The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady Makes 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Contest short list!

While contemplating editing my novel The Lonely Affair of Jonathan Brady for the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Contest, I got a flash of insight to change the title to The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, and everything seemed to click.  The title change made me think of the novel in a whole new light, especially him dying at the beginning as well as the ending.  Besides giving the novel a new focus, the title doubled as a cool metaphor.

As I wrote about it in an earlier blog about making decisions, I hadn’t worked on this novel in over a year in favor of two other novels that I rewrote for the 2011 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.  But when the new title idea struck me in April, I knew it was time to act that very day. Although the novel was an almost-finalist for their 2008 contest, I wasn’t sure if I had enough time for a full rewrite, other than a quick line-edit.  I then got the news that the deadline, which had already been pushed back from 1 April to 1 May, just got pushed back to 15 May!  So I went for it and it turned out to be a good decision!

My Penang novel, The Girl in the Bathtub, was also a short list finalist in the Novel-in-Progress category this year, while another Penang-set novel, The Expatriate’s Choice, was a semi-finalist in the Novel category. Coincidently, I briefly met both judges, Will Murphy (Novel judge, Executive Editor at Random House) and the Jeff Kleinman (Novel-in-progress judge, the founding partner of Folio Literary Management) at the 2006 Maui Writers Conference.   It’s nice being able to put a face to a name; even nicer if one of my novels had made it to the finals for them to read.  (Earlier this year a fourth novel, The Boy Who Shot Santa, had advanced to Round Two of the Amazon contest and was short listed in the 2009 Faulkner-Wisdom contest.)  I know I’m close, though it’s about time I found a publisher.

* Here's an updated link to the revamped first five pages of The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady.

FINALISTS NOVEL William Faulkner - William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition
All in a Name
Bad of Country
Continuities
Echoes of Love and War
F-Train
The Water Master

SHORT LIST
Aftermath, Laura Brlodie, Lexington, VA
All Jeweled Chokers, Helen Argers, Newark, NJ
Angels in the House, Marylee MacDonald,  Tempe, AZ
Black Pearl, Arthur Nevis, Steamboat Springs, CO
Cooper’s War, Tim Smith, Paris, France
Don’t Cry Little Monster, Helen Krieger, New Orleans, LA
Flambeau, T. J. Fisher, New Orleans, LA
Habit, Adam Hungerford, Fairfax, VA
How to Make Moonshine, Jana Sasser, Edisto Island, SC
In the Evening, In the Morning, A. J. Harman,  Arlington, VA
Jerusalem as a Second Language, Rochelle Distelheim, Highland Park, IL
Life Between Dreams, Tena Russ,  Riverwoods, IL
Lucy, William Coles,  Salt Lake City, UT
Memories of the Dust, Robert Wood,  Chicago, IL
No, Heather Aimee O'Neill, Brooklyn, NY
Oleanna, Julie K. Rose, San Jose, CA
Playground, Edward Rowley, Glen Ridge, NJ
Practice Dying, Rachel Stolzman Gulla,  Brooklyn, NY
Red Dirt, Joe Samuel Starnes, Philadelphia, PA
Rich, Martha L. Burns, La Luz, NM
Sea Level, Nancy Kilgore, Post Mills, VT
Stained Glass, Diane Manning, Houston, TX
The Edgartown Portraits, Richard Weber, Carouge, Switzerland
The Journal of Eva Hathaway, Maryanne D’Agincourt, Westwood, MA
The Patriot Joe Morton, Devault, Michael, Monroe, LA
The Principles of Mining, Sharon Thatcher & Wayland Stallard
The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady, Robert Raymer,  Sarawak, Malaysia
This is Squalorville, Brian Schneider,  St. Helen, MI
Various States of Undress, Roz Unruh,  Hockessin, DE
Victor’s Journals, Philip Erickson, St. Paul, MN
Warming Up, Mary Hutchins Reed,  Chicago, IL
Watershed, Laura Lane McNeal, New Orleans, LA
Westminster, Diane Manning, Houston, TX

