Here’s an excerpt from the Prologue of Watermyth: She inhaled those tales amidst the tumult of bus interchanges, the sound of 1990s grunge-rock and Malay hair metal booming from tiny cassette shops flanking the central bus station, where exhaust fumes met a medley of aromas from smoky woks and great cauldrons of livid chettinad curries … Continue reading Cantata Chronicles 10/10/2025
Suspension of disbelief, subjectivity and world-building have always been coiled together in a single kernel for me. It evokes for me the Kelantanese Mak Yong where the narrator/performer gets the audience to suspend disbelief by just placing one foot on the stage and saying, “Now I am stepping into Kayangan”. That was his world-building, his … Continue reading Lyceum Notes: Thoughts on World-building, Suspension of Disbelief and Subjectivity
I’ve been on a rewatch/watch of Elementary (I only watched the first two seasons before this but now I’m watching everything) lately and contemplating on whether or not one could consider the show cozy. Sure, there are murders nearly every week but the show is relatively light on the gore and the high octane. The … Continue reading Cozy? Domestic? Romantasy? On Labels and the Gatekeeping of Subgenres
Here’s a caution I’ve repeated more than once and which seems necessary now since the publication of Watermyth. Now, this caution may not be true of all authors but it’s certainly true of seasoned authors who spend a lot of time and energy constructing multiple worlds, nuanced characters with a multitude of viewpoints. Essentially, do … Continue reading A Necessary Caution
The Ugliest Princess by the Pre-Raphaelite Artist Eleanor Fortescue-Bricksdale (c) Nin Harris 2006– I have had a difficult relationship with Tam Lin since I was 15. I loved it all the more because I could not find the full poems, instead piecing together scraps of verse from chapter headings of Diana Wynne-Jones’s Fire and Hemlock, … Continue reading The Ugliest Princess, The Littlest Mermaid, Janet, and the Reader’s Response