Lovers and Strangers Revisited—Another Revision, Another Look

“You’re revising it?  I thought you just send them the book?” a fellow American writer in Borneo replied, when I mentioned that I’ll be busy the next two weeks revising all the stories for Lovers and Strangers Revisited.   I had just told him that it was confirmed that Éditions GOPE will be translating the collection of Malaysian-set stories into French.

“Yeah, you could do that,” I could’ve replied, but instead, I told him that I saw this as an opportunity to improve the stories for future markets.  I want the best French translation out there and the best English version, too.  Now that I’m getting the book into Europe, other readers might recommend it to other publishers in other countries, especially those with an interest in Southeast Asia, and they might be interested into translating, too.

           

Plus there are plenty of English speaking countries, including the US, UK, and Australia, where the collection is not yet published, and I do hope to get this collection into those markets.  As I writer, I believe in giving myself a helping hand (even playing salesman).  If I can improve the stories by tweaking them some more, shouldn’t I do that?

           

I remember several people seemed to take offense in the comments when Sharon Bakar blogged about the Booktalk that I gave at MPH in 2008 (when the new MPH edition came out) after relating that I had been revising the stories since Lovers and Strangers (Heinemann 1993) to improve them in order to get them published overseas.  I also ripped them apart to make them better for Lovers and Strangers Revisited (Silverfish 2005), and revised them again for MPH, and this was even before their editors offered their own input.  One Australian author said she would never do that with her collection, but then she added that she sort of wished she had because she knows she could’ve improved them.  When the MPH version ended up winning an award, I felt justified, and now it has attracted a French translation.

           

For me, that first version back in 1993 was the best version—at the time.  But I grew as a writer, and after I began teaching creating writing (and a lot of grammar) and revising all of my students work I became a better writer.  Now it was merely a matter of applying what I was teaching, and being honest with myself.  Is that the best you can do?  Can’t you rephrase that better?  Do you really need that cliché!  That expression is rather trite or that metaphor doesn’t seem to be working.  Can you fix it?  How about that beginning or ending, can you make it more effective?  Do you really need all that back story?  Can you trim it?

           

For this latest revision process, I asked myself similar questions. The more questions you ask yourself, the more answers you find. I changed “The Watcher” from past tense to present tense as I had done a couple of stories in previous revisions, including "Neighbours", to make it more effective. I changed the ending to “Smooth Stones” after getting a lot of close calls on the story in the US.  They always cited the ending as being "predictable".

In “Home for Hari Raya”, I found myself changing the name Ida to Rina; it just didn’t feel right for a university student (always reminded me of someone I knew), and in “Transaction in Thai”, even though the story won’t be in the French version since it wasn’t set in Malaysia, but when The French editor mentioned that the name “Jek” was derogatory, I  found a website that lists Thai baby names and came up with Daw.

          

For each story, in addition to tightening the writing wherever I could, I went on a dash hunt (cutting two-thirds), a passive hunt (converting most into active), and cut out what can easily be implied.

           

Now I feel satisfied, and the revised versions may do better as I continue to sell them as individual stories to literary journals and on-line magazines.  More importantly, I feel more confident about the collection as I pitch them to agents and publishers.  The stories, judging by their track record, are good, and they’ve certainly come a long way since 1993 when they first got compiled into a published collection. (When blogging The Story Behind the Story series, I was making direct comparisons from the first published version, some dating back twenty years, up until the MPH version and I was taken aback by how much they've changed while still being essentially the same story; it's in the details.) Even now this is far from the end of their journey.  In fact, I have a rather strong feeling, as they finally break out of the Malaysia/Singapore market, that this is merely the beginning... 

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

**Update: Book orders for Trois autres Malaisie.    E-book orders.  Or recommend it to your friends, especially those who would like to know more about Malaysia or have an interest in Southeast Asia.

  

Here's a link to the intro and excerpts, and to four reviews of Trois Autres Malaisie in eurasie.net, Malaisie.org, easyvoyage.com, and Petit Futé mag.

