

And speaking of short short stories, here's one you must read - Julio Cortazar's post-modern piece A Continuity of Parks. Just coffee break length and magic.

Celebrating Voices

The second of Saturday's literary events was of course, "Readings" at Seksan's. And for me the event was all about ... what is an authentic Malaysian voice?

Yang-May Ooi read first, and poor thing had to compete a little against the rain. Thank goodness we're amplified now.

She decided to use her slot for an experiment. She had brought along a passage from the novel she is currently working on, Tianming Traviata, and she read the same piece written in two slightly different voices. The first very standard English, the second in identifiably Malaysian English. I enjoyed both versions, though the second sounded more natural to me and all but Eric Forbes seemed to agree when we took a vote afterwards.

I told Yang-May later that Shirley Lim had talked about having the same problem when she wrote Sister Swing, and it really is a big deal for local writers. (I do so badly want to write at length on this but haven't yet got round to it.)

Talking about capturing voice, Datuk Shan does a great job of getting Indian voices down to the page and playing with them for comic effect as in the story about Mrs. Sarjit Singh getting teased for her terrible mispronunciations.

Zhang Su Li read us several appetite-whetting short pieces from her travel book A Backpack and a Bit of Luck. I loved the first piece she read about the time she worked in an opticians in Britain and gave a lecture to an old man about the correct way to put on glasses - only to realise that he only had one hand having lost the other in the war. This being Britain, a cup of tea while he told his story put things right. Su Li managed a very creditable northern accent!

Patricia Low is a very talented young lady. My first encounter with her work was with The Oral Stage's Rojak, last year. Two of my favourite pieces were penned by her and she was one of the directors. I sadly missed TOS second production, 59 Minutes, so it was nice that Pat read us a monologue from it - a wonderfully funny satire about the building of a durian tower in a shopping mall. But as I say, Malaysia constantly satirises itself! The scary thing about the piece was that it all seemed just too possible!

I loved the natural way that the voice in the story moved between English and Malay ... this is the reality of voice in the local context, the constant dipping between languages. For convenience. For emphasis. For humour.

Haris Zalkapli (and now I have his name spelt right!) writes columns on pop culture and politics and the interface between. I knew nothing about him before the reading since I had enlisted Raja Ahmad's help in finding good Malay writers, and I am very happy to have "discovered" Haris. He's clearly a writer who has found his niche - his pieces are entertaining and the arguments nicely developed. He read two columns The Stones and the Great Firewall, about The Rolling Stones tour of China and A Lesson in Coolness about Condoleza Rice and other politicians employing pop culture as a campaigning tool.

This was the second time that Eileen Lui has read at "Readings". Her stories have appeared in Silverfish collections, including the book I edited, Collateral Damage. She read a moving piece about a friendship ... which should have been more than a friendship ... about the best friends who became "better friends", but never quite made the transition to becoming lovers.

Thank goodness not everyone is like this couple, or Eileen would be out of a day-job!

Was very happy to see poet Wong Phui Nam in the audience and I think he was very pleased to see so many people interested in writing. I have invited him to read next time!

Many thanks (and you know the litany by now!) all who read and all who turned up to support them. To Seksan for the space. To La Bodega for the lovely wines. To Reza for help with the sound. To all who helped get set up and to Zedeck for washing glasses. Sorry I was so bossy.

I've decided not to hold "Readings" next month as the KL Litfest is on at the end of March and it's better that everyone supports that. But watch this space for April announcements.

Yang-May for Breakfast

Yang-May revealed some very useful stuff about writing on Saturday. I was scribbling some notes but every time things got really interesting my pen stopped moving. Forgive me, then, for the lapses.

She said that she was in love with English from an early age relishing new words from the dictionary and going around using expressions like "You pucillanimous little freak!".

She became a thriller writer because she likes to read a book that's entertaining, but had to master the very masculine style of the genre in order to write her two novels The Flame Tree and Mindgame.

She was interested in how the description of landscape could be used mirror state of mind and add texture to the novel, as it does in The Flame Tree. Jasmine's story, and how she slowly becomes her own person also parallels the wider story of Malaysia developing as a nation.

She urges local writers to tackle contemporary fiction reflecting the Malaysia of today. She talked about her great hero Thomas Hardy who wrote about Britain at a transition point in its history - when mechanisation began to change the lives of ordinary rural folks. Hardy used things that happened in the news in his novels - including the blood dripping through the ceiling incident in Tess of the D'urbervilles.

