Shipping News

Dear Readers,

Although I have said it many times before I shall show you now my appreciation once again: thank you very, very much for your support. My book Growing Up in Trengganu has climbed to a modest 10th position in the MPH Malaysian Non-Fiction list, and many enquiries have reached us here in London from all over, from people who could not get it in their bookshops. An eco-tour operator from Trengganu emailed to ask where to buy 5 copies, a friend on his way back to London who wanted to buy several copies was directed by a KL bookseller to their Putrajaya outlet where they had 3 copies on the shelf, but Putrajaya being further to some than Trengganu, the friend decided to chance it at the KLIA bookshop on his day of departure, and of course he was disappointed. He was told sniffily by the bookseller at our gleaming new international gateway, "We don't stock books by local authors, no siree we do not!"

We kept a small stock here after enquiries came from France, Germany and those United States, but now — as you can see from the sidebar — we too are out of stock. But even if we aren't we cannot, unfortunately, ship to the United States as the cost is too prohibitive, so I shall have to ask my dear friends over there to cease and desist until Amazon (hopefully) receives their stock. Someone from Johor Baru said she couldn't obtain copies there, and last week a sales assistant at a branch of MPH (we shall not say where, but not in KL) said he'd not heard of the title even if it was No. 10 on their Malaysian Non-Fiction list. Because of the reluctance of bookshops to stock an obscure title by an obscure author about an even more obscure state in the Malaysian peninsula, Growing Up in Trengganu has probably chalked up more enquiries than sales, and I shall accept that as an honourable distinction. But if you're tired of enquiring from the outside and would like to see the book in your shop instead, please contact the publisher Monsoon Books and tell them where you'd like to see it stocked.

Meanwhile, the latest sad note comes from the glorious house of MPH yet again (this check was made on 7 November, so please don't take it as an abiding truth):

"This item is currently out of stock. We will endeavour to deliver it as soon as possible..."

Perhaps we should all turn to eBay now and try our luck.

Growing Up In a Book

I have just heard from my publisher in Singapore that the book version of Growing up in Trengganu is now back from the printers and will probably be in the shops in a couple of weeks.

The book has been my top secret project this year, and even my better half Kak Teh only knew about it when the editing work was nearly done. My regular readers will know that Growing Up has been a regular and eccentric feature in my blog and if numbers are to be believed, the series has gone through many hundred thousand parts. But fear not, it is not coming out in many volumes but in just one small collection with cover design by a talented lady in Ireland, published by a small but reputable (and no doubt talented) publishing house in Singapore, and a cartoon of me on the writer's bio page was drawn by a talented but no small cartoonist called Lat; and it is even embellished with photographs sent in by readers from as far away as New York and Canada. I am, needless to say, over the moon.

The idea of Growing Up in Trengganu being snuggled between covers was one that never really seriously crossed my mind, though I did — once or twice, in moments of fanciful thought — toy with publishing it myself. And then Monsoon books came in with an email asking if there's a book there: and of course there was, and so it now is.

I'd like to thank you all, my readers, for having been with me all along, and mostly for your contributions and encouragement. Your coming here was (is) indeed a boost. Writing Growing Up was an experience, and it has opened for me many facets of human life: life in Trengganu then and now, the solitary writer's life of endless cups of tea and shortbread and mind-stretching quests for words, and, to no small extent, my readers' own lives, some hilarious, some sad. You will read about all that in my introduction to the book.

For the book I have re-written, re-honed and expanded or contracted parts of the original Growing Ups, and I have also, of course, corrected not a few solecisms and inappropriate acts. There is also a guide for the perplexed in the form of a short vocabulary of Trengganuspeak in the back of the book, so fear not. I hope you will all go out and buy a copy or three, and recommend it to your teh tarik man, workmates, mother-in-law and the man/woman you exchange glances with at the traffic light. It will, if anything, keep an impoverished author in shortbread.

Thank you blogger.com for hosting the first draft of the book, and thank you Monsoon Books!

For more, go here:
* Bibliobibuli
* Choc-a-Blog
* Blooking Central
* MPH