Archive for May, 2007

Wellbeing of Women is a UK charity dedicated to solving health problems solely affecting women. They are about to launch a campaign to find the most inspirational woman in the UK (in association with the UK newspaper The Daily Mail). The Inspirational Women of the Year Awards will be launched this coming Tuesday 15 May and are sponsored by Marks & Spencer.

You’re hearing about this first here on Fusion View because I met the Director of Wellbeing of Women, Liz Campbell, last week as we sipped cocktails at a City Women’s Network event in London. She told us about the campaign and asked us to tell as many people as we could. Wellbeing of Women are keen to receive nominations for ordinary women that you and I might know, rather than celebrities, so we can celebrate the outstanding and special achievements of real women who are getting on with their lives every day away from the limelight.

Anyone can make a nomination (you don’t have to be a woman to nominate!). The woman you nominate, however, needs to be resident in the UK (ie not necessarily a UK citizen but resident in the UK) as this is a UK-based award.

To make your nomination you can email them at wellbeingofwomen [at] rcog.org.uk or write to them at their mailing address:

Wellbeing of Women
27 Sussex Place
Regents Park
London NW1 4SP

You need to name your nominated inspirational woman, describe in your own words their inspiring story and why you think they deserve to win. The closing deadline is 5.30pm on Friday 1st June.

You can find out more by going to the Wellbeing of Women website and clicking through to their page on The Inspirational Women of the Year.

I can think of a number of women who have been inspiring to me in different ways. There’s my friend Alex, who changed her life dramatically and went on to help many people in her work as psychotherapist, and along the way helped me as a friend through a difficult period in my life. There’s Angie, my partner, who gave me the courage to give up my job and write my novels all those years ago and who continues to inspire me every day. There’s Silvia, a talented business communicator, who is championing all the myriad of blogging and social media activities that I am involved in, while building a brilliant career of her own. There’s Lucy who is juggling her meteoric academic career with her creative talent as a photographer and always takes the time to be a great friend. There’s the other Alex who has always been a dear friend to me, a supportive pal to everyone who knows her, a great mum to her delightful children, a terrific wife to her talented husband and a lawyer to be reckoned with. The list goes on!

My problem is going to be trying to choose only one of them! Or maybe I can nominate all of them…?

Photo: thanks to womenshealthsolutions.co.uk

The prize draw to win a copy of Lydia Teh’s “Honk! If You’re Malaysian” is now closed.

The winners of the draw, picked at random from the Fusion View email subscribers list, are:

rijac

hom

charlotte

The above are first names only, taken from their email addresses, so that their privacy is respected. I have emailed them to let them know.

Thanks to everyone who has subscribed to Fusion View!

Yang-May

.

Who might that be?

Yes, you guessed it. JK Rowling. (For anyone left on the planet who doesn’t know who she is, she is the author of the Harry Potter books.)

She is honoured in Wired magazines’ 2007 Rave Awards. They write:

“Rowling was paid a $4,000 advance. Today she is the first person on the planet to become a billionaire by writing books.”

She gains this status not just through her books alone but through the films and action figures and all the other related tie-in merchandise. “Rowling is the reigning master of what you might call MMFWs — massively multireader fictional worlds”, says Wired.

All I can say is: Wow!

You can visit her site at www.jkrowling.com.

Pic: thanks to adistantsoil.com

I’m thrilled to have been able to do an email interview with Arizona-based crime writer Charles (”Chuck”) Kelly, whom I encountered via Crimespace on Ning.com and whose novel PAY HERE is due out later this year - and whose career as a crime reporter could itself be the stuff of hard-boiled fiction.

Chuck, 60, grew up on a farm in Nebraska, got journalism degrees from Creighton University and Northwestern University, and was a military policeman in the U.S. Army. A reporter since leaving college, first at the Omaha World-Herald and, from 1972, at The Arizona Republic, he’s been a true-crime buff for decades, and in recent years a fan of hard-boiled fiction. His musical tastes run to Irish, Scottish and English ballads. He plays basketball once or twice a week. His first novel, PAY HERE, is scheduled to be published by Point Blank Press.

YM: What is it like to be a crime reporter?

Chuck: I’m not a classic crime reporter, such as a police-beat reporter or a courts reporter. In recent years, I’ve covered military affairs, healthcare, and city affairs in the suburbs, among other things. In the past, I’ve played the role of a general-assignment reporter asked to cover big crime stories such as the 1976 bomb murder of Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles, the 1991 AzScam affair involving a police sting operation that targeted corrupt officials, and the 1997 bank-fraud trial of former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington.

Any real life experiences/events that you’d care to share with my readers that would give them the flavour of what it’s like covering crime?

Sometimes crime reporting involves finding missing people. In 1981, I tracked down the missing heir to a $65,000 estate—a near-destitute cousin of novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, author of THE YEARLING. Crime reporting often deals with death. I recall watching the autopsy of a fat man in which the medical examiner, bloody to the elbow, commented, “Fat people are the bane of our existence. How would you like to fish around for .22 caliber bullets in this?” Sometimes crime reporting involves creative eavesdropping. My newspaper once fronted me money to play poker in a casino to try to pick up gossip about employees suspected of embezzling money.