***Here’s an update to the French blog about Trois autres Malaisie and my meeting the French translator Jerome Bouchaud in Kuching, and my involvement in a French documentary for Arte (June 2017) on The Sensual Malaysia of Somerset Maugham.
 

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, Cyberspot 5 January 2009

For me, thanks to MPH, 2008 and cyberspace has been about publicity and helping other writers write. I stepped up my blogging and gave writers (and readers) a glimpse into the writing process with my on-going Story Behind the Story of Lovers and Strangers Revisited series, which also gave me a real-world look at my own progress as a writer, something I had been doubting. Now I could see the difference!

Then Sharon Bakar nudged me into the world of Facebook and I decided to use the new MPH cover – it’s prettier than my own face – as my “face”. Besides being interviews online, I even got Youtubed by Krista Goon (Mayakirana) when she visited me in Kuching. She and her husband Nic are nudging me to turn my website into a business, so that may well be in my cyberworld future.

The downside of cyberworld is that it eats into real world writing time. It’s all too tempting, seductive, even voyeuristic, peeking and delving into everyone’s Facebook, blogs, and websites, and replying those blogs that strike a chord – Sharon has far too many of them, which means she’s doing something right! It’s that perfect balance between cyberworld networking, family time, and producing publishable work that I’m seeking for 2009

Wish me luck, and I wish everyone a Happy, Healthy, Productive, and Prosperous New Year!

  --BorneoExpatWriter

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 

Networking to a New Book

I just networked myself to a new book. OK, the idea for the book wasn’t new. It had been on the backburner for about ten years, one of those one-of-these-days-I-want-to-compile-my-articles-into-a-book-but-never-found-the-time-nor-the-inclination-to-get-around-to-it. Sound familiar? This could apply to any creative endeavor including starting your own business, or taking an exotic vacation, or…

Two things need to happen when you network. One is you have to listen. We can all talk and share our ideas with others – that’s the easy part. But how well do we listen? How well do we act upon what we hear? That’s the second part of network­ing, the most critical part, too – action. Or as Jim Rohn, the success guru for an entire generation of world class speakers and self-help motivators would say, “take massive action”. Ideas are as common as clichés about ideas, starting with “they’re a dime a dozen”. But without action, they’re just that – ideas that can sit on the back burner of your life and follow you to your grave.

A sad thought.

I didn’t want that to happen to this book, nor to all the other novels, narratives, and screenplays that I have written and rewritten over the last twenty-two years. A ton of work, but little to show for it other than a collection of short stories.

When networking with others, sometimes fate can give you a nudge. Having made the move to Sarawak in order to shake up the complacency of my writing life (and to make my wife happy), I was starting to feel restless, and found myself procrastinating on a number of writing projects. So when Krista Goon, my blog­ging men­tor, ex-student, and website designer (along with her husband Nic) sent me a link to a blog by Lydia Teh, whom I haven’t met but whose book Honk! If You’re Malaysian was climbing the best­sellers list in Malaysia, I decided to check it out.

Lydia wrote in “What Sells Books” (April 30, 2007) the three things you need to sell a book and the most important, it seems, is having a good book distributor. You can have great ideas, great publicity (even great book launches), but if the books aren’t in the stores they won’t sell (not in the quantities you’d like). Lydia’s blog was inspired by a blog that a friend of mine, Sharon Bakar, had written “What We Need” (April 29, 2007), which I also checked out. Both blogs struck a chord with me, so I wrote on Lydia’s blog a rather lengthy comment-cum-article “Publishing Books in Malaysia/Singapore” based on my twenty years of publishing experience in Malaysia. I then started my own blog on writing with the same article, something else I had been meaning to get around to.

In the article I wrote about my frustration of getting my book Lovers and Strangers Revisited into bookstores in Kuching (mainly a distribution problem because of the additional expenses for getting the books shipped to Sarawak from Peninsular Malaysia). The publisher Silverfish was willing, but its distributor who would incur the additional expenses, was not. Lydia wrote in response to my article that she felt that her publisher MPH was doing a great job of getting her books into bookstores. (The fact that they have a lot of bookstores help; but sadly, at the time of this writing, none in Kuching.)