                           —Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer

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 

Rainforest World Music Festival 2011—8-10 July

Robert and Jenny

For the past six years, since 2006, Jenny and I have been coming to the Rainforest World Music Festival, in Santubong, 31km from Kuching, Sarawak.  My friend Rob, who I briefly met at the 2006 MELTA conference in Kuching only the month before, invited us to join him, and he showed us the ropes.  First thing you do, you head to where the concert will be held that night and stake out your ground with a mat or canvas, then plan out which of the three workshops you want to visit for each of the three sessions, held in separate venues, and then you’re on your own. True to his word we never saw Rob again until that evening, but oh it was a relief to have a friend in that crowd of over 10,000 people meeting us exactly where he said he would be.  We’ve been staking our ground ever since.

Iban Longhouse, Cultural Village

For me the best part of the RWMF, other than the beautiful Cultural Village setting, a must see in itself, are the workshops, where the musicians from various acts introduce their instruments and their playing style and then jam together, especially in the intimate setting of the Iban Longhouse.  They’re up close and personal, especially if you arrive early. Here is a different angle (and a much better photo) from last year, if you follow this link about the RWMF and scroll down to the third photo (you’ll see Jenny and I sitting between the first two pillars—I’m wearing white)

Leweton Woman’s Water Music

Although spread over three days, this year we only came on Saturday, and left our two boys at home partly due to their recent operation (circumcision) For the first workshop we chose to see “flying fingers” at Dewan Lagenda (some hilarious miscommunication with the local Sape Masters), which was enjoyable.  Then “Blown Away” at Iban Longhouse (although it had its moments, the musicians failed to jell and we bailed out early) to get a good spot for an special extra session, a unique treat, the Leweton Woman’s Water Music, where six women from Vanuatu created some amazing sounds with their hands splashing waist high in the lake.  You would’ve sworn that they had drums in that water!  Then back to Dewan Lagenda for “the rhythm method”.  You can rarely go wrong with percussionists—they know how to get down and get all of us dancing with Max Singh of Kissmet and Raul Villa of Joaquin Diaz leading the way.

Haircuts at Rainforest World Music Festival

Earlier, prior to the workshops, to beat the crowd later, (instead of getting fancy haircuts)Jenny and I visited the Rainforest World Craft Bazaar, where Jenny bought a few necklaces, and I bought one as a house decoration.  We also met several friends including Lesley and Aidan, and Lynn.  This is one of the cool things about coming here, the friends you meet.  In fact, on the way home after our first visit, we met Martin from Editions Didier Millet who was also there.  We exchanged business cards, then hooked up again a couple of years later on Facebook, and then he contacted me in 2010 and asked me to write the text for Spirit of Malaysia which came out in February 2011.

Every year since then we have run into friends and former USM students from Penang (and from UNIMAS, too).  One year, my friend Earl was making an educational tour through the region on behalf of Brigham Young University-Hawaii.  I had met him at a conference in Penang in 2004, visited him in 2006 at his university in Hawaii prior to the Maui Writers Conference.  Now he was returning the favor with a visit to Kuching.  I told him about the RWMF, which he would just be missing by a few days and asked if he could rearrange his schedule, a major ordeal since he had all these meetings arranged in several countries, but he managed to pull it off.  The very next year, the first person we ran into at the RWMF was Earl.  He had enjoyed it so much; he came back on his own.  We’ve been sharing our mat with others nearly every year since then, following up on Rob’s hospitality our first visit.

Returning to our mat, we settled back to an enjoyable evening of music that rotated between two stages (hence our choice where to sit with some covering in case of rain).  First up was The Shin from the country Georgia—we were mesmerized not only by their music but by the dancing of one of its members.  Next up was the Pacific Curls from New Zealand, three ladies who played 13 instruments.  Ilgi from Latvia was next, followed by Paddy Keenan from Ireland, who interestingly did a beautiful rendition of “Midnight Train to Georgia”.  Next was Warsaw Village Band from Poland, Joaquin Diaz from Dominican Republic and Lisa Haley & Zydekats from USA. Quite a varied international line up, as you can see.  Unfortunately, we had to leave early since we had a long drive ahead of us.  But we’ll be back next year.  After that first taste in 2006, we vowed never to miss it again.

