Girl in the Bathtub Finalist 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards

My latest novel Girl in the Bathtub has been named a finalist 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Award.  Girl in the Bath­tub is a companion novel to A Per­fect Day for an Expat Exit, which was a short-list finalist in 2014 and a finalist 2012.  Both novels are set in Penang, Malaysia, part of an Expats in Southeast Asia series.   

Previously, Girl in the Bathtub was a finalist for 2012 Novel-in-Progress category.  I completed the novel in 2013, a gift from my past, and then followed my own advice by reading it out loud as I rewrote it several times in 2014 and 2015.

Girl in the Bathtub is now the fourth novel to either be a finalist or short list finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards.  The other two are The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady a short-list finalist in the 2014 Faulkner-Wis­dom Novel contest (and Quarter-finalist in 2012 Amazon Breakthrough) and An Unex­pected Gift from a Growling Fool, a short-list finalist in 2013.

Last year, my novella The Act of Theft, was also a finalist (and a short-list finalist in the previous year).  So four novels and a novella have either been a finalist or short-list finalist in the last three years.  Not a bad track record.

So when you throw in a marathon, August has been a pretty good month so far, considering it’s also my birthday month.  Now if only an agent would take a chance on this American writer living in Borneo, and sell one of these novels it would make 2015 a pretty darn good if not a great one.

Meanwhile, I just adapted a screenplay into a novel and have two other screenplays I plan to adapt as well, so I can churn out some more for next year.

    —Borneo Expat Writer

Here are links to four 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 

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