She used newspaper reports when she was writing her novels. Reports of landslides in the press here gave her the pivotal scene of The Flame Tree and she used it to mirror the effect of her character's overriding ambition.

When asked how much of herself she puts into her novels, Yang-May said "I am Jasmine, but also all the other characters" and confided that your fiction is a great place to put the dark-side of yourself - and admitting that she enjoyed writing the gangsters!

Talking about how she puts bits of herself into her writing she gives the example of the flame tree itself, which she used as a symbol of enduring love and hope in her first novel. How can someone plant a flame tree, she asks, knowing that they won't see it flower for another 20 years? "What Mrs. Foong says in the novel was exactly what mum said to me."

Yang-May finds blogging different - very immediate and exciting. She reckons that putting some of your writing online and for free is a good move, as good material in the public domain can only enhance your reputation.

She also said much else about getting published and finding an agent, but I'm going to write about that in a separate post and add to it some of the insights Tan Twan Eng gave me when I interviewed him. So you'll have to keep reading!!

The Satisfaction of Finishing a Book

KayKay forwarded a really nice piece from John Connolly's blog about the satisfaction of finishing a book. His thoughts after finishing and enjoying Wilbur Smith's River God:

I ... felt a degree of satisfaction as I closed the book and put it to one side. There, I thought: another book read, and a lengthy one at that. For a moment, I was one step closer to reading every book in my house, albeit a step forwards that would soon be nullified. River God will probably go to my local Oxfam shop, and there is now a space where it once sat on my bookshelves, a space that can be occupied by a new book as soon as I find the time to amble into one of my native city's many bookstores.

Alas, it is a satisfaction I'm very far from feeling this week. I've never been so part way through so many books.

Believe it or not I'm still reading my first book from the TBR Challenge Martin Amis' Money, but I'm well past half way which is not bad.

I bought the book because I thought I oughta. Had heard stories of Amis being obnoxious and his protagonist is obsessed with ... yes, filthy lucre, and you can't get more crass than that.

Didn't expect to be laughing myself stupid so often, delighting in the bad-boy voice (Amir Hafizi has to read this! making a mental note to pass him my scrunched up pizza-decorated copy when I buy a shiny new one), the dialogue, and the craft of every sentence.

The book is set during the Summer of the Charles and Di wedding and the riots which swept the country. The novel captures the early 80's and Thatcher's Britain so well.

It isn't my first Amis, because I read Time's Arrow years back. That's a bit of clever writing, a whole novel told in reverse chronological order from the protagonist's death to his birth. (Try imagining eating backwards for e.g. ... but that's not the worst). Just like a movie being rewound.

I've got to read The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy because Kaykay said so.

Okay then, it's our book club choice and the meeting is next week. Crime fiction so isn't my thing. And this is very much a sweat soaked testosterone drenched bloke book. But it is very well written and I'm not a quitter. So.

I'm also trying to read Yang-May Ooi's Mind Game before Saturday and the Breakfast for Litbloggers thing at MPH and then the readings at Seksan's.

Thrillers aren't my thing either. When I was in Nigeria I overdosed on them because they were the only books available, thanks to my neighbour.

Anyway, am finding Yang-May's novel (which I managed to borrow from my friend Soo Choon) an intriguing read. I appreciate the contemporary Malaysian setting, and find the Asian Values Alliance, bent on world domination, most sinister. And I like that its an unashamedly lesbian love-story!

Have started reading Camilla Gibbs Sweetness in the Belly as I will be interviewing the author when she comes for the KL Literary Festival at the end of March so this is homework, but nice homework as I am enjoying its African setting.

So a lot of books hanging halfway ...

Oh yes, I did finish one book, Richard Posners Little Book of Plagiarism. A legal mind tackles who did and who did not plagiarise in literary history. (Shakespeare gets off the hook you'll be pleased to know!) and just what constitutes plagiarism in the legal context. It's an extremely readable guide, fascinating for litbuffs and invaluable for academics.

One little quote I'll leave you with:

The reader has to care about being deceived about authorial identity in order for deceit to cross the line to fraud and thus constitute plagiarism.

That's right. The ball is in the reader's court.

And talking of readers, what have you finished, and what have you not?