Making a Decision to Write

I’ve made three crucial decisions to write.  One was leaving Kinko’s to move to Malaysia to write full time (or until my money ran out).  Another was deciding to go to Maui Writers Conference at a time when I was in between teaching positions and my wife was pregnant (had been planning this for over a year).  And a third was to leave teaching at Unimas last year, without a net, to write full time.

To be successful they say, all you have to do is make a decision and then to back that up with consistent action that will take you in the direction of your goal.  Publishing novels was one of my goals, one of the reasons I decided to move to this tropical island.  But you can’t write in a vacuum; you need to get out in the world to see what the real world is really like, and I thought by going to Maui (I know, hardly the real world) I would get a huge dose of some writing reality--the good news (it’s possible) and the bad (there’s a lot of talented competition).  It was at Maui where I met Graham Brown, who at the time, was just like the rest of us, had a dream to write and publish his books.  Unlike many of us, he kept attending other writing conferences where he eventually met an agent who believed in his talent and then last year his first two novels were published, Black Rain and Black Sun.

Prior to going to Maui, I worked with a pair of novelists in Penang, one of whom this year found an agent and her book went to auction.  (Until the book comes out, for privacy reasons, she wants to maintain a low profile.) So I blogged about another writer, that a friend of mine had met, Amanda Hockings, who the week before had broken out in a huge way.  As I wrote about before, when you meet writers who break out, it expands your own belief system.  Instead of buying into all of the naysayers (even the ones residing inside your head) that the publishing industry is impossible, especially now that it’s in such a state of flux (upheaval by some accounts), so it’s best to avoid altogether until things settle down.  Obviously that’s not true for the people I just mentioned and a whole lot of others.

Then a year ago, I made the decision to walk away from renewing my contract to teach creative writing (and general English) because I felt, in more ways than one, that even though it was paying the bills, it was holding me back from ever achieving my dream to publish my novels.  Or maybe I was just using that teaching position (and marking all those papers) as a handy excuse.  Either way, I knew it was time to leave if I’m ever going to achieve my original dream.  I decided to just go for it.

Two weeks ago, I got a flash of insight to change the title of a third novel (the third novel title I changed this year—one for each of my three novels), and everything seemed to click.  The title change, as with the other two books, made me think of the novel in a whole new light and gave it a new focus.  Suddenly for this 23^rd draft, I thought, this could work, and the title also doubles as a cool metaphor.  (**The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady.  The previous title was The Lonely Affair of Jonathan Brady.)  

I hadn’t worked on this novel in over a year, and I had been holding back from it in favor of the other two novels, each requiring massive rewriting for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award. But when the new title idea struck, I knew it was time to act on it that very day.

So once I made the decision to rewrite this third novel for the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Contest, where it was an almost-finalist for their 2008 contest, I wasn’t sure if I had enough time, other than line-editing it and making those corrections.  Then I got the news that the deadline, which had already been pushed back from 1 April to 1 May, just got pushed back to 15 May! (Is this an example how providence moves for you once you make a decison?)  Thus now I got plenty of time to complete it, so long as I remain focused and cut out all distractions, like the Internet TimeThief.

It all began with a decision.  In this case, it’s a culmination of decisions that I’ve been making draft after draft going back far too many years, but I like to think, that each decision I made with this novel has been a natural progression that will ultimately lead to the goal I set back in the US when I made that first decision to leave a safe, secure position for the life of an expatriate writer, now living in Borneo.
                      --Robert Raymer, Borneo Expat Writer

* By the way, shutting down that Internet when you don't need it has been a life saver this past week.  I was able to crank!

**update:  The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady is short listed for 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Contest

***Update: The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady just advanced to the Quarterfinals of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award 2012!