The Raven Silvers blog » swf

Meeting Neil Gaiman (and trying not to faint)

Raven — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:08:20 +0000

I went to see Neil Gaiman today! After waiting over four hours for tickets, you can bet I was excited as heck to see the man himself! With me was Seriously Sarah, Nerwen, Joelyn Alexandra (formerly Raven Azure, who is moving sites) and Justin from Nanowrimo.

They had to move the venue from the Chamber inside the Arts House (200 seats) to the Victoria Theatre (900 seats) because demand was so high. I learnt a lot of things about the area today, including that it’s very easy to walk from Cavenagh Bridge to Victoria Theatre and cut through to the Arts House. I’ve been going to that area for four years now, and only this year I find out… Sigh.

I was in the ticket-holders line, of course, but there was also this – and the organiser’s sense of humor really shines through…

Heh. People did try, though! Nevermind that all the tickets were gone. It’s Neil Gaiman, man. And some of them got really lucky! I saw a few people in the ticket-holders line give their extra tickets to the ticketless, largely because their friends couldn’t make it at the last minute.

The talk was 2pm, but we joined the line before 1pm. I’m not entirely sure, but we were very early. There was already a queue outside the entrance, and we were lucky enough to be standing inside the foyer, where there was shade. The line grew quickly, and the organisers were good enough to let us in early so people would be out of the sun.

Joelyn, Justin, Sarah and Nerwen

We got seats in the fourth or fifth row, so we were basically at eye-level height! While we were waiting, people passed us these little pieces of paper to write a message to Mr Gaiman. Then a drawstring back got handed around and we all put our messages inside, so we could give it to him at the signing session after the talk.

Singapore <3s Neil Gaiman!

I have giant handwriting, yes. But it was a good idea, so I was very happy to add on my message.

Just after 2pm, Mr Gaiman himself walked onstage to thunderous applause and a lot of cheering, mine included. I am a shameless Neil Gaiman fangirl.

Moderator Lim Cheng Tju and the man himself

Neil Gaiman is brilliant, funny, witty and so very interesting. He told us the ‘Scary Trousers’ story, which was hilarious – he even did Alan Moore’s voice, which was fantastic and really funny. I kind of regret missing his reading yesterday, but I was at the Nanowrimo Kick-Off party so I couldn’t go. ):

He told us that he didn’t mind turning 50 next year, and that he was happy with all that he’s been able to do, in his personal and professional life. He mentioned that if the plane went down tomorrow, he wouldn’t be going “Oh no, I didn’t have time to do X”. When he said that, there was a lot of knocking on wood. No sense in tempting fate, after all, though the value of his autographed items would skyrocket if that did happen. (Choy choy choy, touch wood!)

Someone asked about his bees, and that was really interesting. Apparently it was an idea he had 16 years ago, but his assistant Lorraine had a pathological fear of bees (the type where you believe you’ll die from whatever you’re afraid from). It was only about four years ago when he was reading about colony collapse disorder – basically when honey bees suddenly start dying in huge numbers for no apparent reason. Mr Gaiman wanted to do his part, and he met up with a friend who was passionate about wildlife.

By the end of the afternoon, it was decided that his friend Sharon would take a professional beekeeping course and become head beekeeper, and Mr Gaiman would pay for the course and become junior beekeeper. The bees would be on his land. Apparently Lorraine and Sharon’s husband were convinced this was a bizarre suicide pact.

When the bees arrived, Mr Gaiman was away on a signing and so Lorraine had to put the bees in the hives. Poor girl. By the time he came back, though, she seemed to have one of those rare spiritual moments after facing her life fear, and she was at peace with the bees.

And so they have bees. They entered the honey into the county fair as a joke, and they got blue ribbon! They were convinced it was a fluke, so they entered honey and a comb into the county fair last year – and won blue ribbon again. He said that his top few highlights of his career was something like this: 1. Newbery Medal, 2. Hugo Award, 3. Blue ribbons for the bees, and then all the other literary awards. Hee.

He told us the famous Scary Trousers story, and he did Alan Moore’s voice so it was extra funny. The other 899 people and I were laughing away.

I liked what he said about adapting his works from one medium to another. The key is translate, he said, not transliterate. I wholly agree. Some stories work on paper, but won’t make a good movie if you transliterate it directly. But if you translate, like how Henry Selick adapted Coraline for a movie, if you change certain things so that they’re suited for the other medium, then it can work.