Bookish Events at Bangsar Village Two

The new MPH is Bangsar Village will be the venue for events for booklovers.

I'm helping Eric Forbes with The Breakfast Club for LitBloggers on the 4th Saturday of the Month from 11am - 12.30pm. The first one kicks off this coming Saturday February 24th, 2007 with guests Yang-May Ooi, the author of The Flame Tree and Mindgame and poet Sharanya Manivannan, who is working on her first novel, Constellation of Scars, as well as a full-length collection of poems.

Another event worth checking out is Kidz Read! The Reading Group for Children facilitated by Daphne Lee, who writes the Tots to Teens column in StarMag. This session meets every last Sunday of the month from 4 - 5pm, and is for children aged between 9 - 15 years. This session is in line with MPH's effort to promote and encourage reading among children. The February session will focus on The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate Di Camillo, as well as The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams, The Mouse and His Child by Russell Hoban, and The Racketty Packetty House by Frances Hodgson-Burnett.

For more information or to be placed on the mailing list for MPH events contact Sharifah Aliza Syed Alwi Tel: 03 7781 1800 x 119

(Poster designed by Kenny Mah)

February "Readings"

Would be grateful if you could pass on the news of our next "Readings".

Here's the info:

“Readings”

Our series of monthly readings continue next Saturday with the aim of encouraging new writing talent.
Time: 3.30pm
Date: 24th February 2006
Place: 67, Lorong Tempinis Satu, Lucky Garden, Bangsar (for directions check www.seksan.com)
Readers for this Saturday include:
Yang-May Ooi
Eileen Lui
Datuk SHANmugalingam
Haris Zulkfili
Pat Low
(and one more still to be confirmed reader)

"Readings" is the birth-child of Bernice Chauly, lovingly fostered by Sharon Bakar. We are grateful to Seksan for sponsorship.

Admission free and everyone very welcome. Please pass on the invitation to anyone else you think might be interested.

I feel like I'm chasing my tail at the moment trying to round up enough good readers to keep the crowd well entertained. Thanks, Raja Ahmad for helping me: he is getting back to me soon with the name one of another of his Suara-Suara protogees!

Still haven't managed to sort of the wine sponsorship so will be chasing up my friends in La Bodega as soon as CNY is over. We will have bottles there one way or another.

Novelist Yang-May Ooi will be out first guest (with Sharanya Manivannan) for this Breakfast with the Litbloggers thing in the new branch of MPH in Bangsar Village 11a.m. - 1 p.m. so we will be moving from one event to the other with just a little lunch in-between. It should be a good literary Saturday.

Elsewhere Great Online Things

I had no characters, no plot, but there were no other problems ...

says Alexander McCall-Smith, creator of The Number One Ladies Detective Agency series and the most charming private-eye ever, Madam Ramotswe. Deepika Shetty blogs wonderfully about meeting the author in Singapore. And I am so jealous I could spit!

Meanwhile, online arts newspaper Kakiseni has a profile piece up on Malaysian short story writer Keris Mas. I remember reading translations of some of his stories some years back and liking them very much, and now wish I had a copies of his books. Has anyone seen them in the shops? Funny how - and once again I say this - there is so little available information on and promotion for local publications.

Meanwhile, Yang-May Ooi, currently packing her bags to fly back here for a visit, muses about how much an author should give away of the story they are writing. You can catch Yang-May at two events next Saturday (24th Feb), the Breakfast for Bloggers at the new MPH in Bangsar Village in the morning and in the afternoon at "Readings" at Seksan's. I'll be posting up more about these events shortly.

Meanwhile, Tungku Halim asks whether you write in silence, and if not, what's your soundtrack? (Me? I need silence.)

Meanwhile, Eric Forbes has a good go at local authors who don't read ... and if you make any claim to being a writer you should listen to what he's saying very carefully indeed. (And that's an order!)

And meanwhile, Ted finds hypermarkets a great place to shop for cheap books. Not only that but he has a lovely new teddy logo which really suits him, and who could resist pics of him a 5 year old complete with Beatles haircut! Cute! - both the teddy and Ted. But don't tell him I said that.

One for Yang-May's Suitcase

Novelist Yang-May Ooi set me this poser in an e-mail a while back and asked me to pass it on to you lot.

She will be back in Malaysia this month. She wants to do some book-buying while she's here. Supposing that she has room for no more than five books in her suitcase, which are the local books she should carry back with her?

