I just formatted Sea of Storms & Other Stories into an ePub 2 file. You can get it free from my website at freelunch.my/sos.epub. Great to read on your tablet or phone. Contains favorites like “A question of procedure”, and “The writer’s room”. The cover looks like this now:
Not sure what the graphic might mean to an onlooker. I did want a 3D infinity symbol for the first story of the collection, where it says “onions symbolize eternity…”. More on the other stories and why I wrote them later…
The first one, The Writer’s Room, is an extension of what might have happened after my rehab, following a somewhat violent family argument started by my sister. It’s juxtaposed over my becoming a writer, and the people I meet along the way who have their own issues. It takes place in a country struck by Covid and political unease which was Malaysia at the time. Some of the characters are from my uni days in Manchester, UK, others from my Facebook. I put this tale frontmost because it means a lot to me.
The last tale, Old Man’s Car, takes place some time after TWR (above), and is one of reconciliation and reflection. It takes place, mainly in the seats of a compact self-driving sports car. In the end, the conflict, glossed over by high technology, still remains, deep-rooted, iniquitous, and poignant.
In Reminisce, I preserved the memory of grandpa and grandma on my mother’s side. People who grew up poor during WWII. It was a story I had always wanted to write. Not the least for anything else but to share a slice of old Malaysia, and old wounds my family still has.
Possibly my most accomplished / imaginative story, A Question of Procedure, is about a talking frog-chameleon and how he takes over the lives of 3 people, in fact the whole plane, on a long haul flight. This tale mirrors a love triangle I was once in, and my fascination for desert rain frogs, I saw in photos online. Despite being fantastical, it is actually a very realistic-reading piece and in the end, left me dreaming of whether such things might exist.
More later…
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