Which is basically how I feel about comics-to-movies, or movies-to-books, etc. adaptations. I can get quite catty with people who complain that a movie is really bad compared to the book, or they changed X and they hate it. Things have to change when the medium changes, because not everything works across media.

But yes. There was more, but I can’t really remember all of it. Sarah did take a video though, so I shall post that as soon as she uploads it.

The talk itself lasted about an hour, so after that it was signing. It was limited to one item per person, which is totally understandable because there were 900 people there. Mr was quite funny about it; he announced, before the end, that it was one item per head because his flight was at 3am and he really wanted to make it, haha.

And then cue running across to the Arts House, where the signing was to take place. It was a bit nuts as everyone rushed outside. Nerwen nearly got hit by a car and didn’t even know it, but my heart skipped a beat when I saw the car move. (Good grief, Nerwen, be more careful next time!)

Only ticket-holders could get things signed, and the organisers gave each of us a paper with the rules and a space to write the name that you want Mr Gaiman to dedicate the item to.

In the end we got a place in the first 300 or so people, so that was good. Joelyn got lucky and somehow ended up pushed into the queue at the front, but she still waited with us after she’d gotten her stuff signed.

The line ahead of us...

... and the line behind us, which stretched to the river

The line ahead of us was about 2.5 hours long, and I think they took a five-minute break so Mr Gaiman could rest his hand. He was really accomodating, which was really awesome of him.

Totally worth it.

Unfortunately, when we reached him, I turned into a gibbering idiot. *facepalm* I could barely think, and I wanted to ask him a question but I totally forgot.

We gave him a copy of Happiness at the End of the World, our book of genre short stories, with messages from us. And then he shook our hands. Which basically broke my brain and made my day.

The conversation went something like this:

Mr Gaiman: Hullo!
Me: Hi. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: [takes book, sees the dedication paper] And this is for Viki.
Me: Yes. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: I’ll draw you a Sandman.
Me: Okay. Thank you. *giggle*
Mr Gaiman: [draws Dream, signs name]
Me: *giggles madly* *hyperventilates slightly*
Nerwen, Sarah, Joelyn: Breathe! Remember to breathe!
Mr Gaiman: Are you okay?
Me: Yes.
Mr Gaiman: Do you want a hug?
Me: [not thinking] No, it’s fine, thankyousomuchMrGaimansir.

I said no to the hug because I’m still sick with a respiratory tract infection and I didn’t want to pass it to him, but also because I thought I might faint on him. Which would be extremely embarrasing, to say the least.

He drew on my Absolute Sandman! He drew on it!

The inside cover of my Absolute Sandman Vol. 1 - joy!

Am I a huge fangirl? Yes, unabashedly so. I hope he comes back soon! I would love to see him again. Singapore loves Neil Gaiman, and I’m proud to be one of his legion of fans.

The Proper Care of Foxes

Raven — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:48:12 +0000

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.

Meet the Author: Mark Waid

Raven — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:43:54 +0000

One of the many panels at SWF 09 was Meet the Author: Mark Waid, held yesterday at the Chamber. His presence at SWF 09 is somewhat belated; he was supposed to join other comics writers Gail Simone and Kurt Busiek at the last SWF in 2007, but unfortunately he couldn’t make it at the very last minute. ):

About Mark Waid from the SWF website:

Mark Waid (United States)

Mark Waid is a comic book writer and editor who has written some of the best-selling graphic novels of all time, including Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright. Currently editor-in-chief of independent comic book company BOOM! Studios, he is the writer behind The Incredibles, which is based on the 2004 Disney-Pixar film of the same name, and a variety of his self-created works.

I was extra-excited to see him because I had a special centerfold from the SWF 07 programme that Gail Simone and Kurt Busiek signed – I just needed his autograph to complete my centerfold.

His panel was a really interesting one to listen to. He talked about how he went from fanboy to pro comics writer thanks to an opportunity from legendary editor Julie Schwartz, his influential eight-year run on The Flash, how Kingdom Come came about, what it was like to work with three other superstar writers on weekly series 52 for DC, and his thoughts on some of the recent trends in comics. I’m glad to see at least one creator isn’t for big event comics.

Mark Waid talks about his career with moderator Terence Chua

There were quite a few questions, and eventually we went outside for autographs! Unfortunately we ran out of time, because he had to be another panel at 3pm. But that was okay! I went for lunch with Sarah, Nerwen and Raven; we returned before the end of the 3pm panel, and I was first in line.

Fully signed at last!

Meet the Author: Wena Poon

Raven — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 13:43:35 +0000

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

Singapore Writers Festival Opening

Raven — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:19:44 +0000

My feet are killing me, but I had a good time at the Singapore Writers Festival Opening!

I was invited because I’m one of the MLs for the Singapore chapter of Nanowrimo, so today I went down to The Arts House! Nanowrimo represent! Also, I got to feel all literary and posh.

The Arts House front porch

I was joined by Seriously Sarah and Raven Azure, which was good because otherwise I’d probably end up just standing in a corner trying to be inconspicuous.

My companions Sarah and Raven

And we were occasionally joined by the wonderful Wena Poon, who has got a wicked sense of humor. I’ve just read her article in the latest edition of Quill magazine – in the space of two pages, she references Shakespeare, X-Men, SimCity, Star Wars and the O-levels. But she’s more posh and literary than I am, so she mingled more!

Raven and Wena

But anyway. There was some mingling and drinking until just after sunset, when the opening officially started.

The first speaker was Emeritus Prof Edwin Thumboo, who is one of Singapore’s foremost literary pioneers. He is this year’s SWF Singapore Literary Pioneer, and the focus of an exhibition being held at The Arts House celebrating his career – his list of awards is longer than my arm, but suffice it to say that he’s one of the most important literary figures from Singapore.

Emeritus Prof Edwin Thumboo

Second speaker was Philip Jeyaretnam, who is also another big name in Singapore literature. He was heavily involved in organising both SWF 07 and 09, and it was especially nice that he named Nanowrimo as one of the events that start/end writing activities during SWF :D

Philip Jeyaretnam, Chairman of the SWF Steering Committee

And the last speaker was RADM (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts. Mr Lui thanked the sponsors and welcomed the guests from abroad.

Acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts, RADM (NS) Lui Tuck Yew

And then he opened the SWF officially by lighting up the giant installation right outside the Arts House, which you can see in the top picture! It is very cool.

After that was a reception. There were some demonstrations inside The Arts House as well as a movie screening, but it was quite crowded so we didn’t go for that. Instead we had food, which was quite nice.

They had a literal dessert shelf, which was a novel way of presenting the food. They had little slices of cheesecake, which was very nice, and marshmallows and pudding. There were waiters walking around with little finger food. There were cute little chicken pies, and I ate something strange with mushrooms. I’m still not entirely sure what it was, though we think it was beef.

Marshmallows in chocolate and graham crumble

There were all sorts of interesting food, like salmon wellington – spinach and salmon baked in a puff pastry. There was also Peking duck, rolled up in those little pancakes with sauce and cucumbers. My favorite and the most novel was the Hainanese chicken rice, which was made into little bite-sized pieces by making the rice into squat little cylinders topped with a bit of chicken. That was absolutely adorable to eat, but I don’t have any pictures.

Chef cutting up salmon wellington

I never know how to eat at such posh events, so in the end I was still hungry. Oh well. They had a very nice white wine, though.

But yes! The opening was very posh, and a nice start to the SWF. I’ll be going to quite a few events over the duration of the Fest, so watch this space for more pictures and stuff!

[NaNoWriMo] Kick-Off and Book Launch

Raven — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:22:45 +0000

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

Neil Gaiman SWF tickets

Raven — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 13:29:52 +0000

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.

Bubble G.U.M. Prologue (maybe)

Raven — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:30:35 +0000

I’m really excited to report this. Heck, I’m practically bouncing away!

The Happy Smiley Writers Group (which I’m a part of!) is proud to present a preview of their upcoming novel, Bubble G.U.M. You may remember it being mentioned in our appearance in the newspaper recently.

You can download it from the Singapore Novelists website; here’s a direct link:

Bubble G.U.M. Prologue (Maybe)
[Download]
40kb, PDF

It’s a PDF document, so you’ll need the Adobe Reader or similar program to open and read it.

The official launch of the book will be at the Singapore Writers Festival in October/November. It’ll be a joint event with the kick-off party of NaNoWriMo Singapore, so the timing is somewhat flexible, but it should be at the end of our allotted time slot! More details soonish!

You can also find HSWG on Facebook and Twitter!

