“On Fridays” to be published in Thema (USA)

As I wrote in a recent blog, every few years I get this urge to rewrite the 17 stories from Lovers and Strangers Revisit­ed.  The first story, “On Fridays” has just been accepted by Thema as a reprint in their A New Routine issue (summer 2025).

After submitting another story, I thought, why not try “On Fridays” as a reprint since it fit the theme?  I didn’t know if they accepted reprints—it was previously published in The Literary Review in 2003, which I acknowledged in the cover letter.  Figured I had nothing to lose.

When I received an email from Thema, the subject line stated, “Acceptance,” so I knew that it contained good news.  I forgot which story I had sent them.  I was even more surprised when it was “On Fridays.”  I had completely forgotten I had sent it as a reprint.  I double checked to make sure that I had in­formed them.  As a reprint, the story will earn less than it would have as an original story, but I’m not com­plaining.

So now the stories from Lovers and Strangers Revisit­ed have been (or will be) published 83 times in 12 coun­tries (12 stories in USA and UK).  Not bad, which is exactly why I get this urge every few years to rewrite these stories, because you just never know when another one will be published.

This is also the reason I spent two years rewriting six novels (and two collections of stories and a play), because you just never know.  You must trust the writing process and keep submitting your work and keep your fingers crossed that an agent or an editor will say, hey, this is not bad…in fact, it is quite suitable for our present needs…

            —Borneo Expat Writer

Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards—2024 Finalist for Novel: One Day Among the Ruins: A Lesson in Love and Friendship

 

  

One Day Among the Ruins:  A Lesson in Love and Friendship, one of the six novels that I re­wrote between 2022 and 2024 and blogged about, was named a finalist by The Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society’s The William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition.

 

            

This was also my COVID-19 pandemic project that I finished in 2022 then rewrote this year for the competition.  Here is the pitch I’ve been sending to agents:

One Day Among the Ruins:  A Lesson in Love and Friendship (111,985)

An American backpacker and a British expatriate widow experience a lifetime in one day at Pompeii and a night in Naples.  Eat, Pray, Love meets The Graduate meets Indecent Proposal

One autumn day in 1978, between college and career, Mad­dox, an Ameri­can back­­pack­er in a funk about missing a love-interest in Rome, meets Alexis, a middle-aged British widow teach­­ing literature in Malaysia.  Their unlikely, cross-gen­­erational friend­­­ship is forged among the ruins of Pompeii as they share their per­son­al trage­dies and troubled fami­lies, fill­ing a void in each other’s lives.  Yet who is the teacher…who is the stu­dent?  Eag­er to learn more about her near-death ex­peri­ence, Maddox dares Alexis to join him for pizza in Na­ples.  Later he dares her to dance and dares her to ac­cept an un­usual birth­day present, teach­ing him about love.  For Alexis, the dare feels like an opportunity to re­cov­er some love­less years, if on­ly she could for­get about the gut-wrench­ing di­lem­ma that she had to face in the waning days of her son’s life.

Alexis and Maddox came from different generations, different worlds:  Alexis, born in India, the pam­pered daughter of British Raj officer, mar­ried off young on­ly to be­come a wid­owed war bride at eigh­teen, then a survivor of the London Blitz, while Mad­­dox hails from a dys­func­tional, blue-collar Midwestern family with multiple divorces and para­sitic step­sib­lings.  One thing they do share, other than their company, is their brutal honesty.

 “People—all of us, I suppose—tend to see the world in black and white,” Alexis in­forms him.  “Most of life falls in­to a gray realm.  Rarely are there right an­swers.”  She later adds, “For both of us, this was our journey that we had to make…to find our­selves in Pom­­peii—one the teacher, the other, the student.  Only God knows which is which.  In life, as you will dis­cover, each of us teaches and learns, often at the same time.”

Having backpacked three months in Europe in 1978 (and a month in Italy in 1985), hav­ing visited Pompeii (with journal, guidebook, and Bulwer-Lytton intact), having lived for twen­­ty years in Pe­­nang as an expatriate (like Alexis), I have tried to show how that one day—a time cap­sule, real­ly—can resonate in unexpected ways in world events being played out to­day.

              —Borneo Expat Writer

My interviews with other Malaysian writers:

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, finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize 2009. 
Chuah Guat Eng, author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change.

MalachiEdwin Vethamani, author of Complicated Lives and Life Happens.