Anna Tan's Blog, page 99

2014: a year in review

The only time I wish I were on wordpress would be at year end when they do that snazzy year end review thingy, instead of me having to do this manually.

The numbers for this year has been a little dismal - not that I actually tracked anything (I'm just comparing stuff now for the heck of it).
I wrote slightly more posts this year (149 vs 125) but there was a drop of page views from 63K to 53K. Then again, I haven't really been concentrating on my blog, other than the A to Z challenge every Apri...

Merry Christmas!

I heard the bells on Christmas day
Their old familiar carols play,
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair I bowed my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
"God is not dead, nor doth he sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With peace on earth, good will to men."

---

It's hard not to get sucked up into the inherent consumeris...

#thecolornoise launch: great music

Pretty... also pretty expensive.I came out of my hermitage to attend The Color Noise's long awaited EP launch. As all things Malaysian, it started off late.

The night started off with Pastelpower, Cherie Ko's electronic project.

According to Facebook, her genre is pastelwave... whatever that means. I can't say I'm a fan. For one, she suffers from the local artist malady - incomprehensibly garbled lyrics. I had no clue what half her songs were about, or rather, I could only hear/u...

Christopher Datta's book is on sale!

Touched with Fire, Christopher Datta's #1 best selling Historical Fiction is on sale now for only $0.99. "A tremendously amazing story for History lovers!"

"A fantastic story that engaged"

"An excellent example of entertwining a love story with historical facts"



$0.99 December 15th-19th



Touched With Fire, a novel of the Civil War inspired by the true story of Ellen Craft.

Ellen Craft is property; in this case, of her half-sister Debra, to whom she was given as a wedding gift. The illegitimate d...

We have a winner!

You know what... I was so busy/lazy the past weekend I almost forgot that I had to select a winner for the giveaway. Hahaha.

But I remembered and went to rafflecopter to pick the winner.

Ms KK, Xpresso Book Tours will be contacting you sometime on/after Dec 17 to send you the ebook.

Beauty

You are beauty
In the brokenness
    Held together
By cellophane tape
And raffia string
    Keeping back
The tears that
Tear you apart

Broken
But not irreparably so

#bookreview: The Ghost at Retreat Lake by Dan Rix

The Ghost At Retreat Lake by Dan Rix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Fresh out of the crazy, unnerving, time looping events in A Strange Machine, Iris, Cory and Noah watch with horror as a future Iris Strasser crawls out of the machine and dies in front of their eyes.
Still, Cory Holland, like the annoying prick he is, insists that they go for the senior class lake retreat, because... it will be extremely fun.

Except it's not. A series of close calls and strange happenings further unnerve Iris Strasser,...

Syiok Sendiri - a not quite review

SYNOPSIS(from PenangPac's website)
Syiok Sendiri! A Very Merry Malaysian Christmas!' is the first installment of the 'Syiok Sendiri' series, a comedy-variety project we are hoping would be an endless saga of celebrating the spirit of 'self amusement' on stage. Expect drivel material, not-so-high-brow stuff, and occasional 'siapa makan cili terasa pedas' (tak faham, google la ye!) moments. But ingat ye, no need to be tersinggung and all ok. It's all in good fun. So datanglah beramai-ramai to pe...

A #giveaway! In time for Christmas!

So... I finished NaNoWriMo... as in I completed the 50K words... but the story isn't quite done yet. But I got lazy.

Anyway, while I get back to actually finishing the story, here's something to entertain you - remember the book I was blitzing in November? The Expatriates?
Yeah, well, I have a copy to giveaway. Check that out here. Special additional entries available if you show some love for Love in Penang. ;)

Don't have a copy? Find out where you can get one here. Or, well, pretty Amazon widg...

#fridayflash: Dreams

I dreamt about you last night, and you let me lean into you instead of moving away. I breathed you in hungrily; that warm, familiar, earthy smell of comfort and food, of confidence and peace. And instead of making space, you reduced it and you let me hold your hand, just because. So instead of waltzing around the words that keep us apart, we finally spoke the truth to each other; the truth of our hopes and dreams and the way we wanted to intertwine like vines, instead of claiming our separate...