Tuesday September 22, 2009
Journey of discovery
By ALLAN KOAY
A writer turns personal adversity into a tale for children.
WHEN the going gets tough, the tough do get going. Just ask Irene Leong, single mother, ex-journalist, and now published author.
“I was in hell,” she said, describing the time she spent in Australia just a year or so ago.
Teamwork: Former journalist-cum-author Irene Leong wrote her books in a joint-effort with her daughter Chelsea who did the illustrations and cover drawings. In 2007, Leong left everything behind in Malaysia and headed for Australia to exchange marriage vows. Wedding plans had been made, and she was excited about the times ahead, for both her and her then-15-year-old daughter, Chelsea. But then her world plunged into darkness when her plans fell through, and she was left with huge uncertainty about the future.
“It was a really big blow, because I’d left everything here and even sold my apartment,” said Leong, 44. “I was struggling emotionally. When you’re faced with something like that, what do you do? So, I turned to writing. I was a professional writer, but apart from that, I knew that fiction writing was something that I would like to do, and could do till my hair turns white.”
Last year, she started working on a children’s story, a fairy tale that fuses Eastern and Western elements. The main character, Kira, is a chibi (a Japanese term for a “small person”) who is asked by the denizens of the fairy world to recover the falling stars that someone has been stealing.
Together with a group of fairy friends, Kira journeys through all sorts of dangers and obstacles to put the world back in balance so that the fairies can cast their stardust once again.
Leong said that themes in the story reflect what she was looking for during her own time of difficulty.
“I was going through a hard time, and I needed to think about hope,” she explained. “It is about a chibi going on a journey of self-discovery, very much what I was going through. I was groping in the dark, trying to find my way out. And writing this story was therapeutic.
“I immersed myself in the story and tried to imagine myself as Kira. During her journey, she represents faith and courage, elements that I needed to recover from my break-up. I felt better after writing it.”
She wrote about five pages a day for two-and-a-half months. When she had completed the book, titled Once Upon A Stardust Dream, she sent a chapter to Random House Australia, and even though the publisher asked to read the whole manuscript, she was turned down. By then, the fact that Random House was interested in reading the whole book gave Leong the confidence she needed to go further. Not wanting to waste any more time with traditional publishers, which tend to take months or even longer to respond,
Leong decided to work with BookSurge, Amazon’s publishing arm, which offers publishing and distribution services for independent publishing. This means, Leong’s book gets listed and sold on Amazon.
And now, riding on the wave of that endeavour, Leong has published a second children’s book, called Anabella And The Potion Of Life. This time, it’s a story about a fairy princess named Anabella who, jealous of her newly born sister, steals a magic potion from her parents, which turns her into a teddy bear.
This second book was started in Australia, and finished in Malaysia when Leong and her daughter moved back here in March this year. On both books, she collaborated with her daughter Chelsea, with the latter providing the cover artwork and illustrations that pepper the pages. Chelsea, an avid fan of manga and anime, aspires to be involved in the animation industry in the future.
Leong said she read about Wena Poon, the author of Lions In Winter, and learned about how Poon is now publishing with BookSurge because she gets more freedom. Leong also did some research on the Internet, and learned about how an established author sent an already published manuscript to a publisher and was rejected.
“What he was trying to prove was that even if you’re rejected, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’re bad,” said Leong, who self-published each book for about US$800 (RM2,786). The book is then published on demand, as orders come in to Amazon. Leong gets about 25% royalty on each copy sold.
She was doubly motivated when she found out a friend’s daughter was anxiously waiting for her second book. “My friend has called me three times to ask me when the book would be ready,” she said. “That, to me, is satisfaction.”
The one comment that she keeps getting about her books is whether children would have trouble with some of the words that she used.
“I feel too many times, children’s authors are too caught up in trying to determine which age groups their books belong to,” said Leong. “When I was 11 or 12, I read The Good Earth (by Pearl S. Buck). It wasn’t a book for an 11-year-old, but I read it. And when I came across words that I didn’t know, I looked them up.
“That’s the whole idea of learning, anyway. Even as adults, we still come across words we don’t know. In fact, I made a conscious effort to use, not big words, but words that an adult would know but a child might need a bit of help with. But on the whole, children between 10 and 14 can follow the story easily.”
With two children’s books under her belt, Leong has still more to offer. She revealed that she’s hard at work on her third book, a collection of horror stories – definitely not children’s fiction.
“Mind you, there are days when I still feel really down,” she said. “But I try to be upbeat. (Writing) is the one thing that I’m passionate about, and it makes me happy.”
To find out more about Anabella And The Potion Of Life and Once Upon A Stardust Dream, go to amazon.com.
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