Faulkner-Wisdom: Two Novels Short List Finalist 2014!

Two of my novels A Perfect Day for an Expat Exit and The Lonely Affair  (The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady) were named as short list finalist for the 2014 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Competition.

The sequel to A Perfect Day for an Expat Expat (finalist in 2012), The Girl in the Bathtub was named a semi-finalist in only its second full draft.  The Girl in the Bathtub, however, was a finalist for the 2012 Novel-in-Pro­gress (and a short list finalist in 2013).  Both novels are set in Malaysia, famous this year for its missing flight MH370 and then MH17 shot down flying over Ukraine.

This year I was determined to send in the early draft of The Girl in the Bathtub so I would be forced to revise it in time for the competition.  Since then, I had been continually revising the novel draft after draft, cutting the 493 page manuscript down to 419 pages determined to make this my best novel ever.  I hope to get it down to 400 pages by mid-September before I send it to a writer friend for a complete reading, then after further revisions, if necessary, start submitting it to agents, my first new novel in a while, which I find exciting.

My novel An Unexpected Gift from a Growling Fool was a semi-finalist this year too, dis­appointing since it was named a short list finalist in 2013 as was The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady (the revised version of The Lonely Affair) also a previous short list finalist in 2012 (and a Quarter-finalist in the 2012 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards).  I had actually submitted The Lonely Affair in 2013 along with my other four entries and somehow this got overlooked so they carried it over for 2014, a pleasant surprise and an extra short list finalist, giving me five entries instead of four for the novel (two short list finalist and three semi-finalist for 2014!).

I’m still waiting for the Novella results for my entry The Act of Theft, a short-list finalist in 2013.

                      —Borneo Expat Writer

Update: The Act of Theft was named one of the a finalist for 2014.

Update: Winners of Novella and Novel

*Reading out loud to improve your results.

**Six lessons I learned from joining Amazon competition.

Here are links to four of my author to author interviews of first novelists:

Ivy Ngeow author of Cry of the Flying Rhino, winner of the 2016 Proverse Prize.

Golda Mowe author of Iban Dream and Iban Journey.

Preeta Samarasan author of Evening is the Whole Day. 

Chuah Guat Eng,  author of Echoes of Silence and Days of Change. 

Plus:

Five part Maugham and Me series

Beheaded on Road to Nationhood: Sarawak Reclaimed—Part I