That’s right, Happiness at the End of the World is available in stores now!

So far it’s only been spotted at the main Kinokuniya store at Takashimaya, but we expect that the books will hit other Kino stores and other bookstores soon. :D

You can find it here in Kino:

With GST it’s S$19.26, but you can get it [...]]]>

That’s right, Happiness at the End of the World is available in stores now!

So far it’s only been spotted at the main Kinokuniya store at Takashimaya, but we expect that the books will hit other Kino stores and other bookstores soon. :D

You can find it here in Kino:

With GST it’s S$19.26, but you can get it for S$18 (inclusive of shipping) at the publisher’s website!

Aaand what is Happiness at the End of the World about? It’s a collection of eight sci-fi short stories centering around the theme of, well, happiness at the end of the world.

There are all sorts of genres in the book, ranging from romance to crime to fantasy. Everyone has their favorite, so go pick up your copy and find yours ;)

On Saturday was the kick-off party for the Singapore chapter of Nanowrimo, of which I’m proud to be co-Municipal Liaison for. It was also the launch of Happiness at the End of the World, a collection of short stories revolving around the title theme. You can buy Happiness from our publisher, Two Trees!

Things started off really well with a gigantic cake box being delivered to my home. I was a little late because traffic was bad, but by the time I arrived at Earshot cafe things were already buzzing.

There’s quite a lot of thanks to go around, so I’ll try to fit everyone into my thirty-second speech :P

Thanks to: Seriously Sarah, Joelyn Alexandra, Nerwen, NotKieran (and family!), our long-suffering editor, publisher, typesetter and writer extraordinaire Rozen, Ziyang, Kiaace, Wena Poon, The Arts House, the National Arts Council, Singapore Writers Fest volunteers and staff, Singapore Wrimos, Hafiz aka ‘Zebra Preen’, HRH The Drama Queen Afiq, the boys who proved the cake was not a lie by finishing it (man slices!) and everybody else who came down to Earshot! :D

There were competitions and prizes given out, but everything went so fast and so crazy that I completely lost track. I had a heck of a time. I was so pleased with all our Undercover outfits – what with it being Halloween and all.

I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Rozen undercover as a tourist, winner of the Best Undercover competition

Joelyn Alexandra as Lady Una

NotKieran, in characteristic black

Nerwen as a vampire, Sarah as someone with pink hair, horns and an eyepatch

Afiq aka Baghead and Hafiz aka "I'm Ris Low on the inside" (he was wearing zebra prints underneath)

A Wrimo who came underneath book covers!

Wrimos signing in

Earshot got crazy crowded as I took this - more than half were Wrimos!

Ziyang reading his story from Happiness

Aaand we actually finished our cake this year!

This morning I was at The Arts House again, this time at Earshot cafe for the launch of Wena Poon’s The Proper Care of Foxes, her latest collection of short stories. I was joined by Sarah.

The Proper Care of Foxes has been out in stores for a bit now, but today was like the official launch [...]]]>

This morning I was at The Arts House again, this time at Earshot cafe for the launch of Wena Poon’s The Proper Care of Foxes, her latest collection of short stories. I was joined by Sarah.

The Proper Care of Foxes has been out in stores for a bit now, but today was like the official launch with Wena and her publisher, Ethos Books. Ethos might be a familiar name, because they’re quite well known for publishing local poetry.

There wasn’t much of a crowd, but intimate book launches are always nice. Wena read from the story Justin & the Cenotaph, which was actually quite funny in some bits. One of the characters totally sounds like someone I know, which was interesting to say the least.

After the reading, there was a short dialogue with her publisher from Ethos. I wasn’t able to catch his name, so if you know it please let me know and I’ll add it on.

It was interesting to hear from a local publisher about what they wanted. Ethos is looking to publish more full-length novels in the genre of literary fiction, so if you have a manuscript it might be worth it to approach them. The discussion ranged from a recent encounter with a cab driver that inspired Wena to what Singapore publishers look for in the work that is submitted to them.

Afterwards we kind of hung about for a while; we managed to speak to Wena for a bit about Biophilia before she had to go another panel.

I’m looking forward to reading more of Wena’s work. She’s got a unique voice among Singaporean writers and can be genuinely funny, even though I’m generally not a fan of diaspora as a genre.

