RocketKapre’s quarterly webzine, Usok, is up with Issue # 1 with five stories. The following be snippets for temptation.

The Startbox by Crystal Koo

I was twelve years old at the time, only a boy that my father thought could still be distracted by the jingle of an ice cream cart. I didn’t have the courage to tell him what I knew about Ricky Lau.

The Saint of Elsewhere: A Mystery by chiles samaniego

I could have listened to her forever. I could have watched her animate those same words over and over with her pale, gentle lips, even as I tried to persuade her otherwise: no, I said, nowhere’s that safe.

Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing by Kenneth Yu

Mr. Harry Liu Hui Chiu was at the bank when he experienced for the first time—as with a kiss, or a fresh dream—the splendorous wonder of hearing his first vase.

The Coming of the Anak-Araw by Celestine Trinidad

Before Sari had time to take back her words, the Babaylan was out of the door. The priestess’ robes flounced behind her as her parting words rang in Sari’s ears.  “May Bathala smile down upon you. If he is still watching.”

The Child Abandoned by Yvette Tan

They say that Quiapo wasn’t always like this. My Lola used to tell us stories about the place we lived in before The Change began. You’ve heard of The Change, haven’t you?

My story “Wildwater” is now up at The Farthest Shore! There’s a corresponding interview with me regarding the story at RocketKapre’s On the Far Shore. Charles Tan and Rick Kleffel have reviewed the anthology.

“The Startbox” at Usok 1 will be up soon. I’m also currently working on a story for the Ruin and Resolve digital anthology. Proceeds will go to charity, specifically for Ketsana / Ondoy victims.

Kenneth Yu, the first editor who ever published me, has his story “Lost For Words” placed in the top three of Fantasy Magazine’s Halloween Flash Fiction Stories. Vote for it if you like it!

According to the e-mail sent to us and The World SF News Blog. Very excited!

Right. I was typing up a post detailing a certain story idea I thought I’d never turn into an actual story because it’s in a genre I normally don’t write in, when I suddenly realized, just before hitting Publish, that it might probably be worth a try.

Sorry, folks. Here’s a few slices-of-life from my trip to India to make up for luring you in, sort of.

On the road from Jaipur and out of the Triangle:

On a jeep in the Bishnoi village:

In a market in Jodhpur:

In between carriages on the train from Mumbai to Aurangabad:

And while I’m at it, my Boris Yeltsin water bottle:

Work gets cancelled (hence adding to the hours you need to make up for) because of the typhoon signal and you go back home irritated but at least high and dry because there’s barely a drizzle. After the signal lowers and you return to work, you wonder what an umbrella is really for because you got drenched anyway.

(It’s got the workings of a “Funny thing, life” post in it but it’s not going that way. Funny how we use the word funny for something that isn’t necessarily so. Good way to euphemize the irritation but not very accurate in meaning. Neither is the word “euphemize,” which is not one, apparently, according to the squiggly red line in the WordPress ADD NEW POST text area.)

No, this is my attempt to show that this blog has some semblance of being alive by sheer dint of writing anything. When you login to WordPress and everything looks different…well, you know how it goes. Yes, I have been busy (and this blog has every right to be jealous of my Twitter account) mostly because there has been work done, writing completed, meetings attended, trips made, books read, and people seen. (Hopefully there will be more of that later. And yes, I also feel like my virtual presence has mostly been answered for by Twitter. This is why I cannot be bothered to sign up for Facebook. Boys, boys, one at a time, please.)

An update on current causes for celebration on the writing front:

1. “The Man on the Moon” will be published in the anthology The Dragon and the Stars by DAW Books in 2010.

2. “The Startbox” will be published in RocketKapre’s Usok 1 next month.

3. “Wildwater” will be published in The Farthest Shore. Voila the cover art.

4. Haruka and I are planning for the new play / film, The Pink Elephant. I’m not doing the playwrighting this time like what we did in The Foundling; we’re just basing it on a short story I had already written. Haruka has big plans if it’s turned into a film. She’s thinking Cannes. I’m thinking down the more realistic road towards the Hong Kong Film Festival. But if it weren’t for Haruka’s more daring way of thinking, we’d never have done the first play in the first place. So Cannes it is.

5. I’ve been invited to join a podcast by Bookbabble.net.

There is 24% remaining in my laptop battery and it is 1:30AM in the morning. Thank goodness I have a late class for Wednesday morning. But not late enough.

Next time we’ll have a real post. Somewhat. It feels good to write more than 140 characters.

Listening to Bob Evan’s “Don’t You Think It’s Time.”  I’ve got 40 minutes till I start tonight’s writing.