Have you used your experiences in your book PAY HERE?

I tried to capture the flavor of being a freewheeling investigative reporter, a creature who existed more in the past than now. References to records searches, hanging out at funerals to pick up information, dealing with editors—those ring true. However, reporter Michael Callan is a compromised reporter who doesn’t mind resorting to the fist or the gun. I, on the other hand, am just a mellow dude. I’ve trained with the combat handgun and shotgun, but I don’t pack heat. No violence, please.

I’m a great fan of CSI: Vegas. In your view, is it anything like real crime investigation in the U.S.?

I’ve only watched the CSI shows a couple of times. I’m much more a fan of reality shows that reconstruct actual murder cases and show how they were solved using scientific evidence. I get the impression that the CSI shows “push the envelope” to create constantly interesting story lines. Many murder convictions are achieved with just basic evidence gathering to supplement confessions. In a fair number of cases, however, evidence experts have done very clever scientific work to show who committed a crime, or to show that a supposed murder was actually a suicide.

Can you tell us more about the biography you are working on? What drew you to the subject matter?

I’m researching a biography of the hard-boiled thriller writer Dan J. Marlowe, who died in Los Angeles in 1986 at the age of 72. I’ve long been a fan of Marlowe, whose best-known book is THE NAME OF THE GAME IS DEATH, and I was fascinated by the fact that so little was known about him. I decided to research an article about him for novelist Allan Guthrie’s website Noir Originals, and quickly uncovered a treasure trove of documents, letters, and photos that brought into focus Marlowe’s amnesia, his spanking fetish, his relationship with convicted bank robber Al Nussbaum, his secret production of pornography, and his “shadow” collaboration with World War II combat pilot William Odell. I wrote the introduction to a re-issue of Marlowe’s novel THE VENGEANCE MAN, which will be published as part of a trilogy by Stark House Press in autumn 2007.

What’s the difference between writing fiction, journalism and biography for you?

For me, journalism is gathering facts and applying well-know writing formulas to them. Fiction is a much more challenging effort to view events through the eyes of characters, and to produce story lines that allow those characters to develop in an interesting way. Biography is an intense exploration of how real people’s lives developed, based on what you can find out about them. In journalism, reporting is primary. In fiction, point of view and character development are primary. In biography, reporting is used to explore both point of view and character development.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can find out more about Charles Kelly and also read an extract from his novel PAY HERE on his webpage at Crimespace on Ning.com.

Photo by Arizona Republic photographer Angela Cara Pancrazio.

OK, it looks like we’re having an extreme sports season here on Fusion View. First, it was the ski-ing ostrich, then it was the guys base-jumping off the KL Tower. Today on Film Monday, I bring you Extreme Unicycling from the Lake District….

To misquote Asterix the Gaul: “Les anglais, ils sont fous”.

The Guardian Book Blog has a great rant about book collectors who prize the pristine first edition of a book more than the contents of the book itself:

“It’s a strange way of distinguishing worth and there’s something unappealing
about the way book collecting prioritises the rarity of a book over its contents
or even its appearance. Not to mention the fact that physical condition is given
far more importance than the pleasure a book has imparted to its readers.”

It made me think of the first first (sic) print run of my novel The Flame Tree by Hodder & Stoughton. The print run had two Author Acknowledgement pages by mistake so they pulped the whole lot and started again - except for two or three copies which I had. I gave one to someone whom I knew enjoyed collectibles and would appreciate the near-uniqueness of that edition. She turned around asked me for another copy to read so as not to diminish the value of the original unique copy I had sent her. I guess I should have expected that reaction as collectors are different from readers but I found myself quite offended - (i) she could have gone out and bought her own second copy to read (and supported my nascent writing career) and (ii) how could she even think of selling the book (as that would be the only time it would have any value) which I had given out of friendship.

There was another time when I met a businesswoman who told me she had first editions of all Virginia Woolf’s books. Wow, I said. And then to continue the conversation: Which of her novels is your favourite? She replied: I don’t know. I’ve never read them. And I don’t intend to.

Sigh. Sometimes, I wonder: What’s the point in being a writer?

Photo: thanks to “Today is a good day” on flickr

Tunku Halim is a Malaysian-born writer living in Tasmania. He started out as a lawyer like me - and guess what? He jumped ship as well to do the writing thing. Unlike me, he is very prolific and has published a number of books: novels, short story collections etc. His tales tend to be dark and macabre and have a deadly twist - like an Asian Roahl Dahl. His book has titles like “44 Cemetery Road” and “The Rape of Martha Teoh”…. very dark indeed!

I am delighted that he has agreed to write a guest piece for Fusion View. Hal writes:

My dad is from the Negri Sembilan royalty. My mother is not. They
divorced when I was very young, so I was essentially brought up as a
KL boy no different from any other kid. That was until the age of 13
when I hopped on a plane and it all changed. Boarding school in
Cheltehenham, followed by University in Sussex, then London where I
attended the Inns of Court School of Law and later post graduate
studies at City University.

