The first story which I wrote and submitted was for the 1984 New Straits Times Short Story Competition. It was called Miel and the Honey Bunch or something pretentious-sounding like that. The exact story and wording are all gone now. Success came to me early as a writer, to my detriment, as I since then I always …
“Support a JB writer’s book project” article by blogger Peggy Loh
Blogger Peggy Loh is a writer herself. She is, like me, born a writer, and born and raised in Johor Bahru. She is a writer with the New Straits Times. Read Peggy’s detailed and insightful write-up here of Heart of Glass and of me. Check out her blog also at peggyloh.com which is called MY Johor Stories. Her blog has …
See “Heart of Glass” original manuscript with piano soundtrack
Today you can take a look inside the original handwritten manuscript of Heart of Glass, my MUSIC CRIME NOIR NOVEL set in Chicago and Macau in the Reagan era of 1980s. Piano soundtrack is by yours truly of course: Aquellos Ojos Verdes. Watch out for it. I really love this song. See how the novel …
BOOK LAUNCH: Ewan Lawrie’s “Gibbous House” Thursday 12 January 2017 1830H
I was very lucky to have been given an invitation to attend Ewan Lawrie’s book launch in Islington. This would be the first time I am meeting an Unbound author and in fact the first time I would be meeting an author that I had got to know first through social media. Times have indeed …
Heart of Glass the Novel – Silent Movie news update!
Hello! #Vintage alert! Watch this homemade SILENT MOVIE update on Week 3 of project Heart of Glass the Novel with a piano soundtrack by yours truly. But please! Don’t be too critical, it’s my acting debut! I am experimenting with the silent movie concept as I love the Artist and I love the music of …
Pitching your Ideas in 3 minutes
Pitching is presenting your ideas. What people and I myself don’t realise is how tough my business life as a designer is and has been. I pitch for ten jobs to get 2. Five jobs to get 1. Clients today make you bleed. You are competing against younger, cheaper and more innovative pitchers. So how do …
My first NaNoWriMo
This year is the first time I am participating in National Novel Writing Month. I am doing this partly as a challenge and partly as a way of getting another book written under pressure. Today is Day 21 out of 30 and I am only on around 18,000 words. Why I am doing this thing: …
CBBC interview with Children’s Author Phil Earle
Phil Earle is a very prolific and engaging writer whose ideas, thoughts and humour filled the space that was the Children’s Library at Southfields Library. Listening to him speak was very inspiring. Of course, his Liverpool accent helps. It’s like listening to a Beatles interview. Here he explains where ideas come from. Essentially, they come from …
Frugality, Imagination and the Vintage life: Roald Dahl’s village, Museum and Story Centre, Great Missenden
Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre is set in the tiny village of Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire where he lived for 36 years. He was also buried in the village. I took a train from Marylebone with the family on a bright October day in 2015. We enjoyed a surreal vision of a horse on the ceiling: It …