My Fiction

I've always been a voracious reader, and since last year I've started on writing fiction. I hope I've moved ahead on the learning curve, thanks to time spent here, here and here.

Some of my work so far can be found at Malaysian Poetic Chronicles and Quarterly Literary Review Singapore.

The story Peeping Toe published in QLRS would also be part of a short story anthology called Love and Lust in Singapore, along with another of my stories.

My story "Maya Niwas" would be published in New Asian Short Stories, an anthology by Marshall Cavendish Malaysia, edited by Professor Quayum.

A travel story on Tasik Kenyir would be published by MPH in their anthology Sini Sana.

All these should be out by December 2010. But as we all know, in the publishing world, things take their own time, and that's all right.

I hope to share more of my writing on this page as I grow as a writer. For the time being, I have added a sample of my Flash Fiction below. More pieces here. I'll update this page as I go along.

Feedback is crucial in this learning process, so comments are welcome at the Malaysian Poetic Chronicles or at Amlokiblogs and Daily (w)rite.

The Summer Storm

Robert's wife has no idea when the light blue sky has turned a threatening, sombre gray-black. As if someone has gone and smeared a lot of chimney-soot on its face, she says to herself, her hand automatically reaching up to touch her own. Laying there on the grass with the sooty sky bearing down on her, she thinks of Robert. She thinks of his arms as he had held her last summer in this very meadow, how they'd made love, laughed, fed each other from the small basket she'd brought along, the mingling smells of a thousand honeysuckles around them.

She has gone back in time, dreaming, when a movement catches her eye: a foal at the water's edge, drinking from the small brook, all by itself. She wonders where its mother is. She decides it is probably time she returns home, to the empty house Robert has left her in, to follow that harlot he'd met at the fair: the doctor's daughter, fair-haired, light-skinned, tall, and slim--everything Martha is not.

Martha has become Poor Martha, Poor dear Martha. Martha, the wronged, abandoned wife. Every eye in the village has touched her with silent but heavy sympathy as she's trudged her fat belly on swollen legs to and from the market, to fetch milk, or to order new clothes when the old ones did not fit any more.

Anything, dear God, but pity. Anything, but another Poor dear. Martha, her jaw clenched, thinks of how well she has put a stop to all that today. She gets up, brushes off the grass from her dress. As she walks over to the brook, the foal skitters away, neighing.

She takes one last look at the bundle under the stone. A big, fat raindrop falls on her arm just then, but she takes no notice. They will find it soon enough, she thinks, as she looks at the bits of cloth spreading out from under the smooth stone she's chosen. Mrs. Brown will recognize the mittens and the cap she had knitted for "Martha's poor baby." Mrs. Kilshaw would see the old baby quilt she handed down for the "poor fatherless child." What a waste, really.

But the proud father is returning today and the house would be empty no more. He will ask for his son, she is sure, before he asks for forgiveness. Better walk down to the village then, it is almost time he is here. She can always send someone back to fetch his darling blue-white son from the brook.

The storm gathers and begins to blow in earnest, the rain soaking Martha so she looks as if she has never been dry. On her hair and clothes and skin the rain flows in rivulets, making it seem like she is crying from all the parts of her body but her eyes. She hums under her breath, and walks like a woman on a stroll in the meadows, taking in the smells of summer.