INTERVIEW MALACHI EDWIN VETHAMANI: Robert Raymer chats with Malaysian Writer Malachi Edwin Vethamani on Writing and Publishing his Books

I was introduced to Edwin back in 2006 when I gave a creative writing workshop for MELTA, the Malaysian English Language Teaching Association, in Kuching.  At the time, I had been based in Penang and was considering moving to Sarawak with my Sarawakian wife and our young family (we were expecting our second child) and I thought I could make some connec­tions at the conference and apply for a position at Universiti Malaysia Sarawak where I later taught creative writing.  Every time I saw Edwin, who was the President of MELTA from June 2001 till January 2008, he always had a big friendly smile on his face.

Not only is Edwin a gifted poet, but also a short story writer, editor, bibliographer and academic.  He is currently Professor, School of English, University of Nottingham Malaysia.  He holds a doctoral degree from University of Nottingham UK.  His most recent publication is his first col­lection of short stories entitled Coitus Interruptus and Other Stories (Maya Press, 2018). He has published two volumes of poems, Life Happens (Maya Press, 2017) and Complicated Lives (Maya Press, 2016).  He edited a volume of Malaysian poems covering a period of 60 years entitled Malchin Testament: Malaysian Poems (Maya Press, 2017).  In 2003, he edited a volume of poems for young adults entitled In-Sights: Malaysian Poems (Maya Press, 2003).  In 2015, he published A Bibliography of Malaysian Literature in English (Petaling Jaya, Maya Press).  In addition to being a past President of MELTA, he was also Vice President of Asia TEFL from 2008 to 2013.  He is a recipient of the Chevening Award (1993-1996) and the Ful­bright Scholar­ship (2000).  He had received the Asian Education Leadership Award from the World Education Congress in Mumbai, India in June 2013.

 

  

RR: Lately you’ve been rather productive with the recent publications of two books of poetry, Complicated Lives and Life Happens, a collection of short stories Coitus Interruptus and Other Stories, plus the Malaysian anthology Malchin Testament: Malaysian Poems!

People often say or think…who has time to read poetry?  Sadly, I was one of them until I found a way!  Red Lights.  Like most drivers I detest getting caught at a red light, especial­ly when I am running late, but then I found the perfect solution — a way of killing two birds with one poem!  I keep a book of poetry beside me.  Now I often wish the red lights were slightly longer so I could finish the poem I’m in the midst of reading.

This past year, thanks to those red lights, I have read most if not all of your published poetry.  They even in­spired me to dig through my unread collection of poetry that I had accumulated over the years with the best of intentions and began reading them…poem after poem that I might never have gotten around to read.  And for this, I am grate­ful for you for getting the poetry ball rolling.

 

One of your poetry collections is titled Complicated Lives, which seems to sum up our lives these days.  Are our lives truly more complicated than those of previous generations, even that of our parents, and does that complication give us more possibilities (angst) to write about?  I’m also thinking, perhaps, the various sexual permutations that seem to exist in your own writing.  Does complicated lives produce better poetry and prose?  Or just better gossip for the readers?

Edwin:  I believe every generation has had its own kind of complications.  I would agree that our lives are indeed complicated.  We would wish for simpler lives but I’m afraid that’s not often the case for many of us.  The complications do give us (at least, it does for me) more to write about. It allows me to explore the various kinds of relationships we find ourselves in, not just with fel­low human beings but with fellow creatures and the environment itself.  The sexual permutations are often about love and the desire to be loved; gender is secondary.  And some of my poems deal with sexual desire and how that could complicate lives.  It can be difficult to separate sex and love and that could cause its own complications.  “Better gossip?”  No!  There’s no gossip in the poems.  There’s both pain and celebration.

RR: True, but that doesn’t prevent readers (and nonreaders) from gossiping about the poems (and the poet), which was what happened one hundred and fifty years ago when Walt Whitman published Leaves of Grass (and added to it throughout his life).  Speaking of Whitman, I recently had this surreal literary moment.  While in the midst of reading Leaves of Grass (at red lights), I was reading Lincoln by Gore Vidal (at home), when a clerk-cum-novelist asked Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of Treasury, to consider a clerkship for a great poet.  “He comes to you, sir, with a letter of introduction and com­mendation from Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

Suddenly I had goose bumps; I knew he was refer­ring to Walt Whitman!  I knew he had gone to Wash­ing­ton D.C. during the Civil War be­cause his brother had been wounded in a recent battle; then he stayed to help to comfort the other wounded soldiers, which he wrote about in Leaves of Grass.  Al­though he never met Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln did know him (and his infamous reputation) as did Lincoln’s personal secretary, John Hay who later wrote a book about Lin­coln and had asked Walt Whitman, since he was in town, to sign his copy of Leaves of Grass.  Then Walt Whitman added several tributes to Abraham Lincoln after he had been assas­sinated.

