Ted Mahsun

So, 2018 already huh? Time for some resolutions! Write a short story every fortnight Lol. I don't even know if this is possible, because my usual resolution every year is to write a short story every month and I've failed every year I've attempted it. Writing a short story every fortnight means writing two short stories a month. How is that even possible? Well, I have a plan mapped out, aaaaaand if I stick to it, it should work out. Maybe. Anyway the goal here is to keep writing, and from there, to keep submitting, which I was lax on in 2017. Focus on writing English short stories I spent a lot of time in 2015, 2016, and 2017 reading and writing in Malay. My goal back then was to get good at writing in my native language, and have it be up to my standards writing in English. I think I have succeeded in that aim. After all, I did get published in Dewan Sastera, Tunas Cipta, and even had two Malay novels published (after winning a novel-writing competition no less) so I...

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...

Little Basket has been published two years in a row now, and Fixi Novo has recently announced that we are going to do a third one. I've been lucky, proud, and honoured that I've been chosen to be co-editor three years in a row now (along with people like Tsiung Han See, Catalina Rembuyan, and Eeleen Lee, who are much cleverer than I am). So what is Little Basket ? Little Basket is an anthology of new Malaysian writing, published annually. Each year we seek to publish exciting new works, whether short fiction, poetry, comics, or creative non-fiction, by upcoming or established Malaysian writers, or non-Malaysian writers writing in and/or about Malaysia. If we were feeling any more pretentious, we'd call it a "literary journal" but we're trying not to be pretentious, so we shan't call it that. If you're familiar with what Fixi Novo (and its parent company, Buku Fixi) publishes, you'd know they usually publish fiction that lies on the more pulpi...

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...

  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 ...

Earlier this year I blogged about feeling inspired to write again , how I gained my writing mojo back after several years of writing drought. (Perhaps one day, I'll write about that period of time but suffice to say I was in a bit of a depression and didn't think highly of my own writing. But that time has passed and it is time to focus on the now, and more importantly, on the future.) As I said it that blog post, I intended 2015 to be the year I took writing seriously again, and so far, I've stuck to my word. I didn't mention it back then (perhaps because I was afraid of jinxing it) but I renewed an old contract, an old resolution I used to make every end of the year , and that was promising myself I'd write a short story a month, or twelve stories a year. I've never been able to keep that promise and at the end of the year, I'd self-flagellate for not being able to live up to that promise. But this year felt different. There was certainly something...

Yesterday, the New Asia Now edition of the Griffith Review went on sale: Griffith Review 49: New Asia Now showcases outstanding young writers from the countries at the centre of Asia's ongoing transformation. They write about the people and places they know with passion, flair and insight. All born after 1970, our contributors are cultural agenda setters at home who explore issues of identity and belonging in the new world that is unfolding. Griffith Review 49: New Asia Now, co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Jane Camens, takes a journey through the region’s diversity, featuring a new generation of literary stars who will shape the way we understand the complexities of culture, politics and modernisation. The editors received so many good entries they wanted to include that they decided to publish this edition in two volumes -- a print edition and a supplementary e-book entitled, " New Asia Now: Volume 2 ". Now, why am I telling you this? Because not only is Ne...

This article in Wired has made me rethink my fiction quite a bit lately: Half the time, people can’t even seem to figure out how to define rape, let alone portray it in responsible ways. Indeed, one of the most baffling things about so many rape scenes in popular culture is that the people who scripted them felt qualified to do so, despite seemingly knowing nothing about rape except that it exists and it is bad. In short, anyone can write a rape scene—but should they? Chances are, the answer is no. It's a well-written piece about the use of rape as a plot device and why it's most often unnecessary and makes for lazy writing. I agree with this and I, for one, don't enjoy rape scenes, no matter how crucial it is to the plot in a story. Yet, with that in mind, I must say the article comes at a crucial time for me as I was drafting out an outline for a future short story which happened to include a rape scene. The scene would have involved a woman raping an andro...

I just finished writing a novel ( the one I mentioned in my previous post ), and boy is this feeling exhilarating! Also, there is this overwhelming sense of relief. Word count: 55,827 words. Warning: Anybody who says it is too short to be considered a novel, will be shot. In the genitals. To say I'm excited is a little bit of an understatement. I've written novels before of course, and they've been monsters that have reached almost 100,000 words, but they've all been stinkers and worse, they've all been unfinished. Unfinished in the sense that I managed to get to the first draft stage, then decided it wasn't worth it to plow on with them. A polished turd is still a turd. This novel, I can say with some confidence, has the potential of being not a stinking turd. It's just a first draft of course and there's still a lot of work to be done to get it shiny and polished well enough for publication. There are names to be changed, MacGuffins to be insert...

