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...

The Book Smugglers feature Cyberpunk: Malaysia in their monthly SFF in Conversation article . They speak with Zen Cho, the editor, as well as the authors featured within the anthology. And yes, I'm one of 'em, thank you very much. An excerpt: We received 100 submissions – a lot for a local English-language anthology – and filtering them down to the final 14 short stories was not an easy process. But I’m proud of the resulting book: it’s a fascinating snapshot of contemporary urban Malaysia, an exploration of what cyberpunk might be in a Malaysian context, and a glimpse of what we can hope for from the continuing growth of world SF. There's also a giveaway, so if you hurry, you might be able to win a copy.

Yesterday was a landmark day for me because Cyberpunk: Malaysia was finally launched at the Cooler Lumpur festival. Cyberpunk: Malaysia includes in it my first SF short story published by somebody other than myself. That story is entitled " What the Andromaid Reads at Night " and is what I feel is the best short story I've written so far. It's a pretty big deal for me, in many ways. But what really makes it primarily a big deal is that this was the first acceptance for me this year (out of three so far, and I'll talk about the other accepted short stories in a future blog post) and was the desperate affirmation that I sorely needed to prove I could indeed write something that somebody else actually likes. (Like most writers I am insecure.) My awesome editor and me. This somebody happened to be the all-round awesome Zen Cho , co-winner of the William L. Crawford Fantasy Award, and author of the fantastic anthology of short stories Spirits Abroad ...