 

I don’t know how many degrees of separation that is, but sudden­ly I felt like I personally knew Walt Whit­man; and thanks to reading his poetry, I was inspired to read four books about the Civil War that had been lying around for years waiting for…someday.  That day came after reading your poetry, Edwin, because that got me to read Leaves of Grass.  So, who knows where a good book of poetry or even a single poem can take you if you let it?  For me, it brought me closer to an infamous Poet and a famous President and a terrible Civil War that still haunts the American psyche today.

In Life Happens you quote the Bible “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sin”.  Love — wanton love or self-indulgent love — can also cause a multi­tude of sin (and a few marriage breakups along the way).  Do lovers, more today, than in the past, go too far in their kiss-and-tell books or their hook-up and broad­casting their blogs all over the social media?  For the lover, it can increase their notoriety (Don Juan, anyone?  Or the Kardashians?), but what about the named or flushed-out victims who must deal with the real-time fallout that can destroy their current relation­ships and wreck their professional and personal lives?  Are people going too far to inflict pain on others (payback) and even themselves?  Is poetry and even prose, based on your own writing, truly cathartic or are writers merely a glutton for punishment?  But at whose expense?

Edwin: I certainly do not subscribe to any form of kiss and tell in my writing.  Those who write such real-life confessional books are certainly not doing it for any kind of literary reasons.  Sadly, that seems to be what some publishers want, and they know these books have readers and they will sell copies.

My poems are often drawn from various sources and I rework them and create my own images and metaphors that attempt to capture the experience, the moment or the emotion.  Writing prose and poetry are different experiences.  Writing poetry sometimes has an element of being thera­peu­tic.

RR:  As does writing prose, which I had experienced firsthand during a divorce and a custody battle.  I wrote a long story that suddenly answered my unasked question…where was she coming from?  Why was she doing this?  And what had I done that led to this?  And, more importantly, what could I do to help resolve this in a way that would be best for both of us and our child?

 

Edwin:  Some of my early poems, especially the ‘Mother Poems’ in Complicated Lives deal with my coming to terms with my mother’s old age and Alzheimer’s illness.  These poems are very close to me and I still find it difficult to read them aloud in the Readings sessions.  I actually invite others to read these poems.

Some of my poems have been described as confessional poems.  Here, I’d say that I’m not nec­es­sarily the persona in all of these poems.  Poetry allows for this ambiguity and I do draw on it.  When I write stories, I draw from various sources.  If one listens and looks hard enough you see and hear so many things that give fodder to writers.  They are seeds that allow for fertilization with the imagination and you have your stories.  I often take an issue or a problem and see how I can give it a fresh look.  My stories do not have a clear closure as I want the readers to continue to think about the characters and what options they may have.

RR: We write, if not for ourselves, then for others, it seems to me, even if it is only for one person.  What may be closure for the writer and closure for the reader may be very, very different.  It’s how we react or respond to a partic­ular piece of writing or, by association, how it links to our past that suddenly awakens us or even provides a solution that we hadn’t been seeking.  Each reader may res­pond to a differ­ent aspect of the story or the poem, even to a particular word that reson­ates for them in unexpected ways.  Thus, the cause and the effect can go on and on for generations of read­ers…long after the author had passed away.

Another of your quotes from the same collection is TS Eliot, “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.”  This is a true sentiment that applies to various aspects of our lives, including running a marathon, but specific to writing, based on your own experiences, please elaborate.

Edwin:  I subscribe to what Eliot is advocating in this quote.  I like to think that my writing is an attempt at “going too far”.  One needs to be careful with what one decides to publish.  There are things I write and don’t publish.  But I certainly needed to write them for myself.  My editor is my barometer who cautions me, and I rarely disagree with him.  Some of my readers say I’m brave to publish what they read in my books.  So maybe, now I can go a little further.  Malay­­sians self-censor for many reasons.  There is the fear that our work might be banned or at worse the writer gets arrested.  One has to be careful with matters of race and religion.  My writings do deal with race and aspects of religion, but I am very careful not to offend though I might touch on these issues.

