Two Novels are in the Faulkner-Wisdom Finals!

A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit is in the finals in the novel category and The Girl in the Bathtub is in the finals for the novel-in-progress category for the on-going 2012 William Faulkner-William Wisdom Competition in the US!  Both novels are set in Penang, Malaysia, both featuring the same expat character, Steve Boston, though set nine years apart.  I've been hoping that the success of one novel will help sell the other in a two-book deal (I have a series of books planned for this character).  It can still happen, especially if one or the other wins.

Back in September 2011 an excerpt was published in the New Straits Times. I also posted the pitch and the first chapter, now revised.

This year's competition had a record 406 full manuscript entries, of which 14 are finalist.  These will be read by Jeff Kleinman of Folio Literary Mangement.  A third novel, The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, a recent Quarterfinalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, was a short list finalist for the second year in a row. 

The Girl in the Bathtub had also been a short-list finalist in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom novel-in-progress competition.  This year, Deborah Grosvenor of Grosvenor Literary Agency will be reading the novel-in-progress finalists.

Last year, A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit (as The Expatriate's Choice) was a semi-finalist in the Faulkner-Wisdom competition; however, it has been extensively rewritten several times since then (for both the 2012 Amazon and Faulkner-Wisdom competitions). In fact, I was in the progress of revising and changing A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit from third person back to first person (where I originally had it), after rereading The Great Gatsby, when I got the call that my father had passed away.  Now I'm still back in the US visiting my brothers. 

Yet right now, after receiving the good news about my two (three) novels, I'm anxious to return to Borneo to finish that off and have it completed, so when the results come out I'll be ready with a freshly revised manscript in hand for another round of query submissions for agents to see if I can still make this two-book deal happen for 2012.  I know my father would be proud.

Update:  Here are the winners and runner-ups.

*Two novels and one novella are short list finalist for 2013 Faulkner-Wisdom, so five books into two years, including the Girl in the Bathtub, my Gift from the Past.

Here are links to some of my author-to-author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I