Girl in the Bathtub Finalist 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards

My latest novel Girl in the Bathtub has been named a finalist 2015 Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Award.  Girl in the Bath­tub is a companion novel to A Per­fect Day for an Expat Exit, which was a short-list finalist in 2014 and a finalist 2012.  Both novels are set in Penang, Malaysia, part of an Expats in Southeast Asia series.   

Previously, Girl in the Bathtub was a finalist for 2012 Novel-in-Progress category.  I completed the novel in 2013, a gift from my past, and then followed my own advice by reading it out loud as I rewrote it several times in 2014 and 2015.

Girl in the Bathtub is now the fourth novel to either be a finalist or short list finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Novel Awards.  The other two are The Resurrection of Jonathan Brady a short-list finalist in the 2014 Faulkner-Wis­dom Novel contest (and Quarter-finalist in 2012 Amazon Breakthrough) and An Unex­pected Gift from a Growling Fool, a short-list finalist in 2013.

Last year, my novella The Act of Theft, was also a finalist (and a short-list finalist in the previous year).  So four novels and a novella have either been a finalist or short-list finalist in the last three years.  Not a bad track record.

So when you throw in a marathon, August has been a pretty good month so far, considering it’s also my birthday month.  Now if only an agent would take a chance on this American writer living in Borneo, and sell one of these novels it would make 2015 a pretty darn good if not a great one.

Meanwhile, I just adapted a screenplay into a novel and have two other screenplays I plan to adapt as well, so I can churn out some more for next year.

    —Borneo Expat Writer

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