Either way, I listened.

Two months later, at the end of July, I was attending a conference in Penang to give a creative writing workshop, and while autographing books, I heard a passing comment from one of the book distributors that MPH was opening a new bookstore in Kuching. I listened and asked for more details.

Then while standing in the food line, Lee Su Kim introduced herself. Having written three books, including the very successful Malaysian Flavours, she had nothing but praise for Eric Forbes at MPH whom she worked with at her previous publisher, I believe, and urged me to contact him.

Again, I listened.

Since I was in Penang I met up with several Penang Players friends including Mary Schneider, the columnist for The Star who mentioned that Eric Forbes expressed an interest in turning the articles from her popular column into a book, but at the time she was unsure whether or not to do this – it would require sifting through over 500 articles and organizing them into various categories, a massive amount of work.

I listened and also offered some advice. Fortunately, ten years ago I had already organized about a 100 articles into various potential categories, so I had a head start.

That evening Mary and I and a few Penang Players friends had dinner with Joelle Saint-Arnoult and the subject of The Secret came up, so we all went to her place and watched it. That really got us thinking about our lives. The possibilities seemed endless, if only we learned how to ask, how to be grateful for what we do have, and to have faith in the universe by using the Law of Attraction. I listened very carefully – my whole future was at stake!

While in Penang, I attended the Little Penang Street Market to sell the remainder of my books so I wouldn’t have to carry them back to Kuching. As fate would have it, Penang Players was involved in reading some work by Beth Yahp, who also happened to be in Penang to conduct a workshop of her own. Although we had never met, as the fiction editor of Off The Edge, she had accepted my short story “Following the Cat” for their July 2006 issue. I attended the reading along with Mary and Krista (who decided to join me at the last minute since I was in Penang). After­wards, Beth mentioned in passing that MPH is bringing out her novel Crocodile Fury, which was originally published in 1992, a year before my own collection of short stories.

Again I listened.

The following day, back in Kuching, I took action. I googled Eric Forbes, read his blog, and emailed him about the idea for this book Twenty-Two Years in Malaysia: Movie Magic, Mysterious Musings and Melodramatic Moments. Being familiar with my work, he seemed eager to see it (or maybe he was just being polite.) Suddenly I had taken this ten-year-back-burner idea and moved it to the front burner. This now required massive action on my part since half of the articles needed to be retyped (written in my pre-computer days), and the other half needed some serious editing, plus some new articles that I had meant to write a long time ago needed to be written.

Had I waited until I rewrote, reedited, rethought the placement of the articles in the various categories (and wrote the new ones, too), I may have given up on the idea, or something else may have come up – life often gets in the way of action, not to mention success. Then once again on the back burner the book would go, and for how long? Another ten years?

Instead, I forced my own hand. Having committed myself to this book (and not wanting MPH to change their minds), I put everything else aside and made the time to complete the project, which took me two months of working in the evenings and on the weekends (sorry, no TV). For my efforts, I’ll have something to show and hold onto, and it all began by networking with some writers. So thank you Krista, Lydia, Sharon, Su Kim, Mary, Beth, Eric and even Joelle for sharing The Secret. If I hadn’t listened nor taken swift action, I wouldn’t have this new book coming out.

Oh, by the way, I managed to turn this into a two-book deal, an additional idea sparked by listening to Beth. Lovers and Strangers Revisited, featuring a couple of new stories and possibly a play based on the story “Neighbors”, will be reissued in 2008 by MPH. There’s even a possibility of a third book, a novel set in Penang, which again will take some more massive action on my part to take it off the back burner and whip it into shape.

Yes, networking with other writers does pay off. But it involves more than just talking about writing. You must listen, and more importantly, you must be willing to take action – massive action – and that will necessitate some actual writing. But isn’t that what we all want? Our projects being completed? Our work being published? So start networking and put your ideas to action! That’s what I did and so can you. Just let me know when your new book comes out.
    --Borneo Expat Writer

*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