RR:  I remember reading one young poet in an anthology that I was asked to write a comment for and it seemed to me that was exactly what he was trying to do, offend.  My advice to tone it down fell on deaf ears; I had told him, later, when you mature, you are going to cringe and regret this.

What got you interested in reading and writing poetry?  Who were your early Malay­sian influences or mentors at school?  Which poets, both local and overseas, grabbed you or shook you out of your complacency and made you think, this is what I want to do!

Edwin: From an early age, I loved reading.  A habit I picked up from my eldest brother. As we could not afford to buy books, I joined the British Council library and the library at the Lincoln’s Cultural Centre.  Living in Brickfields in the 60s and studying in Methodist Boys’ Secondary School, Kuala Lumpur, I could walk to both the libraries.  I used to look for new books and try to be the first reader.

In my 20s, I read more poetry than prose.  And I read more modern poetry than I did the Roman­tics like Wordsworth.  In fact, I only began to like Wordsworth much later in life. I enjoyed T.S. Eliot from my Form 6 days.  I loved the way he wrote about people and life after World War Two.  His religious poems resonated well with me, coming from a Christian back­ground.  I try to capture our contemporary society in my poems too.  

As in the case of poetry, I read more modern prose writers like Virginia Woolf, Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster.  Shakespeare grew on me very quickly too.  I started reading Shakespeare in Form 4.  I had a wonderful English Literature teacher.  She introduced me to many writers in­cluding Ovid.  The American writers came much later in my life, then I discovered Walt Whit­man, Emily Dickinson, Hemmingway, Steinbeck, Faulkner and Baldwin and Scott Fitz­gerald.

Among the earliest Malaysian writers, I read were Ee Tiang Hong, Muhammad Haji Salleh, Wong Phui Nam and Hilary Tham.  Edwin Thumboo had just brought out a volume of Malay­sian and Singaporean poems entitled ‘The Second Tongue’ and it opened the door to local writing, especially poetry.  I read Malaysian short stories and novels much later.

I had the privilege of being a student of Professor Lloyd Fernando.  He was certainly a mentor and role model. We became friends and he gave me access to his personal library in his home and much of my early research on the bibliography of Malaysian literature was done here.

RR:  Getting the right teacher or lecturer can make a huge difference; one turns you on, the other shuts you down.  For your Malaysian anthology Malchin Testament: Malaysian Poems, which spans sixty years and covers nearly sixty poets, what were your criteria for choosing the poems?  I could imagine that would have been a difficult under­taking, not wanting to leave someone deserving out, against cries of bias or showing favouritism or having to defend yourself to the inevitable backlash from fellow poets and friends, “How come so-and-so has four poems and I only have three!”

Edwin:  I had several criteria for selecting the poems.  First, that the poets are Malaysians or are poets born in Malaysia and may now have gone abroad but continue to write about Malaysia. Second, I chose only poems that have been previously published. 

My work on The Biblio­graphy of Malaysian Literature in English helped me to find just about every published poetry collection by Malaysians poets.  Third, I only published poems that the writers gave me permis­sion to publish as they hold the copyrights to the poems.  The number of poems for each poet represented the volume of the poet’s publications.  There are some poets with just one or two poems.  These are usually the emerging poets whose works have appeared in anthologies and the poets did not have their own collection of poems.  There are more poems from the established Malaysian poets.

RR:  That sounds fair; I hope they were all happy!  I liked how the anthology, as you stated, “brings together voices of poets from multicul­tural and multilingual Malaysian appropriating the English language for their own expression” which I feel is a tribute for all Malaysians, something everyone should be proud of.  But has there been a struggle for this multicultural and multilingual Malaysian voices to be heard and accepted by all?  Is this an on-going process or has Malay­sia turned the poetic corner, so to speak, and embraced all of these voices, enriching the literature of Malaysia in the process?

Edwin: Malaysians write in an English which is quite distinctive.  We can recognize Malaysian English both in its standard and non-standard forms.  We can see the influences of the local languages on Malaysian English and it certainly enriches the language, but we need to bear in mind that it should have intelligibility for both local and international readers.

