Ted Mahsun

Every time I reach the last day of the year I chastise myself yet again for not having finished writing a novel. It's been happening for nearly a decade now. Well! The year isn't over yet so maybe I will manage yet. You will know tomorrow if I succeed, I am sure. As for the year that is past, what can I say? It's been a somewhat challenging year for me but there were lots of good mixed in with the bad. But in general I would call it the year Ted discovered the eReader . I've been somewhat vocal on my dislike of ebooks, if not on this blog, then in conversation with fellow readers and friends. My dislike for them was borne out of a time when Amazon had not yet launched its Kindle, and the only eReaders available on the market were expensive, bulky and most terribly, impractical to buy books for. This was also a time when people still thought that eBooks were a thing you read on your computer screen. I thought this a terrible thing, and still do. Reading a 150,000...

I don't remember who said this, it was either J.A. Konrath or David Gaughran , but it goes something like this: "Staring at your sales figures every minute will not make them go up." Very true indeed. Then why the hell can't I peel my eyes away!!!

I had a promotion yesterday to coincide with the launch of my short story ebook, Zombies Ate My Muslim , where I gave it away for free. If you missed out, well... sorry! Keep checking this blog or subscribe my to Twitter feed @tedmahsun to find out when my next promotion will be. At the end of the day I managed to get 93 downloads on Amazon US and 30 downloads on Amazon UK. The book also wound up on the Top 100 Best Selling Kindle Books for Horror. (EDIT: It's since gone back down to somewhere in the 80,000s.) So, not bad I guess? 100+ downloads was more than I expected. My aim for making the book free was for exposure and I got that. But I also wanted the people who downloaded it to write reviews on Amazon and so far I've had none. Reviews are important to get people to buy the book as well as visibility of the author. Perhaps in the coming days? If you're one of the awesome readers who downloaded Zombies Ate My Muslim and you enjoyed it, please consider leavin...

Zombies Ate My Muslim is my latest short story ebook: All he wants is to have a simple life. And that simple life he wants to spend with his celebrity girlfriend, Barbra Streisand. But unbeknownst to him, his darling Barbra has become a Muslim... which isn't a bad thing. Except for the rampaging zombie horde outside his front door who only want to eat Muslims. Between the Muslim-hungry zombies and the Google Robots that want to steal his Brussels Sprouts, can he save the woman he loves before she gets eaten? Will things ever be simple for him? Available at: Amazon.com

I had a lightning flash of an idea last weekend. It was the midnight of Sunday turning into Monday and I had wanted to go to sleep but suddenly there came into my brain a brilliant seed of an idea for a short story that I just had to sit down and write then and there. So I did. I hammered out a 3700 story about zombies. I don't usually like zombies. In fact, I hate zombies as a genre, but this idea seemed so good at the time I didn't want to lose the energy of the moment. When I was done, I reread it and I was pleased. It came out not-so-bad, if I do say so myself. Over the next few days, I rewrote it, gave it to some friends for advice on improving it and rewrote it some more after I got said solicited advice. My friends said they liked it and well, if they liked it, I suppose some other people out there would like it as well. At first I had wanted to self-publish the story on Amazon but something inside me said I should try submitting it to a certain magazine that I h...

I was asked yesterday to write something fictional that was related to my Malay background. I replied that I wasn't interested in doing that anymore because I was more interested in writing something that was inspired by medieval Arab/Islam. My friend asked why medieval Arab and not Malay. And while at the time I simply answered, "Cos the medieval Islamic period is more interesting", I feel I should expand on that a little bit. The truth is, when I first started this blog, I was all about writing something that reflected my roots and heritage. I wanted to write The Great Malaysian Novel. I wanted my stories to be infused with Malaysiana. And I did. I wrote several short stories of which I feel reflect quite accurately the Malaysia that I personally know. Unfortunately those stories have never really been published, not because I think they're rubbish (although I do occasionally reread them and think they are a bit rubbish) but because I feel they are a little to...

Hey guys, check it out: Secret Operation in the Matriarch's Kitchen (Kindle Edition) I'm finally on Amazon! Hurray! I'll probably hit Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks and Kobo within the next two weeks as well. Hopefully this will improve sales... even if a little bit.

Well it's almost 24 hours since I unleashed my first ebook into the world. (You didn't buy it? Why the heck not? Go and correct this grievous error right now!) How many people have bought it so far? *drum roll please* A grand total of TWO. That's actually two more than I expected so I guess that's not so bad, even if I sold those two copies to two close friends. Definitely not something to sniff at!

About four years ago, I wrote a story about alien home appliances that came to Earth to save their fellow instruments from the shackles of human enslavement. It was called: The story was published in an anthology called Write Out Loud which I haven't seen in bookstores for quite a while so I think it must be out of print. Even when it was in print many people complained they couldn't find it and unfortunately I could not help them as distribution was out of my control. Well, four years later and we're in the midst of a digital revolution when it comes to book publishing. I thought I might as well publish the story as an ebook and see what happens. Consider this some kind of experiment on my part. You can get The Secret Operation in the Matriarch's Kitchen on Smashwords for US$0.99 in every digital format you can think of. If I'm lucky, one day maybe the ebook will appear on the big online bookstores such as Amazon, B&N and Apple. Related: Bibi Misb...

I started out reading Murakami's behemoth of a book, 1Q84 , but when a friend gifted me an e-book copy of Stephen King's 11/22/63 , I read the first few pages to check it out... and was hooked. Now I cannot go back to 1Q84 . Well, at least for now. King has me caught in his death grips of superb writing and excellent plotting.

Okay. I can now admit it. I love e-books. Digital ink. O! glorious digital revolution, let it wash over me and cleanse me of my perve for paper! A friend let me testdrive his Kindle some time back and ever since then I've been slowly falling in love with the idea of digital books. Today, I had a trial run of sorts with my iPad loaded with Stanza and Naomi Novik's Tongues of Serpents by taking it on my daily commute to work, and it's been brilliant so far. Enjoying very much the ability to define words as I read them. Vocabulary +1!

Well, I just bought something: Thing is, as huge a Murakami fan that I am, I wasn't planning on buying it so soon. I felt I had outgrown Murakami and didn't really feel like reading a huge tome, especially if it was a meandering one like Kafka on the Shore. Not that I do not like Kafka. Far from it. It's just that, well, I want to read other stuff too. But it seems the God of Books has other plans and sent fate to intervene? I was made aware of some excerpts of reviews with statements such as "his best work since Wind-up Bird!" and "the opus that would define his oeuvre!" I realise this might be hyperbole but come on! I had become intrigued. And then today a colleague said he had it for his Kindle and had already started reading it. He said it was great so far. That was the last straw. I knew I had to read it as well. So, one trip to Borders... and here I am. I haven't even ripped off the plastic wrapping yet. I am savouring this delight o...