A bit more on Wena from her profile on the SWF website:

Wena Poon (Singapore/United States)

Born and raised in Singapore, [...]]]> I spent the day at The Arts House at various panels, one of which was the Meet the Author: Wena Poon at the Blue Room! I was with Sarah, (the other) Raven and Nerwen.

A bit more on Wena from her profile on the SWF website:

Wena Poon (Singapore/United States)

Born and raised in Singapore, Wena Poon graduated magna cum laude in English Literature from Harvard and later obtained a degree from Harvard Law School. She has worked as a journalist and lawyer in Hong Kong and the United States. Her first book, Lions in Winter, was listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and the Singapore Literature Prize. Within two months of its launch, the collection of short stories climbed to No. 6 in The Straits Times’ Top 10 Bestseller List for fiction (February 2008). Her second book is called The Proper Care of Foxes (2009).

Wena is a great writer and a friend. She writes serious short stories, currently published as Lions in Winter and The Proper Care of Foxes. My favorite is neither, though! She also has a series called Biophilia that has kickass heroine Imogen Parks, alternate worlds, and some really awesome talking animals.

She’s released the Biophilia Omnibus, which collects the first four Biophilia books into one hefty 730-page volume with added special features. It’s available at the temporary BooksActually  and Earshot cafe, on the second and first floor of The Arts House respectively.  There is extremely limited stock, though.

Wena reading from the Biophilia series

She read about six or seven scenes from the Biophilia Omnibus and by the end of it I was literally at the edge of my seat. I can’t wait to read the Omnibus, because all the characters are so colorful and it looks to get all mythic at the end. Imogen and Kai are exactly how I expected them to sound when read aloud, which is awesome.

I should also mention that Wena is a great reader, which is actually quite unusual in a writer. I certainly can’t read my own work to save my life, and a writer who’s able to read their work out loud and with the intended impact is rare indeed.

She answered a question after that, and then we all moved to the temporary BooksActually store set up in a gallery down the hall. She signed our books and gave us an awesome post-it pad featuring Hello Kitty in front of the Golden Gate Bridge.

I can’t wait for the next Biophilia book, Ars Musica. I’m a big fan of Orpheus the giant talking octupus, myself :D

It’s that time of year again! This year, we’ll be merging the NaNoWriMo kickoff party with a book launch. :D

Happiness at the End of the World is a collection of short stories written by a few people who did NaNoWriMo last year, and will be on sale at the party-launch.

It’s that time of year again! This year, we’ll be merging the NaNoWriMo kickoff party with a book launch. :D

Happiness at the End of the World is a collection of short stories written by a few people who did NaNoWriMo last year, and will be on sale at the party-launch.

There will be cake for everyone! :D

I got back from holiday a few days ago to find out that Neil Gaiman is coming to Singapore for the Sinagpore Writers Festival in October-November!

You need tickets to get in, but I’d already missed the ticketing date — apparently all the tickets were gone within 1.5 hours, but the SWF organisers decided to [...]]]>

I got back from holiday a few days ago to find out that Neil Gaiman is coming to Singapore for the Sinagpore Writers Festival in October-November!

You need tickets to get in, but I’d already missed the ticketing date — apparently all the tickets were gone within 1.5 hours, but the SWF organisers decided to open up more places! But they were extremely limited, and only available at The Arts House on 26 September from 11am.

I missed him the last time he came down, so of course I arrived at 7am on Saturday to line up for those limited seats.

I arrived just 7am but I wasn’t the first: that was my semi-famous friend Seriously Sarah, who arrived at 6.40am. The night before, rumors were that folks would be camping overnight for the tickets. In the end there were no campers, likely due to security for the F1 Grand Prix that weekend.

He’ll be doing four sessions at the SWF: a reading with Amanda Palmer from The Dresden Dolls, a joint panel, and two individual panels talking about his work. Tickets were limited to one pair per head for one event.

So we waited. More people came, and they waited with us. And waited… By 11am, I’d counted at least 63 distinct groups or individuals that I could clearly see were there for the tickets.

Four hours and ten minutes later, at 11.10am, we were the first to get the tickets to the November 1st panel!

Afterwards, Sarah and I found out that within half an hour all the tickets were gone. The first one to run out was the November panel, but the Amanda Palmer tickets were really popular too.

It’s interesting to see how big the fanbase is, but boy, am I looking forward to November 1.