Writing in English in Malaysia has not been easy.  Having the writers’ voices heard is a good start.  We do not have many publishers who want to publish poetry.  There is the option of self-publication.  Even established poets like Wong Phui Nam self-publish. Most poets look for options abroad and online literary journals.  It slightly better if you are publishing prose but that too is very limited though the opportunities are more in the last few years.

Those who write in English in Malaysia do not get any governmental support unlike those who write in the Malay language.  This lack of support has not deterred the writers as we see many more young people writing in English than ever before.

There are some success stories of Malaysians publishing in English who have won awards and received international recognition. The first person to win such an award was Shirley Geok-lin Lim in 1981 when she won the Commonwealth Poetry Prize for a debut volume.  Tan Twan Eng, Tash Aw and Rani Manicka have won prizes for their novels.  This year, Saras Manickam won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Asia. So, it is looking good for Malaysia, writing in English. As a literary tradition, we are only about sixty years old.  There is a lot of diversity in the writing and that for me makes Malaysian writing in English rather vibrant.

RR:  Plus Ivy Ngeow’s Cry of the Flying Rhino and Bernice Chauly’s Once We Were There both won prizes.   Having witnessed that transition in the thirty plus years since I first came to Malaysia, I wholeheartedly agree.

Anthologies...poetry...short stories...is a novel the next in your future offerings, or is that risking going too far?

Edwin:  I am working on a number of projects.  I hope to bring out a collection of Malaysian short stories, similar to that of Malchin Testament: Malaysian Poems.  It’s ready to go to the publisher.  This project has taken a lot of time as I want it to be representative of stories from the 1960s to the present.

I have also been writing poems and short stories.  This I do constantly.  I’ve re-written couple of my short stories into scripts, hoping they will be staged at some point.  I was very encouraged when three of my stories from Coitus Interrupted and Other Stories were used to stage a per­for­mance called ‘Love Matters’ in Mumbai by Playpen Performing Arts Trust directed by Ashish Joshi in 2017 and 2018.

I would look to write a novel but maybe not yet.  Some of my short stories could have the seeds for a full-blown novel, we’ll have to wait and see.

RR:  Back in the 1990’s, I used to be the Penang Coordinator at MACEE, the Malaysian-American Commis­sion on Education Exchange, which was run under the Fulbright Program.  As a re­cipient of a Fulbright Scholar­ship, tell us about your Ful­bright experience.  How has the program impacted your writing and your profession­al life?

Edwin: I totally enjoyed my Fulbright experience.  It was the first of a series that was called “Reading America”.  We started at New School University, New York where we were given lectures on a variety of topics ranging from literature to politics and history.  New York City was in itself a learning experience.  There’s so much to see and do. Going to the New York Univer­sity Library and having access to use it was very exciting for me.  I was in all the bookshops, especially Strand.  There were theatres, museums and art galleries to go to.  I can just go on.

We then went to New Mexico.  Here we had a few tours and going to the native Indians reservations was an amazing experience.  Made me feel rather sad when we were told about the history and violent past with the white settlers.  A highlight in the New Mexico section was going to Georgia O’ Keeffe’s house and seeing her work.  Finally, we went to Washington D.C.  Here, we re­ceived various guided tours, including the White House and some monuments.  The visit to Library of Congress is something I will remember.  What an amazing library both architecturally and in terms of its collection of materials.

The Fulbright program provided an excellent opportunity for networking.  There were about twenty of us from different countries who shared similar interests, mostly literature.  We are still in contact and I’ve been to visit some of them.  We continue to communicate and read each other’s work.  This has cer­tainly contributed in our professional lives.

RR:  I'm sure it did.  Hopefully you'll inspire other writers to apply.  I once had an amusing experience with Fulbright in Kuala Lumpur when attending a for­mal dinner in the mid-1990s.  The set menu consisted of, among several delicious dishes, two Brussel sprouts, which I thought a rather peculiar choice.  I wondered who had taken the poetic licence to suggest such an unpop­ular dish for the menu of a formal dinner filled with hundreds of Fulbright scholars, Malaysian government officials, and interna­tion­al digni­taries?  No doubt, someone very important and everyone was afraid to say, “Aiyoh, are you crazy?”  Instead they meekly shook their heads in agreement.  Not to any­one’s sur­prise (I call it poetic justice), those same two Brussel sprouts were the only un­touched items left on the hundreds of plates taken away by the waiters.

