Robert Raymer's Blog, page 30

"Neighbours": Comment: Are You Mrs. Koh? by Denis Harry, NST 28/8/10

After meeting the students in KL who were studying my short story "Neighbours" in SPM Literature, you can imagine my surprise when I came across Denis Harry's article  "Comment: Are You Mrs. Koh?"  Denis was writing about my character from "Neighbours"!  It came out nearly one month ago! No one even told me!  I guess it's like that, you figure, oh, he'll see it, or someone else will point it out to him.  When it comes to good news, I'd rather have one hundred people tell me than no one at...

Creative Writing Now: An Interview with Robert Raymer on Writing Short Stories in Malaysia

A fellow Ohioan from Cincinnati, an expat living in Spain, interviewed me for their writing website which is read mostly by Americans.  She had read my media post  and gave me the option to do my replies by email and thankfully limited the questions to four, which centered around my writing in Malaysia as an expat. 

Although I was born in Pennsylvania, I moved to Ohio when I was nine, in the third grade and stayed there through high school and attended Miami (Ohio) University, just 20 miles...

The Cycle of Success and The Power of Five

Success, according to Lisa Jimenez in Conquer Fear!, is a cycle of enthusiasm and discipline.  When you lack enthusiasm to do something, that discipline had better kick in, and when it does, that brings results, and results bring more enthusiasm, and enthusiasm brings in more discipline which bring in even more results, and this is where you want to be in the success cycle.  Still, it all comes down to discipline, doesn't it?  For a writer, discipline is what you need to produce results...

Borneo Post 15 September 2010 - Meeting students at KL BookFest

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal based in Hong Kong is running a blog series on meeting the writers who will be in their next issue, out later this month. Yesterday they ran one on me for "On Fridays" and stated, "Cha does not normally reprint works (apart from the "Lost Teas" section). So, when we do republish a piece, it has to be very good."

Talk about raising expectations! They also added a link to both my blog series The Story Behind the Story and my website. I think it's a cool way to...

BookFest@2010

Tropical Affairs didn't win, so no two years in a row for me, but I did have a nice time. I finally met with Lydia Teh, whom I wrote "The Merdeka Miracle" with last year. Too bad Tunku Halim couldn't join us.


I also met with authors Kuan Guat Choo and Peggy Tan Pek Tao, a former colleague of mine at USM, and this year's winner for non-fiction for her book Life The Malaysian Style. So that's two years in a row for USM!

Afterwards I met with Yvonne Lee, who gave me a copy of her latest book, Mad...

Starmag-BookFest- 5 September 2010

"On Fridays" from Lovers and Strangers Revisited—my 100th Short Story published!

"On Fridays" from Lovers and Strangers Revisited—my 100th Short Story published!—will be reprinted in Hong Kong-based Cha: An Asian Literary Journal. Cha is also providing a link to my blog "On Fridays: The Story Behind the Story" sending the Story Behind the Story blog series international with its first literary magazine connection. "On Fridays" has now been published 13 times!

Amazingly this is the 78th publication of one the *17 stories in Lovers and Strangers Revisited. Recently I reconc...

Life & Style - Personality of the Week

Here's the link to my first online interview that came out today in Life & Style, lifeandstyle.com.my. Eight questions are asked and the answers are kept short, and I tried to make sure each one is quotable. They did a nice job with this, using a black backdrop, and putting my two book covers side by side. Notice the titles of the book are reflected upside down on the table for a cool effect!

I'm sure there's a way to copy and paste this website page into the blog, but every way I tried it see...

Getting Known through the Media and Anyway that You Can!

Georgette, Robert, and Sharnaz

"I'd like to invite you to be my guest on my TV talk show" read the SMS from Regina Ho from RTM Kuching, the producer of Kuppa Kopi, the only talk show from Sarawak on National TV. She asked me to bring along my books Lovers and Strangers Revisited and Tropical Affairs: Episodes of an Expat's Life in Malaysia to the shooting (aired on 31 May).

When writing a book or even thinking of one, you need to get known by as many people as possible. One obvious way is th...