Ted Mahsun

Oh hello! It's been a while huh! I figured I'd better update this because I've been networking with other writers from around the world and I didn't want them googling me up and then finding my blog and all there was on it was a page from way back in May and then another from way back in 2015. So anyway, what's been up with me this past couple of years? Well it so happens, quite a lot! It's been a good 2017 for me. I won 3rd and consolation prize in the prestigious biannual Malay SF novel writing competition, Sayembara Fiksyen Sains dan Teknologi UTM-Utusan . This also means I had two SF novels published this year, Dunia Hanyalah Pentas , and Yang Diselindung Samudera , which I co-wrote with Nor Azida Ishak and Fadli al-Akiti. I'm particularly proud of Dunia Hanyalah Pentas , which is a YA cyberpunk murder mystery thriller (phew! what a mouthful!) set in my hometown of Ipoh, a quiet little town which isn't really the kind of megalopolis one usual...

Ever since I started this blog, I've had a somewhat loose tradition of writing an annual retrospective of the year that's passed. Some years I did not do it because those years were too depressing. Indeed, the period between 2009 to 2013, I consider some of my darkest years of my life. No permanent job, a very low paying job and sometimes no jobs at all, I was scrounging for money, on top of having a wife and baby to feed. (Don't worry, things slowly got better and I'm not fishing for sympathy. Just saying.) During those years, I barely wrote any of my own fiction, and the ones I did I wrote purely out of spite (See: Zombies Ate My Muslim . What was I angry at? The world.) 2014 was the year that everything turned around for me. I finally found a job where my employer truly appreciated my skills and so money was flowing in at a good rate again. In the meantime, to make some extra bucks, I had ghostwritten a screenplay (and half a novel based on said screenplay) and...

While 2007 was awesome for me , 2008 was not. A lot of things did not go well for me and people close to me this past year, and I'm not even counting my writing failures yet. I won't go into my non-writing disappointments this past year but I will touch on my writing disappointments. Of the three resolutions I made earlier this year , I achieved none. No surprise there, really ... since when have I kept a resolution? But still! Pretty disappointing! I mean, I would have loved to have finished that novel and would have been blown away to be able to write 12 short stories, one for each month. As it stands, not only have I not finished the novel, I went and started another unfinished novel for this year's NaNoWriMo, and I didn't even finish that. I did write 5 or so short stories this year, but all of them are unfinished. Yep, 2008 was an epic fail and not a year I will look back on fondly. On the other hand, I did have more book reviews published this year than th...

2007 was not a bad year for me. Good stuff that happened in 2007 I Got Married .^_^ Married life has so far gone well and there are no little Teddies on the way, thanks for asking. I read 48 books. Quite a feat, although my initial target was 54. Oh well. The longest time it took me to read one book was one month, for Mervyn Peake's Titus Groan . Good book, but totally unsuited for reading on a crowded train during the rush hour. For the first time in the three years I've done NaNoWriMo, I actually won . The novel's still not done so I am still slogging my way through until I get to the end. I had wanted to finish it before the end of December, but that does not appear to be feasible at the moment. *grin* I had three reviews published in The Star this year. Doesn't sound like a lot, but consider this: the previous year I only had two book reviews published and both times I had to pay for the books myself. This year, the three books I reviewed were donated by Big Name Bo...

...for 2006! Since I have no internet at home (I'll get to paying the bill, one day), today will be the last post for the year. What has 2006 meant for me? 2006 was to me, the Year of Writing. This year, for the first time in my life, I took my writing very seriously. For the past 5 years or so, my New Year's resolutions had always included one where I resolved to write The Novel. Though I have yet to fulfil that promise, I have at least made huge strides in my writing. This year, I wrote 9 short stories, submitted 6 of them to 11 publications, and have had 2 of them accepted for publication (one of them is included in a book being launched tomorrow ). Compare that to the previous years... all I had written were some story outlines for the games company I work for... and that's it. They were pretty lame outlines too, come to think of it. I joined a writing class, which gave me the confidence to actually keep writing (thanks, Sharon !) and I started a blog about books and ...