David Seow's Blog, page 5

My 2018

2018
Chinese New Year




Kobe's 2nd Birthday Mom & Dad's Anniversary


Literary Events With Juat and Mr Rama at the Singapore Literature Awards


At the Asian Festival of Children's Content
Xie Shi Min, winner of the HABA at the Asian Festival of Children's Content

With my fellow judges of the Hedwig Anuar Children's Book Award
Emily Lim and Sarah Odedina At Book Week at the Hollandse School
At the Singapore Writers Festival


BOOKS









Upcoming Books

Highlights of the Year

2018
Chinese New Year




Kobe's 2nd Birthday Mom & Dad's Anniversary


Literary Events With Juat and Mr Rama at the Singapore Literature Awards


At the Asian Festival of Children's Content
Xie Shi Min, winner of the HABA at the Asian Festival of Children's Content

With my fellow judges of the Hedwig Anuar Children's Book Award
Emily Lim and Sarah Odedina At Book Week at the Hollandse School
At the Singapore Writers Festival


BOOKS









Upcoming Books







The Trump/Kim Summit
Lester Holt
Jeff Zeleny
Jeff Glor
Anderson Cooper

Christiane Amanpour
Celebrities Misty Copeland
Sebastian Stan
Daniel Dae Kim

A Visit to Hollandse School

I recently had the honor and privilege of being invited to the Hollandse School for their book week. I have to say the students there were incredibly creative! Good on them! I had an incredible time working with the kids on their story ideas.  Thank you to the teachers and students of the Hollandse School for a really fun morning. 

Unpublished Authors

A lot of  unpublished authors have asked me for advice. It surprises me how unrealistic and entitled some of them can be.  Here are some tips for them:
1. Publishing is a tough industry, especially children's book publishing.
2. If you're given an opportunity to be published, don't take that opportunity for granted. Never look that gift horse in the mouth.

3. Be humble. First time writers, your first draft is never your best draft. When editors tell you your work needs to be edited, follow instruction. The editor knows what's needed. Remember they've been working in the industry, you've just started.
4. If you editor or publisher sends you an email regarding your work, respond in a timely manner. Even if you're not given a specific timeline, you should do your work as quickly and effectively as possible. Any excuse for not responding is akin to ' the dog ate my homework.'
5. If an author and publisher offer you an opportunity to work with them, be grateful. Listen and learn. They’ve been published; you haven’t. They didn't have to give you this opportunity but they did. So go along with things. Don't insist on doing things on your terms. 
6. Your attitude when working with editors, publishers and fellow writers determines if you are or you aren't going to be published. 
7.If you leave a publisher with the impression of being difficult, then you're not going to be published.

Sneak Peek at our Last Book in the Sam, Sebbie & Di-Di-Di and Xandy series

Sneak Peek at our Last Book

Meeting Favourite News Anchors during the Trump/Kim Summit

OK, I'm a bit behind on the times, a lot's been going on so I haven't been able to update my blog as of late, So I'll try to catch up on things. Back in June, Trump and Kim Jung Un were in town for a their much anticipated summit. There were Trump and Kim impersonators with whom you could have a wefie for a price. Restaurants served up summit burgers and security was out in full force. This was the biggest international political event that Singapore's ever hosted. Since I'm a TV news junkie, I decided to try to meet some of my favourite news anchors who were in town. 
When the summit was confirmed, CBS News announced that Jeff Glor would be leading the coverage from town along with Ben Tracy and Major Garrett. I've been a fan of the Emmy-winning journalist's work for some time. He's got a great interview style, his stories have sense of fun, he's got a great sense of humour, he's impartial and he seems like an incredibly nice down-to-earth guy.  

Back in February and I mailed him a couple of my kids' books for his kids and a couple of weeks later an autographed photo arrived in the mail. So I decided to try to meet Jeff in person so that I could pass him the latest books for his kids and let's face it, I also wanted to get that all-important selfie. I'm a shameless fanboy and I'm not ashamed to admit it.
A short while after arriving at the hotel, Jeff and the CBS crew headed out for a location shoot. I kind of nervously approached him with some of my books for his kids. Jeff smiled and said:"Thanks for coming down. Is it David or Dave?" he asked as he signed an autograph. I'm not sure if he received the books or if he read my tweets and I didn't want to presume he did so I just said Dave, which is what everyone calls me anyway.  So he kindly signed another autograph for me and posed for a selfie. I thanked him and then I remembered I forgot to pass him my latest book on Joseph Schooling. Jeff thanked me again and kindly accepted it and posed for another photo. I hope I was not too much of a pain and I hope he and his kids like the books. If not they can also be used to prop up unstable chairs/tables or as door wedges.  Thank you, Mr. Glor for making my day. By the way, I think you did a good job with the your interviews with President Trump.

Jeff Glor and me.








It was a small world, Jeff Zeleny whom I also met is a friend of my old college classmate, Bruce Rohr. 

I'm also a fan of Anderson Cooper and he was staying at another hotel in another part of town. My friend Manfred and I spied him filming his show on one of the balconies of the hotel. 
When there was a brief break in filming Manfred asked him to come down to pose for a selfie. #Facepalm #Headdesk.  It was reminiscent of the scene in Say Anything where Lloyd holds up his boom box. Anderson smiled and politely declined, saying he was filming. Nothing was going to deter Manfred from his quest to meet his favourite anchor. By lunchtime we were  famished so we headed to one of the hotel's restaurants for a quick bite of lunch. But wouldn't you know it, the waitress led us to a table next to the one where Anderson Cooper was seated.
Awkward! But Mr Cooper kindly approached our table and asked if we would like him to sign our items and pose for selfies. Which, heck yeah, of course we did. I gave him my books A Day with a Duchess and A Royal Adventure because he had seemed to be thrilled when he was covering Harry and Meghan's wedding on CNN. We thanked him for taking the time and he returned to his table to resume his lunch.

And after lunch, Anderson came over to our table to say goodbye and wish us a good day. What a nice guy, a genuine class act. Thanks, Mr Cooper.

Asian Festival of Children's Content 2018

I'll be on a panel with best-selling authors Shamini Flint and Emily Lim at this year's Asian Festival of Children's Content. It will be a reunion of sorts because the last time we spoke on a panel was at the 2011 AFCC.

Happy Birthday, Sam!!

Nepalese Orphans

It's really heartwarming to see my book, 'Blow a Kiss'  in the hands of Nepalese orphans. Hope they like them.