Date: 22 and 23 August Time: 9.30am to 8pm Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 6A Admission is free

Books are going for cheap! English books are $2, while magazines are going for $5 for ten issues. Prices vary according [...]]]> The library used book sale is back! Basically the NLB takes all its old books and puts them on sale for really cheap.

Date: 22 and 23 August
Time: 9.30am to 8pm
Venue: Singapore Expo Hall 6A
Admission is free

Books are going for cheap! English books are $2, while magazines are going for $5 for ten issues. Prices vary according to language, but either way it’s a steal. And if you’re lucky you might end up with some really good finds.

Payment is by NETS, CashCard or cash only. Each person can get up to 60 items, and a pack of 10 or 20 magazines is considered one item.

More info at the GoLibrary page.

Date: 29 & 30 June (Mon and Tues) Time: 9am to 5pm Venue: Possibility Room, National Library (100 Victoria Street) Fee: $490/person or $390/person for two and above (includes materials and tea breaks)

It’s quite expensive, but it looks like it’s pretty intensive. Over two days, the workshop [...]]]> Book Camp is a two-day intensive workshop organised by the National Book Council.

Date: 29 & 30 June (Mon and Tues)
Time: 9am to 5pm
Venue: Possibility Room, National Library (100 Victoria Street)
Fee: $490/person or $390/person for two and above (includes materials and tea breaks)

It’s quite expensive, but it looks like it’s pretty intensive. Over two days, the workshop will cover book writing, book production, getting published, and marketing, promotion and distribution – basically the whole process, really. It looks like it’s focusing on nonfiction, but I think quite a lot of it will carry over to fiction as well.

For more information, download the brochure here (it’s called Book Camp).

You can register for the workshop online at the Book Council’s website, or print the form in the brochure and fax it to them.

More about Dan Poynter:

Dan Poynter is an author of more than 120 books. Dan’s work for publishing was recognized by the Publishers Marketing Association when they gave him the Benjamin Franklin Award. He was given the Irwin Award for the best electronic promotion campaign by the Book Publicists of Southern California. He is a past vice-president of PMA.

Dan’s seminars have been featured on CNN, his books have been pictured in The Wall Street Journal, and his story has been told in U.S. News & World Report. The media comes to him because he is the leading authority on book marketing, promoting and distributing. More about Dan Poynter, visit his website at www.parapublishing.com

Time: Monday, June 1, 7pm Venue: The Pod on level 16 at the National Library (100 Victoria Street) Admission is free

To RSVP, please email Zariena at zariena@horizonbooks.com.sg or call 6483 5953. But I think you can also go [...]]]> Map of the Invisible World, a new novel by Tash Aw, will be launched on Monday, June 1, at The Pod!

Time: Monday, June 1, 7pm
Venue: The Pod on level 16 at the National Library (100 Victoria Street)
Admission is free

To RSVP, please email Zariena at zariena@horizonbooks.com.sg or call 6483 5953. But I think you can also go without RSVPing.

Click through for more information on the book and author.

About the book
In Map of the Invisible World, Johan kept a constant vigil over his little brother Adam during their years together in the orphanage. When they are placed in different adoptive homes, they lost all contact. Johan is taken to Kuala Lumpur by a wealthy Malaysian couple whilst Adam is adopted by a Dutch painter, Karl and grows up in a simple coastal town in Indonesia.

However in the summer of 1964, there was disorder as post-colonial Indonesia slid towards civil war. Foreigners and especially the Dutch are treated with hostility and when Karl is arrested, 16-year-old Adam resolves to do all that he can to find him. He seeks help from an old friend of Karl’s in Jakarta, but in the volatile atmosphere and lured by a promise to find his brother, Adam quickly falls in with a dangerous crowd and is swept up in events beyond his understanding.

About Tash Aw
Tash Aw, a Malaysian-born writer is now living in London. His highly-acclaimed novel, The Harmony Silk Factory won the Whitbread Best First Novel Award, the Commonwealth Best First Novel Award and was also long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and the Guardian First Book Award. Map of the Invisible World is his second novel and is a touching tale of love and loss, friendships and belonging, and the indissoluble ties of family.

Time: 2.15pm to 6pm (it’s long, but there are five talks in total) Place: Play Den, The Arts House (1 Old Parliament Lane) Admission is free

The talks for that day are: