AFCC Day Six

I arrived late on day six because I had to take care of a few things to take care of before heading out. I was sorely disappointed that I missed Candy Gourlay's keynote talk.  I did, however, make it on time for The Nuts and Bolts of Self Publishing: The Good, the Bad and the Fabulous, a panel discussion by Sarah Mounsey, Emma Nicholson, and Hidayah Amin.  Award-winning author, Emily Lim, moderated the session.

The multiple award-winning, Emily Lim, moderates the panel.

All three ladies have self published their books to great acclaim. Emma's already been signed to an agent, Sarah won the Bronze medal in the MoonBeam Awards and and Hidayah scored a double whammy when she won this year's Hedwig Anuar Children's Book Award and the Grand Prize for the Samsung Kidstime Awards. Congratulations to all three ladies who shared their invaluable insights into the adventurous and sometime treacherous world of self-publishing.

The Bronze Medal Moonbeam Award winner, gets ready for her talk.

Sarah addresses the audience.

Two-time winner, Hidayah Amin, takes to the podium

Author of the popular  Princess Petunia's Dragon,  Emma,  takes her turn.

Later in that afternoon, I attended the most anticipated event for aspiring authors, The First Pages Critique with Sarah Odedina, Shirin Yim Bridges, Ying Chang Compestine and Edmund Wee and moderated by Kathleen Ahrens, who always does a brilliant job of reading the manuscripts. First Pages is always a nerve wracking experience for any author. During the session, the first 100 words of the author's manuscript are read aloud and then critiqued by the panel.

The Panel: 

Edmund Wee, Sarah Odedina,Ying Chang Compestine & Shirin Yim Bridges

To the uninitiated writer, it may feel like you've been sentenced to death by literary firing squad. The wait to hear your manuscript being critiqued is unbearably indescribable and when they finally do get to yours, beads of perspiration embroider your brow, your heart practically hurtles right through your rib cage and you can almost feel the unmistakable trickle of pee running down your leg. Relax, it's all part and parcel of the course. You're not a real writer until you've peed on yourself.

Ying Chang Compestine and Shirin Yim Bridges

Most of the time it's not as bad as you think it will be. But sometimes it can seem like an editorial blood bath!  Am I joking? I'll leave that for you to decide. But it's an experience that every writer should go through. It's good for you.

Authors: Sarah, Simon, Helle and Linda  anxiously await literary execution or salvation.

The surviving members of the critique session made their way down to the festival bookstore, Closetful of Books, for a spot of shopping before taking a group photo with the SCBWI members.

I managed to grab a few minutes with friend and best-selling genius of an author, Candy Gourlay, whom I missed at last year's London Book Fair. Candy was off to London a few hours later, so our meet-up was all too brief, but we did manage to take a photo. Candy says I never smile, but I beg to differ - see the photo below.

Candy  says I never smile! See I do!

Singapore's best-selling award winning author, Emily Lim took time to catch up with her American counterpart, Ying Chang Compestine before the group left  for  Boat Quay for the SCBWI AFCC Family dinner organised by Catherine Carvell.  After a full day of sessions most of us wanted to unwind, relax and fill our tummies. I, on the other hand, opted to go for the literature lecture, which was conducted in Chinese with live English translation.

Emily and Ying

Stanley, the nickname I've given my stomach, began to growl and so  I skipped out on the Q & A session and shared a cab to the  SCBWI Dinner with Best-Selling author Chris Cheng. 

And we all spent the night, eating, drinking, catching up with old friends and making new ones. All in all, it was another pretty awesome SCBWI/AFCC dinner. 

Emily and Helle

Catherine and Kathleen

L to R: Chris, Avery, Kathleen and Catherine.

Simon and Dave Liew

Linda, Helle and Simon

Adan and Felicia

AFCC Day Five

For most of the week, I was down with a horrid cold and cough that just wouldn't go away, so when I wasn't at the festival I was resting at home.  I spent about two weeks preparing for the talk with Sarah

and I would have done more but I just felt so incredibly exhausted all the time.  Constant coughing will do that to you, won't it?

Anyway, Auntie Susanna and Claire kindly showed up to support us. So did Emma before she decided to skip out on us to go to something better. Thanks, Emma.

Through the lead up to our presentation, Sarah was worried that we would be only speaking to about two people since we were speaking during the same time session as Ying Chang Compestine.

I almost missed the session entirely as I was heavily medicated and thought our session started at 11:30 instead of 11:00 but at 10:30 I realised my mistake and high-tailed it to the library just as Sarah was setting up.

After a mini debate on whose computer we should use, we decided to use Sarah's since the thumb drive she used seemed to 'kill' mine. I have to say that Sarah was worried about the 'David Seow' experience I would unleash upon her but I have to say I was rather well behaved, even though she made several unauthorised changes to our slideshow presentation that I was not privy to before hand.

Sarah, payback will be coming. Oh yes, it will be coming.:) We discussed our different strategies when it comes to approaching our school visits. Sarah's the grown-up; I'm the kid.

The hour seemed to go by rather quickly and I hope the people from our session got something out of it and that I made some small measure of sense. Thanks to Claire for taking the photos.

After our session, Claire, Simon and I met with my long long long suffering agent. Helen Mangham from Jacaranda to discuss the group project we are working on before we headed out for lunch at the library plaza.

At the plaza, I met up with Andrea Pasion Flores, my other long long long suffering agent, and Ying Chang Compestine. As the buffet line was a tad long, Claire and I decided to go for a chicken rice lunch before I decided to head home for a short rest before the celebrating Our Stars Event in the evening. That didn't work out because I couldn't catch a cab.

My long suffering agents: Andrea, Helen with Ying.

Myra and Auntie Susanna

Then while I was at the Plaza I ran into Myra who took a photo with Auntie Susanna as a group of children were performing a rather nosy number on stage.

What is this? I thought and then I heard the narrator say 'Emma's Elephant. They were performing an adaptation of my story! They reprised the performance several times over the next few days and I have to say that I enjoyed each successive performance more and more.

Performing Emma's Elephant

I was still unsuccessful in my attempts to hail a cab, so I took refuge in the air-conditioned comfort of the Pod and I decided to stay there until the Celebrating Our Stars event commenced.

Celebrating Our Stars

Guest-of-Honour, Minister of State, Ministry of Education & Ministry of Communications and Information. Ms Sim Ann, launched the night's proceedings with an opening speech before NBDCS Chairman Ms Claire Chiang invited her onto stage to unveil three books that have recently been translated into other languages: Dr Tan Wee Kiat's 'Our Pledge', Sharon Ismail's 'What Sallamah Didn't Know' and Edmund Lim's 'Where's Grandma'.

Managing Editor of Amour Publishing, Ruth Wan delivered an informative presentation on the trends in children's publishing in Singapore.

Ruth Wan.

Ruth asked me for a quote about the relationship between author and publisher and I equated it with that of the relationship between spouses: you help each other through good times and bad.  Basically the book is your baby and your there to help each other raise it to be the best it can be. I also wanted to add that since my publisher is my literary spouse I would need a royalty increase, but then I thought the better of it.

Popular author Neil Humphreys brought some levity to the proceedings, sharing his take on the children's book scene. Then Deputy Director of the Book Council, Kenneth Quek, a connoisseur of all books and children's books, in particular,  took to the podium for a few words.

Kenneth Quek

Malavika and Sue Quek unveil Magic Bird by Ken Spillman

There was one last official part of the night before we could all hit the buffet line, and that was the launch of Ken Spillman's book, 'Magic Bird' illustrated by Malavika.  Ken wasn't able to attend and he was definitely missed.

Then it was time to mix, mingle and munch on the buffet.  I mingled with Sarah Odedina, whom I met at AFCC 2012. We were on the same plane to Bologna that year as well.  It's always great to catch up with Candy, though for some reason she never seems to think I smile. :)

After eating my fill at the buffet, I decided to go home to take my meds so I could head out early for Emma and Sarah's panel discussion the next morning.

Andrea and Candy

Andrea, Catarina, Edmund and Sarah

Michael Heyman and Alycia

ALL IN YOUNG WRITERS MEDIA FESTIVAL

Sarah, Ken and me at the All In Young Writers Media Festival

Sorry I haven't updated in a while, but I've been down with a horrendous bout of the flu and it's turned into a horrible wretching-kind of cough, but I'm sure you don't need to know the details.

Last Saturday I managed to drag myself out of my bed to attend the All In Young Writers Media Festival. Carlo invited me to be part of a  panel discussing the lives of a full-time authors along with the amazingly talented Otto Fong and Zed Yeo. How my pathetic part of the presentation would compare to theirs made me feel even worse!

Any how, I showed up early to support friend and fellow-author Sarah Mounsey who was discussing self-publishing. Of course, she
did a  great job of her presentation which made me doubt myself even more.

Denise of Closetful of Books was there after arriving back from India  with loads of books in her baggage--none of which were for me--and a big case of the flu. So the both of us were hacking up a storm at the Library at Orchard Gateway! So if you were there and you caught the flu bug you know who to blame --Denise!

Kelvin and Denise: Don't let her smile fool you. She's spreading her germs
everywhere!

After lunch I headed home to work a bit more on my presentation. Linn Shekinah who was facilitating the panel discussion had already prepared a brilliant powerpoint slide show for me based on the pictures that I mailed her but I felt that I could add more too it. In any event I didn't do much at home except take my medication before heading back for the panel discussion.

Otto

Otto was up first and boy his presentation was fantastic. He also showed us his old school report card. I've never seen so many As in my life--or I should say my report cards never looked like that. Quite the opposite actually.

Then it was my turn to speak and wouldn't you know it, the computer froze up and I had to speak off the cuff. Sorry guys and girls. So I rambled on for about 10 minutes before it was Zed's turn. And wouldn't you know it, the computer started working again. It's just as well because Zed gave a fantastic powerpoint presentation just like Otto.

Zed

With our individual presentations done, the panel discussion commenced with Linn facilitating. The audience members were great and I think we gave them an insight into the world of full-time authors. Now it's up to them if they really want to take the plunge.

AFCC DAY 3: A Day of Book Launches

The third day of the AFCC got off to a fantastic start when I met up with the wonderful Sally Gardner for a quick glass of Coca-Cola along with Denise from Closetful of Books, Evelyn Sue Wong, Felicia Low and Adan Jimenez.

After lunch Evelyn, Corinne Robson, Myra Garces Bascal and Ken Spillman launched their bibliography on rice to a packed roomful of participants. This year's festival theme is rice and so it is no wonder that this year's theme had me hankering for a nice bowl of fried grain.

Shortly after that it was time to get ready for my book launch of A Day with the Duchess. I'm always a bundle of nerves before any of my book launches. What if people don't show up? What if there aren't any kids? I'm so grateful to everyone who came and showed up to help. Mum, Auntie Susanna, Andrea, Corinne, Emma, Evelyn, Faith, Marjorie, Helen, Karen, Kristina, the two Lindas,  Sarah, Mika, Tilly, Dave, Kelvin, Simon, Peter and everyone. I'm sorry if I left anyone out. But a HUGE thanks.

The best launch was yet to come and I'm saying this without the hint of any bias. Auntie Susanna had discussed her launch for Fun at the Opera  with me and she seemed uncertain about what she was going to do, but you wouldn't have guessed it if you had been there.

The launch was absolutely brill. She started off by wearing one of her Chinese Opera hats. Niece Jeanne, and granddaughters Tilly and Mika were drafted in to help by donning Chinese Opera costumes.

Auntie Susanna regaled us with stories about growing up with an opera troupe and Claire Chiang told us about the big plans that are in store for what started out as a sweet little book. Auntie Su's Opera is going be heard long and loud for years to come. At the conclusion of her launch Auntie Susanna invited everyone to join in an opera dance as a classical Chinese flautist played. It was a fantastic, fun launch! I have to say Mum had more fun at Auntie Susanna's launch than my own.

Mum was feeling tired after both launches so I accompanied her back home, but not before stopping at my great friend Sarah Mounsey's launch for her third book in her award-winning trilogy Purple Paw Prints and the Itchy Spots. Sarah is always able to charm and capture an audience in a way that I could never do.

Once I was back home, I showered, changed and headed back out the door for India Night at Bugis Plus.  Mr SR Nathan, 6th President of Rep of Singapore was launching the translated versions of his book The Crab and the Crane.

HE and I share several similarities, if I say so myself. 1) We're both Singaporean. 2.) We write children's books  3.) We have the same publisher. And that's about it! While Mr President is climbing the heights of publishing...I'm er...stuck in first grade!

Auntie Susanna was at the forefront once again when it was announced that her book with Chris Cheng Water had been translated and she was called to the stage to pose before a phalanx of photographers.

With the formalities of the evening over, we were treated to a performance by the ultra talented Kiran Shah and Rosemarie Somiah that left is in stitches.

President Nathan was besieged by some fans for an autograph as the evening concluded. It reminded me of myself every time I approach a celebrity and hound them for their John Hancock. Note to self: STOP IT!

As HE was leaving, he took time to stop and pose for a photograph with Auntie Susanna. It turns out that he knew her Dad!

And so the third glorious day of the AFCC had come to an end. Once again kudos to the AFCC and NBDCS team. You always seem to out do yourselves.

Anyway I had better stop blogging as I'm supposed to accompany Sally Gardner to the TV studios for an interview soon! After that I have a pitch session and a meeting with my Angel Agents Andrea and Helen. Busy, busy, day!