So, Free Comic Book Day for 2012 was on May 5! It’s taken me this long to blog about it because I completely forgot. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Last year’s was a pretty good one, but this year it was even bigger with four stores taking part in the festivities.

Our first stop was [...]]]>

So, Free Comic Book Day for 2012 was on May 5! It’s taken me this long to blog about it because I completely forgot. Mea culpa, mea culpa.

Last year’s was a pretty good one, but this year it was even bigger with four stores taking part in the festivities.

Our first stop was local comics stalwart GnB Comics. They had two guests this year, Nicola Scott and Ardian Syaf, and a great sale, so the shop was insanely crowded! But it was great.

Nicola Scott and Ardian Syaf, being awesome and signing

Our second stop was Books Kinokuniya, but when we arrived, they were almost completely out of comics! Which was a huge shocker, since they’re a really big bookstore (even if they’re not strictly comics-only) but this year they’d started much earlier, at 10am instead of noon. But the staff were awesome and managed to rustle up the last few sets of comics for us, which was great :D

Third stop was Harris Planerds at Somerset. They were also giving out comics, but more importantly, they’re having a great sale until 20 May because it’s their first birthday! Get one item at 10% off, two at 20% off, etc. up to a maximum of 60% off. It’s on until 20 May (next Sunday) so head on down while you can – they have a pretty wide range of toys, graphic novels, and fiction. The more you buy, the more you save.

Our final stop was Paradigm Infinitum at Midpoint Orchard. They were launching their graphic novels section and giving away some older comics to celebrate. I didn’t get to check out their GNs, but it was great to see so many places celebrating FCBD.

It’s really catching on, so here’s to a bigger, better FCBD next year. Honestly, I can’t wait.

SWF is looking for volunteers, though! I would totally sign up if I didn’t have school, but alas.

Anyway! Here’s what you need to do if [...]]]> The Singapore Writers Festival is back for 2012! It’ll be held from 2 – 11 November 2012, but we don’t have any details of location and ticketing just yet.

SWF is looking for volunteers, though! I would totally sign up if I didn’t have school, but alas.

Anyway! Here’s what you need to do if you want to volunteer:

Please email nac_swf@nac.gov.sg with the following details:

1. Name (as per IC/FIN)
2. NRIC/FI number;
3. Age;
4. Mobile Number;
5. Language proficiency;
6. Profession;
7. Previous Volunteering experiences (if any)

Submit before 13 July 2012 for a chance to volunteer!

My friend June and Math Paper Press (an imprint of the excellent folks at BooksActually) are looking for pieces of short fiction for an upcoming speculative fiction collection!

It is, rather amusingly, called The Ayam Curtain – if you don’t get it, try saying it out loud. (And if, rather depressingly, you’re too young [...]]]>

My friend June and Math Paper Press (an imprint of the excellent folks at BooksActually) are looking for pieces of short fiction for an upcoming speculative fiction collection!

It is, rather amusingly, called The Ayam Curtain – if you don’t get it, try saying it out loud. (And if, rather depressingly, you’re too young to get it: have a Wikipedia article.)

Here’s what they want:

Category I: SPEAKING BIRD LANGUAGE
From the branches above Orchard Road to the void decks where old men with cages gather, bird share stories of fantastic realities they have visited in a cacophony of tweets.
 Send us microscopic glimpses into fantastical worlds of lengths between 100-150 words. 

Category II: THE AYAM CURTAIN
Numbering more than 23 billion across the globe, there are more specimens of Gallus gallus, the domestic chicken, than any other bird in the world. On paper, by the reckoning of numbers, they are a runaway success as a species. But what utopias do they dream of, caged in their factory farm coops?
 Send us 500-1000 word stories of worlds where the boundaries have been shifted in strange ways.

Submissions are already option, and they close on 31 May 2012. For more information, check out their website!

Here is the meme:

Writers, here are your rules for the Lucky 7 Meme: 1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP 2. Go to line 7. 3. Copy down [...]]]> I was tagged by the wonderful J Damask (also known as Jolantru), so here’s a sneak peek into what I’ve been working on lately.

Here is the meme:

Writers, here are your rules for the Lucky 7 Meme:
1. Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
2. Go to line 7.
3. Copy down the next 7 lines, sentences, or paragraphs, and post them as they’re written.
4. Tag 7 authors.
5. Let them know.

I don’t actually have a page 77 yet, so here’s something from page 37 instead.

“I need an audience,” Josiah said.

“With the king?” Lorenzo asked. “You know you can just call.”

“Not with the king,” he said tentatively. “With the queen.”

That caught the vampire by surprise. “The queen? Can I ask why? Her Majesty doesn’t like to be disturbed.”

