Ted Mahsun

That strange moment when not only are two books with my stories in them are on a bestsellers list, they are on it together with a book by Haruki Murakami! 10 Bestseller sepanjang minggu ini! Terima kasih! @Irvan_Affan @hadimnor @AriffAdlyyy @fahmimustaffa @zenaldehyde pic.twitter.com/VUEp6gDd2x — Kedai Fixi (@KedaiFixi) October 25, 2015 CRAZY. It's not much compared to other people's success, I know, but this is at least one of the few things that can make me smile when it comes to the painful writing journey I've had this past nine years. After all the painful rejections I've had, after all the horrible things people have said about my writing, I now know at least there are some people out there who can appreciate it. Thank you to those who've been there along the way, always encouraging and supporting me, (John Ling, Shark, Sharon Bakar, Elizabeth Tai) even the worst moments when I almost quit writing for good. Thank you to the editors (Zen Cho f...

  If you're a long time reader of this blog (all three of you), you'll remember I wrote a story about two boys and a water tower. Okay, actually you won't remember, because it was nine years ago . That was my first seriously written short story, one I had intended on submitting for publication. It was also my first rejection. No hard feelings though. It was truly a badly written story. I was overconfident of my writing abilities (or lack thereof) and the story truly didn't deserve to be published. But the story of climbing a water tower continued to linger in the back of my mind. I knew I wanted to write a story which featured one. I had grown up in suburb of Ipoh called Pekan Razaki, and I lived on a road that led up to an imposingly tall water tower. I'm sure you'll understand that this would spark the imagination of a teenaged boy. To give you an idea what it was like, I messed around a bit with Google Maps Streetview. Here's the view : I ...