Legal Eagle

After 10 years of study in the UK, I returned to KL and chambered at
Shearn Delamore. There I acquainted myself with the tedium of doing
unending lists of documents for court cases and searching for lost
files in the High Court. Great social life though! I then worked for a
property developer. This led to a non-fiction book being published
entitled Everything the Condominium Developer Should Have Told You But
Didn’t. I also began work on a novel and a collection of short
stories.

As I didn’t have a chance to work in the UK , I felt a need to work
overseas. So I shot over to Sydney and found a job (no use of contacts
ok?) as Legal Counsel with a US software company. This was exciting
but stressful stuff. After 4 years I took a sabbatical to write. You
can only negotiate contracts for so much of your life! My first novel
and collection of short stories had already been published by then. I
began work on my second novel, a short story collection and a
biography. After a year, I decided never to return to corporate life.
This was a particularly productive time as I’d published 10 books in
10 years.

The most haunted place in Australia

The fact that Tasmania is the most haunted place in Australia has
nothing to do with me living here! We had lived in Sydney for 10 years
and I felt it was time to move on. There was no job, no family holding
us to a city that was getting more and more congested. My wife and I
had been to Tasmania on holidays and loved the peacefulness, the
beauty of the island and its cooler weather. My dream was to also to
live by the sea. In Tasmania, my dream is fulfilled. Now I can throw
stones into the ever changing seascape and watch for the occasional
pod of dolphins swimming by!

Dark, sinister stories of the macabre do attract me but not because
they are dark or sinister. Rather I’m drawn to supernatural elements.
Something beyond our normal life, something even spiritual perhaps.
Although I’ve written gruesome novels like Vermillion Eye, nowadays I
get more satisfaction from writing more thoughtful pieces like “The
Year 1972″ which appears in my forthcoming short story collection 44
Cemetery Road. I would love to write a ghost story, very gothic, with
suspense and atmosphere.

Distant view of home

It’s easier for me to write about Malaysia because of my geographic
distance from it. This distance provides me with a mental distancing,
an ability to sift out what’s important, what’s unique about the
place. If I lived there I would be too caught up in its own consuming
environment. I’d be eating all the time too. So being far away,
setting a story in Malaysia just seems natural thing to do. Perhaps if
I lived in Malaysia, I’d write about Australia. I’ve written about
Australia though. A good part of Vermillion Eye is set in Sydney. My
story “This Page is Left Intentionally Blank” is also set in Sydney
and won an Fellowship of Australian Writers competition a few years
back. But, yes, most of my work has a Malaysian context.

Current projects

I’m currently working on a children’s encyclopedia of Malaysian
history. It’s a mammoth task as I’m practically doing everything from
taking photographs, Photoshopping, graphic designing and, of course,
the research and writing. It’s taken over 3 years of work. Hopefully
it’ll be out at the end of the year.

I’m also interested in writing a book on creative writing aimed
particularly at Malaysians. Another project is compiling a collection
of writings by Malaysian bloggers.

Other than writing, my other passion is real estate. I’m particularly
interested in regenerating the inner city and new forms of housing. In
Tasmania, I converted a dilapidated shophouse into 6 studio
apartments. These are very compact yet extremely well designed. The
building won a a couple of architectural awards.

—————

You can find out more about Hal and his writings at http://tunkuhalim.wordpress.com/.

Carmen Stavrositu from Pennsylvania State University contacted me to ask me to take part in a survey last week. Her email said:

“Dear Yang-May

I am contacting you regarding a blog survey I am conducting. I am a Ph.D.
candidate in Mass Communication at Penn State and my dissertation project
consists of a survey that looks at women bloggers’ perceived motivations
for and effects of their blogging.

I am sending the survey to a number of bloggers, and I would like to invite
you to participate in it as well. Participation should take approximately 15
minutes of your time. I would appreciate it tremendously if you would be
willing to take the survey. If you decide to do so, please follow the link
below:

http://www.personal.psu.edu/cds205/blog/signin.htm

I would be very happy to share the findings of my study with you once it is
completed!

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact
me!

Thank you in advance,

Carmen”

I took the survey and it was all about what my purpose or objective is in blogging and what were the outcomes of blogging for me personally eg did I feel connected to a wider community? Did I feel more assertive? Overall, my answers showed me that I really enjoy blogging and part of the fun of it is sharing my thoughts and ideas as well as connecting with other bloggers and also hearing what they have to share in response to what I’ve written. My life has been enhanced by blogging in that I’ve met a lot of interesting and generous people through online conversations (by emails and comments) and in some cases, I’ve met them in person through live events that have come out of blogging (eg my KL Book Events). It has also made me feel more connected to a wider, global community, making me think more beyond my local environment. At the same time, I’m also interested in my local environment more as it offers me ideas for posts to share with others who are from another culture or a distant country.

Carmen is keen to for more women bloggers to take part in her survey so do click on the link above to get involved - it’s entirely anonymous apart from having to give your gender and age. If you’d like to share your reactions to taking the survey, do come back and leave a comment or email me. Or write about it on your own blog and link back here.

Photo of researcher: thanks to ucdmc.ucdavis.edu