The Best Asian Short Stories 2023 Book Launch

Let me tell you a funny story: I started this blog because I wanted to be an author.

If you don’t believe me you can go check out the very first post of this blog. I’m not lying. (But no, that underline is not a hyperlink, because why would I let you find my cringiest writing so easily? No thank you.)

But I suspect most of you believe me. After all, blogging is a form of authorship, involving writing, editing, and publishing, minus the pesky business of submitting to journals and publishing houses, with their arcane requests for things like “quality”, and “grammar” and “Times New Roman 12 point font double spaced”.

Now, of course, blogging doesn’t quite get the respect that “authorship” gets, perhaps because sometimes it lacks the things I mentioned in the inverted commas. Or maybe it’s because of how they’re perceived. I remember one nettling time my high school Social Studies teacher mentioned offhand that “bloggers are wannabe writers”.

Which hurt, alright, because well, it was true.

For me.

Where was I.

Anyways, I opened this page here just to say that I’ve been promoted from blogger to author.

Now of course anyone following me for maybe, well, five or more years would know my first published story—that went through real editors (who didn’t, however, demand Times New Roman)—came out in 2018. And since then I’ve published four more stories (one of which came out last week here. This link is real), two essays, and a book review.

But why I say I’ve been finally promoted from blogger to author is because finally, at long last, one of my stories, “C751B” is coming out in a physical book in a physical bookstore in a physical mall that I frequent physically. (For those in the know, it’s called Kinokuniya.)

You can tell how excited I am.

Also, there’s a proper book launch and everything.

Which means someone besides me will be calling me an author.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m nattering on about this. Well, that’s because this is my blog, and on this particular website, “Editorial Standards” and “my taste” are synonymous.

Anyway.

All this to say that if you happen to be in Singapore on November 18, 4:30 p.m. local time, you are very welcome (pls come pls come pls come) to attend the book launch. The details are below or here. And because it’s an anthology, so you get to meet a whole bunch of authors for free! (The whole thing is free. Except maybe the book.)

Details