Now I've been thinking this up and down. Some of the books I'd want to recommend are out of print. Others such as Tash Aw's The Harmony Silk Factory and Tan Twan Eng's The Gift of Rain are published (or in the case of the latter - soon to be published) in the UK anyway.

Then there horrendous gaps in my own reading. I bought Lloyd Fernanado's Green is the Colour, for example, but haven't read it yet. Much else has slipped by me and I haven't managed to get beyond the first page of any novel in Malay apart from kids' books. (Shame, shame and more shame!)

Plus enough writing friends of mine read this blog to drop by and strangle me if I don't include them in my top five, so ... erm ... I'm going to fence-sit.

All this is an introduction to one book which I think Yang-May should slip into her suitcase if she doesn't have it already: Rehman Rashid's A Malaysian Journey.

Rehman is a friend from way back. Met him at an old boy's reunion at Malay College in 1985 when I was teaching there. I remember we had a conversation at the rest house in Kuala Kangsar about the traumas of turning thirty (aiyoh, such spring chickens!) and we discovered that we share exactly the same birth date.

Rehman was writing for the NST and I loved his friday column, Scorpion Tales, and can remember some of them still. (Including a curious one about a caterpillar he wrote after Operation Lalang.

I took my Form Four kids up to KL and Rehman gave them a talk about the work of a journalist at the New Straits Times' offices and the grand tour. On another occasion, we roped him in to judge a debate against Royal Military College.

Our paths divided. I left Malaysia to do my Masters and was away for the best part of two years. Rehman moved to Hong Kong to work with Asiaweek and later to Bermuda.

I didn't know Rehman was back in Malaysia until one day in 1993 when I went into Skoob and saw copies of A Malaysian Journey of the counter. And when I picked it up, it opened straight to a page about my husband bullying him at rugby practice which made me laugh out loud. (That's Abu all right!)

The book I loved - a series of vignettes from his travels across the country weaving together the personal and political landscape with a freedom and honesty that was extremely rare at that time (pre, of course, the anything-goes until-someone-sues-you days of blogging).

It was, and I would argue, still is, a very important book

The book has now been reprinted. As Rehman says in his new foreword to the book, copies were changing hands for many times the initial price on the internet without him making a cent from the transaction - so why not bring out a new edition?

The book was intitially turned down by every publisher Rehman approached because the subject matter was too hot to handle, and so he had to self-publish. Now he says those same publishers were falling over themselves to reprint A Malaysian Journey, but it was his turn to reject them, choosing once again to handle the whole process himself.

So Yang-May, I'd say, put this one in your suitcase and we'll go browsing for the rest.

Unless you guys have any better ideas?

(Rehman will be appearing at MPH in April - more news about this later.)


(Suitcase pic by Tom Slaughter. Book cover from Rehman - click to see full size)

Author Blogger

How lovely to see Malaysian author Yang-May Ooi's blog, Fusion View featured inStarmag today in a piece by Elizabeth Tai.

Yang-May is a fairly recent blogger (she began in April) but her space online is a great place to go for useful insights into the writing life and the low-down on getting published.

And for a good read about all things Malaysian written by an expat in London.

I can echo her sentiments about blogging being a great way to connect with people from across the world (how many good friends has it sent my way?) and I find it particularly interesting that she says that blogging has helped her to write in a more relaxed manner.

Yang-May plans to put up extracts from the new novel she is writing, Tianming Triavata "a quirky family drama" set in small-town Malaysia, as well as podcasts of them.

I gotta podcast soon or burst!

Related Posts:
Getting Published: Advice from Yang-May (28/5/06)
The Real David K.T. Wong (5/6/06)

The Real David T. K. Wong

Though I may have toasted David T. K. Wong a few months ago for setting up a fellowship that annually funds a South-East Asian writer to do the MA in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia, I knew nothing about the man himself.

But then Yang-May Ooi met him at a party and got a chance to find out. Do read.

Getting Published: Advice From Yang-May

There is for sure a generosity about published writers who take time out to give advice to the wannabe's.

Yang-May Ooi, author of legal thrillers Flame Tree and Mind Game is planning a series of posts on the subject on her Fusion View blog, and has the first one up today.

Thanks too Yang-May, for your mention of my blog the other day - and yes, we are sort of converses ... I've lived more than twenty years here, you more than twenty years there ...