“Only by humans,” he said darkly. “The last time she saw me, she tried to run me over in her car.”

“That was unfortunate, yes.” Lorenzo winced apologetically. “She comes from old blood. They can be very conservative, and they’re pretty set in their ways.”

Josiah refrained from pointing out that Lorenzo came from old blood too, but he hadn’t yet tried to mow him down with an Italian supercar. “Can you arrange it?”

There are a ton of events worldwide over the course of February and March to celebrate the bicentenary. I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to the Dickens 2012 launch in Singapore, [...]]]> Dickens 2012 is a worldwide celebration of the 200 years since the birth of Charles Dickens, and what a birthday bash it is!

There are a ton of events worldwide over the course of February and March to celebrate the bicentenary. I was pleasantly surprised to be invited to the Dickens 2012 launch in Singapore, so you betcha I went.

It was a lovely evening with performances and readings. We got to hear the British High Commissioner, H.E. Antony Phillipson, read from Sketches by Boz as part of the 24-hour read-a-thon — 24 readings in 24 countries over 24 hours, which I think is brilliant.

Mr Antony Phillipson, British High Commissioner, reading from 'Sketches by Boz'

Here’s a taste of the read-a-thon:

There was a brilliant semi-improv acting group who weaved their tale through the night’s events, which was wonderful because they sang and danced and we honestly weren’t expecting it at first.

Unfortunately I don't have many photos because I'm really short.

In Singapore, the British Council will celebrate Dickens 2012 with a series of film screenings and a literary talk. You can find the schedule for Singapore events here (scroll down a bit). Hit up the Dickens 2012 website for more information.

Don’t be scared off by their [...]]]> A few weeks ago, I got wind that this article had featured The Steampowered Globe (available from our publisher) had been featured as a Singapore book of genre fiction that people should be reading. The article is on the Budding Writers League, a new site for local writers.

Don’t be scared off by their name – while their target audience includes younger writers, it also welcomes everyone no matter what the age. Sign up for an account, then you can post your stories for comments and suggestions by others on the site. I admit, some of the criticism can be a bit pedantic, but in a well-intentioned way.

The site’s quite new so they might be a bit light on content, but they do have a BWL Mentorship Programme! It’s pretty neat. So far they only have one mentor (the wonderful Joyce Chng, whose Wolf at the Door series is excellent and highly recommended), but perhaps in the future the programme will expand.

The Happy Smiley Writers Group (us, basically) have been contact with the BWL. We’re looking forward to working with them in the future. (:

For more information, check out their website and their Facebook group!

(More pictures)

Remember the last time we went prawning? Yeah, the time [...]]]>
Tally-Ho is a semi-regular column of my adventures with the Adventure Crew (and sometimes other people). We figured that Singapore can’t be all that boring, and are determined to show other folks how fun Singapore can be… if you know where to look.

Remember the last time we went prawning? Yeah, the time everyone caught a prawn except me. Well, we decided that wouldn’t do, so off Avariel, Sarah and I went to change things!

Well no, not really. But my goal was to catch a prawn to make things right.

This time we went to a different place: East Coast Prawning, which is at East Coast Park and considerably smaller than Bottle Tree. It’s more of a chill place rather than a family funtime place, but their rates are lower and they’re less crowded.

Prawning involves a lot of waiting.

The procedure is the same, really: pay for your time, get a rod and some bait, then sit down and hope the prawns are hungry.

She even brought a book to keep her busy

And much to my delight, they were! Within about an hour I caught my very first prawn!

YAY PRAWN

It was a really big prawn, too. It ended up being the biggest prawn of our lot. Still makes me grin thinking about it. :D

And then, I caught another one!

Me: 1, Prawns: 0! Ha!

The universe provides, ha. One for the first prawning outing, a second for this. I consider the prawns and I even, now.

It wasn’t just me though. Sarah caught a prawn too!

Sarah and her prawn

Then Avariel did! The universe provided for all of us that day, prawning-wise.

Prawns for all!

Bwahaha. Oddly enough, we were the only ones around the pond to catch anything during the two hours we were there. There were other folks there too, but I didn’t see them catch anything. Maybe a bit of that legendary Sarah luck rubbed off on us.

Then came the actual act of cooking the prawns. That… didn’t go so well.

Unlike Bottle Tree, they didn’t have an electric grill; at East Coast it’s all old-school, and by old-school I mean charcoal, fire starters, and matches.

This fire lasted all of ten minutes.

We suck so much at lighting a fire, it’s not funny. We had to ask the prawning folks to help us, ha.

On the way to nom-ability

Maybe not the most evenly cooked, but we got there eventually.

So yes. I consider this a major success for me, because I caught two prawns in two outings :D