What else would you like us to know about you, about your writing, or any writing topic that you feel passionate about that needs addressing?

Edwin:  I like to present a Malaysian Indian perspective which is contemporary but also deals with the past.  The past is very important to me, for example the loss of people and places.  Brickfields, my birthplace, features in my poems.  I like to write about loss, longing and loving.  My hope is that my treatment of these themes and issues will be different and will give a fresh and unique perspective.

I am currently doing a book tour to many universities.  The purpose of this tour is to meet my readers and potential readers.  It gives me an opportunity to meet young people and very much want to share my love for poetry and literature.  So far, I’ve visited about eight universities in Peninsular Malaysia, one in Sarawak, one in Singapore and two in Taiwan.

RR:  What advice would you give young poets or writers who are struggling to finish (or even seriously start) their first book?

Edwin:  If you want to write, my advice is to read.  Read widely and read as much as you can. That is certainly the first step towards becoming a writer.  I would advise writers to have reading buddies.  People who you could trust to be honest with you about your work.  Also, a poet or short story writer, one could send poems and stories to literary journals and online magazines.  Many of these are peer-reviewed and they often give useful feedback; getting them published is certainly a great way of building one’s confidence.  Hopefully, with this one publication they will have enough writings and confidence to get more work published, possibly even a book.

My interview with Malachi Edwin Vethamani has been published in Blue Lotus 19.

Other Interviews with 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. 

Five part Maugham and Me series

Joseph Conrad and Me

Trust the Novel Writing (and rewriting)Process. 

     
      —Borneo Expat Writer

MELTA International Conference 2010

Here I am smiling after lunch just prior to my workshop "Using Critical Thinking Skills to Create Ideas and to Create Stories" at the 19th MELTA International Conference 2010 at Four Points Sheraton, Kuching, 17-18 June. The theme was “Transformations in English Language Education: Vision, Innovation, Implementation". The good thing about conferences, it gets me out of the house, I get to meet some new people, exchange some ideas, network a little, attend some talks, have some fun at other people’s workshops (I was in drama skit playing the part of a Chinese father who’s upset with his daughter).

It’s always interesting for me as a writer when I meet someone I’ve never met before but who has read one of my books or some of my articles in magazines (“Prove Them Wrong” in Quill, and “Merdeka Miracle” in Going Places that I wrote with Lydia Teh and Tunku Halim, were both mentioned), so they sort of know me. Others were vaguely familiar, having attended a previous workshop of mine or bought an autographed copy of one of my books from me. Some I recognized right away, having taught them at USM in Penang when they took a break from teaching in Sarawak to pursue their English Language and Literature Studies degree.

The turnout for the workshop was good, more than 50 people. They had me in the main ballroom, Rainforest Two, where there’s this huge stage and a row of sofa chairs for the VIP’s for the opening ceremonies, totally unsuitable for a workshop. But Agnes, a student at Batu Lintang Teachers Training College, who was nervous and excited assisting me since this was her first international conference and here I am her first American, helped me with rearranging the table and flip chart to eliminate the distance between the participants and me. It worked out fine. Glad I arrived early to sort this out. Now I was free to interact with the participants and not feel so cut off from them.


By the end of the workshop, as you can see, I felt pretty drained, but still happy to sign autographs. In all, after two days, I sold 25 books, 17 Lovers and Strangers Revisited and 8 Tropical Affairs.

*Thanks to Santhi for the photos and being my Chinese wife in the drama skit!

**Announcement latest workshop:  Writing Your Life Stories Workshop—Kuching! 28 April 2012 (with links to other workshops and writing tips!)

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 

Malay Mail, 5 November 2008

Revisiting tales
By GABEY GOH November 05, 2008 Categories: Blogspot

When expatriate Robert Raymer (during a moment of weakness) did a Google search on himself last year to gauge the buzz surrounding his book, what he discovered was a unique take on the old adage: "Never judge a book by its cover".

"A blog entry caught my eye and caught me by surprise, so that's what people are thinking about my book!" writes the American-born author of Lovers and Strangers Revisited, a collection of short stories set in Malaysia.

The post in question, was that of a student who shared a conversation with the book store cashier, about the misconstrued stigma attached to book titles – while picking up a copy of Raymer's book.

"After reading this blog entry, I had to smile – so that's why the book wasn’t selling well at USM bookstore! People were too embarrassed by the title. Sounds like others would stare or glare at them for even picking up the book, let alone trying to buy it," he continued.