I wrote 20,000 words quite recently. And I did it within 4 days. Why did I do it? And how? That's what this blog is all about, friends! Some time in the middle of January, I got an idea that I felt would make an interesting writing project. Something light and easy for me to start my writing year with. The elevator pitch I came up with was something that went along the lines of: " First Blood, Part II , but with robots. Or Predator , without aliens." I started writing a synopsis of what the novella would be. Spoiler warning: it's First Blood, Part II , but with robots. I planned out a beginning, a middle and an end, all plot points blatantly and shamelessly stolen from the awesome movie that is First Blood, Part II . I figured the beginning would be 5000 words, the middle would be 10,000 words, and the end would be 5000 words. Then I realised something, HEY! That's 20,000 words. Just nice for a novella. Then I started thinking how much time it would take...

So now my latest short story e-book is out for the consumption of the masses! Don't everybody rush to the bookstores at once! There's enough for everyone! Because they're e-books dammit! Here's a summary of what you're in for: When Sayyid opted to become an organic Volkswagen farmer, he did not expect the Volkswagens to misbehave and break out of his backyard. Now those crazy air-cooled vehicles are running loose in the neighborhood and only Sayyid can stop them. But the situation gets even more out of hand when they invade the home of cranky old Mrs. Winters and take her hostage. In this action-packed and absurd short story, all bets are off as to whether humans or air-cooled Volkswagens survive to see another day. The Dangers of Growing Air-cooled Volkswagens in Your Backyard can currently be found at the following outlets: Amazon Google Play Smashwords iTunes Barnes & Noble Kobo  and Barbra Streisand knows where else. Every time I push o...

It only took four years but I've finally finished writing a short story that I never thought I would finish. As I mentioned in the previous post , on the very last page of Zombies Ate My Muslim , I had promised that the next story would be The Dangers of Growing Volkswagens in Your Backyard . I didn't think anybody would be interested in reading it due to its ridiculously silly title, and so I never was motivated to finish writing it. Yet here I am, basking in the glow of a freshly completed short story. By complete, I mean first draft complete and not rewritten-umpteen-million-times-and-edited-to-hell complete. That process would probably take several more weeks and after that I'll self-publish it on all the major e-book outlets. That's still an achievement though. I shan't be bothered submitting this one to any pubs; it's way too silly for the likes of them. Like Zombies Ate My Muslim , it doesn't take itself seriously and it doesn't even want to t...

You know, I'm feeling inspired again. Inspired again to write. I'll be the first to admit I've been a little slack in my writing. Writing only a short story per year, for the past five or six years. Most of them aren't even complete. I kept abandoning what I started because I kept second guessing myself. Is this good ? Ugh. No, it isn't. I never want to see this piece of crap again. And so I wrote at a glacial pace and only when I felt like it. Until 2014... 2014 was a bit of a strange year for me. Mainly because in a year full of horrible tragedies, so many good things happened to me. Career-wise I was hitting it off. Kids too had finally grown old enough that they stopped trying to commit acts of random suicide every few minutes. And, in terms of my writing, I had finally gotten round to putting up Zombies Ate My Muslim on Smashwords and Google Play . It was no longer an Amazon exclusive! ( Pat on back, Ted. ) Putting it up on Smashwords is a big deal fo...

Anne Lamont's wonderful book for writers, Bird by Bird , isn't a how-to book for writers. Rather, it is a book about the joys of writing as well as being an inspirational guide on the life of writing. The book opens with an anecdote that retells a childhood story of Ms. Lamont's brother who has to write an assignment for school. The assignment requires him to write about birds but when finally the day before the assignment has to be submitted, he cries in frustration that the task is impossible because there are just too many birds to write about. The father comes over, takes a look at the assignment, then gives one small but important piece of advice: "Take it Bird by Bird, son. Bird by Bird." (I haven't read the book for years, so forgive me if this isn't exactly verbatim.) It goes without saying that this is excellent advice. Recently, I met with fellow writer, Elizabeth Tai , and we chitchatted about books, reading and writing. After a whil...

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...

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 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...

Yes, I'm taking part in Nanowrimo again this year. This will be my first serious year taking part in Nanowrimo since 2007. I gave my all in that year and finished with 52,000 words. I would not be able repeat that feat the following two years due to work and life constraints. Even though I told people I would take part I never really took it seriously. So I never won Nanowrimo again for those years. So this year, I'm putting on my bandanna Rambo-style, this music video is playing in the background and I'm gonna hit that 50k word mark again. This is a promise. I've already put down 1812 words for today, so I'm on track. I'll write more about the novel I'm writing for Nanowrimo in the coming days.

...and we killed it !

In past twelve months, I have worked in an art gallery, taught English to a variety of non-English speaking but very willing to learn students, taught English to unwilling students (ugh), programmed a computer game, formed a company to sell said video game, had a baby girl, got into a fight with my brother (jealous of the baby), got into a fight with my mother (protective of her favourite son, i.e. not me), and finally, moved into a new house, as far away as I possibly could afford from my insane family. I can, with all honesty, say that writing is much better than everything I've mentioned above. Well... save for having a baby girl. That was pretty awesome. The new house is pretty nice too. So! What's been going on with you then?