I’ve been clocking in at least 3 hours of writing every night for more than a month now. I had to start doing it at some point. Initially I thought I’d burn out; after a whole day at the Day Job, the last thing you’d want is do more thinking. But it’s been going really well; some music then cuppa tea to start me off, the initial leap into the writing zone – arguably the hardest part of the routine because it involves shutting out all the temptations, then before I know it I’m there.

I spend the day editing the story in my head, tossing the plot line looking for holes, getting to know the characters, asking the tough point of view questions (tough being if I had chosen the wrong one, I’d have to make a more-than-usual painful rewrite). True, all the potential edits get all tainted by the tiredness from the Day Job but at least most of them make it to the manuscript.

The best part is that the discipline hauls me to crunch words whether I want it or not, instead of having to wait for the muse to stumble in, tie her to a chair, and get her drunk, as Warren Ellis put it. There’s no retrogression in writing the longer you do it (except the case when you’ve been doing it such a long time that the Editor side of your head starts drying up the Artist side and leaves it looking like a prune because it’s already a knee-jerk reaction to have the Editor call all the shots in anticipation of the rewrite – but that’s more of an issue with psychology rather than skill, I think), so theoretically I’m getting better at it. Also productivity’s up, which is never a bad thing.  And it’s a bit like leading a double life as well, in the sense that I have serious work  at night that has nothing to do with the Day Job. It’s comforting, actually, to know that you’ve got something else you find more fulfilling going on in your life.

Anyway, I’ve been using the free full-screen writing software Q10, which blocks out everything else from my monitor and forces me to concentrate on my writing. Cool thing about it is the option for typewriter sounds; it feeds into the romantic idea that I’m in some way connected to the old greats. It’s best when in the heat of pounding first drafts, but when it comes to editing, I must say it gets rather tiresome.

On the fourth month of the ninth year of the twenty-first century, I returned to the Motherland. I found the Mother sitting in the middle of the world, her back before me, chunks of ash from the cigar in her hand falling to her feet.

Piqued by the lack of a welcome, I called, “Black lungs make no one beautiful.”

She did not turn around and I wondered if she knew I was there. As I watched the puffs of smoke rise, I heard her ask, “What do you know of beauty?”

Glass lake from the bus to Yunshanping in Lijiang

Yak milk is...interesting. It's got a bit of a punch in the end.

Yunshanping

Carpets for hire in Lijiang's Old Town

The occupation of the Old Town

Picking up after yourself is pretty important to the Naxi religion

Childhood in Yunnan

Arise! People who refuse to be slaves!

Bridge in the Tiger Leaping Gorge

Songzanlin Lamasery in Shangri-la / Zhongdian / Gyalthang

My National Geographic moment on the way to the lamasery

Can't be paradise without the Internet

The Old Town in Shangri-la

The steppes of Shangri-la

On the Diqing tarmac, on the way to Kunming

Shame on me; it’s been more than a month since I last blogged. And in the face of deadlines and paperwork, I will try to fix that at some point. I’ve got a class to go in 5 minutes; I’m just scribbling this down to remember what to write about here.

1. April trip to China (just got back last night.)

2. Being invited to submit to an anthology.

3. Turning another year older.

4. Regularly writing a few hours every night.

5. Twittering too much.

Thank you.

September 16, 2008.

Sometimes I think I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

It’s just turned one minute past midnight.

You know what’s great about writing to you? You’re always around. You’ll never grow feet and run away or leave. As long as I keep a good head on my shoulders and not lose you, I’ll always have you to talk to. And you never interrupt.

You never judge. You just wait till I flip these pages again and let me judge myself.

The pages are starting to thin; I’ll need to buy a new one of you soon. I wish you weren’t so expensive. Old friend, we’ve been through so much, and past midnight it’s just both you and me again and the voices in my head.

I wish…but there is no use for wishing.

I wonder if I would care if someone ever read through these pages. I don’t think it would matter much, since most of what matters is in between the lines. At least that’s what we’ve been taught as how any good writer is supposed to write. Restraint, finesse, and subtlety. No bleeding hearts worn on the sleeve. Always discreet, never desperately revealing. One writes to hide and show at the same time.

…Old friend, the one who can tolerate me the most. What are you if not simply myself. You know, one day it’ll end, my having to constantly talk to myself.

One day I’ll have all thorns out of my side, and till then I’ll be left to wonder if it is possible to live a life simply as subtext read between the lines.

You incurable dork.

September 20, ‘08.

I wonder why I always think of Hong Kong as a she? Like it can never be a he, in the same way Berlin can never be a she. How is Hong Kong female? Sly. Vibrant, energetic, flashy, almost alluring. That sharp, cold beauty of a cyberpunk city.