Conversation with Wena Poon

Raven — Mon, 25 May 2009 16:22:15 +0000

Photo by Sarah Coldheart

On Friday night, I was at the Arts House with Raven Azure and Sarah Coldheart (of Seriously Sarah fame) for Conversation with Wena Poon, a pre-Singapore Writers Festival event organised by the National Arts Council and the Singapore Book Club.

Wena is the author of Lions In Winter, which is an excellent collection of short stories that I highly recommend. Born in Singapore but currently residing in the US, she’s also been listed for both the Singapore Literature Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. You can find her website here.

Besides Wena, Malaysia-based editor Sharon Bakar was also there as part of the session.

I arrived a little late because of traffic, but I made it there before they actually started. Cue a rather sheepish me rushing to the seat that Azure and Sarah had been kind enough to save for me.

The event was supposed to be at earshot Cafe, but they had to upgrade the venue to the Play Den due to overwhelming response.

Anyway, everything that Wena said was very true. She hit the nail on the head almost every time, covering a variety of writing-related topics, but more on that later.

The basic gist of it all was: write whatever you want, but you’ve got to know your market if you want to sell.

Wena is a lawyer by training, so a lot of what she said reminded me of marketing classes. It’s all true, though.

She’s really big on print-on-demand, which is not vanity publishing; rather, it’s exactly what it says – when people order your book, it gets printed and sent to them. It’s much cheaper for both publisher and author, and in many ways more advantageous than going through a traditional publisher.

Either way, you’d end up doing almost all the publicity yourself, unless you’re lucky and have a publisher who is really keen to promote your work. She made a very good point, which was that we’re in the generation where being wired (or being wireless, rather) is common. We can use the many aspects of the Internet — Facebook, Twitter, websites, viral marketing — to our advantage.

There was also a chart about how the writer, public and publisher sees the whole process of creating, producing and marketing a book. To a writer, publishing is almost all the work, while writing takes less effort. To the public (ie non-writers), writing seems like the most difficult job of them all.

The reality, however, is that the writing and publishing are nothing compared to the cost and time investment that goes into marketing and after-sales support of the book.

After her 45-minute talk, it became a dialogue with Sharon Bakar. There was much discussion about how Singapore and Malaysian writers should join forces to become an unstoppable literary power network and stuff, because of our geographic proximity and how the markets (and writers) are very similar.

Because we’d started late and everything, the Q&A session was cut a little short, but one thing of interest was that there is a publisher in Singapore with the POD machines in Singapore. It was pretty obvious everyone was interested and suprised.

At the end of the session, we went outside to the corridor, where they had a table set up for book sales and autographs. I bought both Lions In Winter and Biophilia, the first of her highly entertaining sci-fi/fantasy/adventure series that I really liked. I got her autograph on both, and I really look forward to getting the Biophilia omnibus comes out. It was a good session, all in all.

Wena will be back in October for the Singapore Writers Festival, so look out for that! You can check out Azure and Sarah‘s take on the event at their respective blogs.

Experience Singapore

Raven — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:13:48 +0000

As part of the Singapore Writers Festival pre-festival event lineup, there’s going to be a series of literary tours called Experience Singapore.

Both will start from the National Library. There are limited places available, so you have to register (links are below).

Experience Singapore: Nostalgia

Time: 10am to 12pm
Date: 6 June, Saturday
Venue: Starts from the National Library (100 Victoria Street)

From GoLibrary:

Shention Way. Central Busines District. Toa Payoh.

We often pass by these places unaware. Have you ever thought what stories these places hold? Join Kenny Leck as he brings you on a poetic journey down the Singapore nostalgic lane. Together with writing pieces by Klyth Tan, Heng Siok Tian and Koh Buck Song, come along on this trail to uncover a fresh perspective on the Singaporean landscape.

Kenny Leck is the co-owner of independent bookstore BooksActually. You can register here.

Experience Singapore: Changes

Time: 10am to 12pm
Date: 11 July, Saturday
Venue: Starts from the National Library (100 Victoria Street)

From GoLibrary:

What does Singapore mean to you? For a fast-paced country like Singapore, changes are synonymous to the Singaporean way of life. Continuous self-renewal is a distinctive feature of Singaporean life. Cyril Wong will take you on an unconventional trip and bring you to uncover Singapore in a way never experienced before. Take the trip with us to the Changi Airport, Raffles Place and Armenian Street to recover a sense of wonder.

You can register for ‘Changes’ here.