The biggest boon of blogging for writers has been its role, not only as a launching pad to promote their works, but also as an evolving workbook and diary for their ideas. Along with his musings about the craft of writing and the business of publishing, visitors to his blog will get to delve into his current project.

"Now I’m doing a series of posts, as part of my writing blog, called The Story Behind the Story: Lovers and Strangers Revisited , whereby I blog about how the various stories came to be written," says Raymer, who noted it would be interesting for readers to see how much the stories, over a span of 20 years, have evolved.

How and when did you start your blog?

When blogging was first recommended to me by several writers, it didn’t make any sense, plus it sounded like it would eat into my limited writing time, since I teach full time and have small children at home. Then Krista Goon, whom I taught creative writing to at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), kept sending me links to various writers, mostly Malaysian, who have blogs. One was Lydia Teh, she was reacting to a blog post by Sharon Bakar, about the realities of publishing books in Malaysia. It struck a chord with me and I shot off a reply to Lydia’s blog, which turned out to be a rather lengthy comment. In fact, it was a full length article because I had a lot to say on the matter based on my years of experience publishing books in Malaysia and Singapore.

Having written this article, I thought, why not start my own blog on writing with the same article (and on the same day), which I did on May 19, 2007. The hardest decision was deciding what to call it. I came up with BorneoExpatWriter: Borneo, since I was moving there, Expat, since that is what I am, and Writer, because that is what I do.

Has your blogging changed your life?

Blogging hasn’t changed my life, just my writing life, or how I view writing. Before, I would write or pitch articles for publications, but now I write posts on writing to help inspire other writers. Then later, I think some of these would make pretty good articles, so I would rewrite them and submit them for publication. This is a recent development, but so far one has already been published. So blogging in this sense serves a new purpose for me, it gets me to write articles that I may not have written in the first place, plus they become fodder for paying articles and workshops.

It’s also nice when readers of my stories and former writing students stumble across my website or blog and contact me. Also the website/blog is invaluable for editors, agents, publishers and reviewers to get more information about me and to read samples of my writing. So far I’ve got one US$500 writing assignment from the US, one full page interview and book review ( Borneo Post ), and one workshop presentation (in Miri) from strangers who came across my website.

Any regrets?

I only wished I had started blogging sooner, before there were a billion other bloggers out there.

What in "Cybersphere" amazes you?

How quickly unfounded rumors can spread and how much damage one person with a perceived grievance or a grudge (or just because he can), can humiliate or destroy someone’s life by posting malicious gossip or doctored photographs or stealing their identity and their money! Scary!

If you really had to choose one website to interact with?

Your Success Store and its weekly Your Achievement Ezine because of all the great advice that you get from leading success experts on all aspects of your life, from people like Jim Rohn, Denis Waitley, John Gray, Brian Tracy, Zig Ziglar, you name it. It’s not just one person’s point of view; it’s dozens of the most successful people on this planet, those who’ve walked the walk for years, for decades, before they begin to talk.

What would you really like to achieve through Cyberspace communication?

I would like to find an agent who then finds an international publisher for my novels, someone who has the wisdom and the persistence to attract readers from all over the globe so I can stop teaching and write full time to achieve my goal of publishing 20 bestselling books in 20 years.

If there were someone you could influence to take up blogging, who would it be?

I would like to see a joint blog with Moses, Jesus and Muhammad (with Buddha as a special guest), so they can tell us in their own words what they really said, what they really meant, how we got it all wrong (assuming we did), and how we can start to make it all right before it’s too late. There’s too much anger, hate, wars in this world, and most of it caused by misunderstanding or misinterpreting what those original words really mean.

Memorable incidents?

Blogging from Borneo proves that the world is smaller. A French woman visiting her son in Australia stumbled on my blog and as it turns out she lives 15 minutes from us here in Sarawak, so she invited us over to her lovely house for some appetizers, one of which was smoked salmon from a Dutch man, who does this as a hobby. Oh, that salmon was unbelievable good!

Then a man from Canada contacted me and said he used to take ballroom dancing lessons from this woman in her house in the Bidayuh village, Quop, here in Sarawak. As it turns out, that woman is my wife’s mother. And I didn’t even know that she taught dancing! Maybe I should ask her to teach me, it’s been a while since I last danced the tango.


*Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

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 

“Neighbours”: Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

Hearing some persistent moaning coming from a neighbor’s house two doors away, I went to investigate. With the help of another neighbor, we took the Chinese man, in his mid-fifties, to the Penang General Hospital, where he eventually died. He had drunk the weed killer Paraquat.

For me the story began when I returned to the man's house and found several neighbors gossiping. I was fascinated by all of the comments the neighbors were making, the wild speculations about the family and why the man had taken his life. Some of the things they had said were mean and spiteful. Later, when the man’s wife and daughter returned home, they quickly dispersed, so I was left with the task of having to inform them about the man’s death.

This was the story that fascinated me. The story I wanted to tell was not a first person narrative of my finding this man and all that took place that day (although later I will write about it). Instead, I chose to write about the neighbors themselves and what they said about this family in the aftermath of the suicide. When I began to write the story, after some years had passed, all the details were fresh inside my journal, including details that had completely slipped my memory. This is one of the reasons I insist that my writing students keep a diary/journal.

In writing the story, I decided to leave me, as a character, out of the story. I felt the story would be better without a Westerner or a mat salleh in it. I wanted the dialogue to be natural, spontaneous, and an expat present would alter the dynamics of the group, including the dialogue. My goal was to show how self-centered everyone was, and despite all the bad stuff being said about the man, I wanted the sympathy to shift back to him.

I purposely wrote the story in a neutral tone with the viewpoint of an observer, to avoid racial bias, so no one race in this multiracial society is talking down to another, which became crucial twenty years later when it began to be taught in SPM literature in schools throughout Malaysia. I also wanted to make the story universal, so readers around the world could relate to the characters and also learn about Malaysia, where different races freely mix and socialize, and yes, gossip.

Initially, too many people were coming and going and it was difficult to get a fix on any one character. There were far too many for a short story, so I merged a few characters to make it less cumbersome. I also slowed down the pacing by balancing it out with descriptions and even added a dog, a Pomeranian Spitz (which, I just noticed, was misspelled in the first collection!).

The original title of the story was “Aftermath” and it first appeared in Commentary, a Journal of the National University of Singapore Society, in 1990 and then in Northern Perspective in Australia. By the time the first collection Lovers and Strangers came out, I changed the title to “Neighbors”, which is what the story is about.

Over the years, I changed the names of several of the characters. Sometimes you need to trust your instincts as to whether the name is appropriate for your character. Other times, you try the name on for size and if it doesn’t fit, try another. It’s a not unlike naming your children, but in stories we usually know their character, their traits in advance so that helps.

The story originally began with a paragraph or two of description, to help set the scene, but after revisiting the story for Lovers and Strangers Revisited for the second collection, I opened the story with dialogue: “I suppose there’s a mess in the back seat!” This sets the tone of the story and pulls the reader in quicker. This is the version that was accepted to be part of the 6th cycle for SPM literature (Big L) to be taught throughout Malaysia 2008-2112.  (*Link to the story, revised after French translation.)

For the latest MPH collection, I still had some difficulty getting that initial description of their arrival from the hospital and where the neighbors lived just right, so I kept working on it. I also experimented with the present tense. I liked the effect this created and it seemed to solve some problems, too and it gave the story, and the neighbors, a timeless quality. In 2008, this was published in Thema, in the US, 20 years after I first wrote it.

There used to be an on line discussion of "Neighbours" for students and teachers created by MELTA (Malaysia English Language Teaching Association) on its forum for literature, which had over 20,500 hits and 30 pages of comments before it was archived.

Here's also a link to Denis Harry's article on Mrs Koh in NST 28 August 2010!  Comment: Are you a Mrs Koh?

Also, I’ve adapted “Neighbors” into a play, turning a tragedy into a comedy titled, “One Drink Too Many”, which had been play read twice by Penang Players. I then made a 10-page version of that, "Back from Heaven", ideal for schools or competitions.  At least one school had a good run with it. Just contact me via my website (below) or Facebook if you want a copy. A good story can be expressed in many different ways.

*Here is link to a recent Google Meet with students at UiTM-Penang during a Q-and-A session about "Neighbours" and the motivation of the various characters and why I ended the story where I did. 

Lovers and Strangers Revisited is now getting translated into French as Trois autres Malaisie.

 Here is a review in The Star (MPH) and a link to the other story behind the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.

Update, the 20^th anniversary of Lovers and Strangers Revisited

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