Author: dphauthor

Born and bred in Asia, now living in Europe. When she's not doing her full-time job or relaxing at home with her husband, she writes. The dream-giver is her best friend. Dreams and nightmares are where she usually gets her ideas for her writing. She writes for fun, she writes to record her dreams and nightmares. She writes about things she knows and things she doesn't know.

Playing God

On By dphauthorIn I See You, Sweet Like Sugar, Through Sweet Like Sugar, You See MeLeave a comment

The best thing about being a writer, in my opinion, is that you get to play god.

You decide what happens to your character, who dies, who lives, who’s happy, and who’s sad. You decide what your character says, does, wears, eats, drinks, and so on.

Things you may not be able to do in your own life, you can do in your book, through your character.

For example, in real life, I can’t have a dog. I do take care of some of our relatives’/friends’ dogs now and then, but due to my work, I can’t have my own dog. Not yet. And it’s sad, because I’d love to have one.

So I dreamed up a dog and put it into my novel.

I love it. I love the imaginary dog. Through my character(s), I play with it, feed it, and walk it around. It was hard when I had to end my story, because every book has to have an ending. But who knows? I might one day be able to have an actual dog, just like the imaginary one I made.

If you’ve always dreamed of having something nice that you can’t quite have yet, it helps to write it down sometimes. You can be creative about it, visualize it to be as realistic or far-fetched as possible. It’s a fun and harmless way of playing god. At least for me, it also somewhat relieves the itch and craving.

Then, one day, when you finally get to have that nice thing, whatever it is, imagine how fun it would be to read what you’ve written those many years ago.

Never Be Normal

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If you have gone to my (book’s) Instagram account or Facebook Page, you would have noticed something by now. That’s right, I, the author of Sweet Like Sugar, stay hidden behind my book.

Well, I’m here to assure you that I am real. 🙂

Why, then, am I being so secretive about myself? Shouldn’t I be out there, to promote myself, show people how happy I am being a writer and so on? Other authors, indie or not, do this, right?

Perhaps I am old-fashioned or you can call me naïve, but I have only wished my book to go far, not because you see how I look like, see my day-to-day activity, and feel like you could be my friend. I mean, I would be happy if you feel like you could be my friend! But for my book, I need to know that people and its readers like it because of the book itself, and nothing else. And if nobody does like it because of whatever reason, that’s okay, too. At least I know that I stayed true to myself and that’s what’s important to me.

Does that sound abnormal? I guess it does, even to myself. I’m not special, and who the h**l is D. P. Haka anyway? Nobody has heard of that name.

But I have another confession to make. Before coming upon The Thirteenth Tale or Geek Love, I had also never heard of Diane Setterfield or Katherine Dunn. And to this date, I don’t follow them in social media either. It didn’t stop me from reading their books and eventually falling in love with them … the books, I mean.

I know who I am, and that is enough for now. I am far from normal, but who says we have to be normal anyway?

I’d like to clarify, though, that I really admire all the writers out there, indie or mainstream, self-published or not, who put themselves all out in their own channels. It takes courage to do that, and maybe that way is working best for them for reaching their goals.

As for me and my unconventional way, it’s an untrodden path that I can’t say yet if it’s working or not. But if a few years from now you don’t hear from me anymore … well, then you know what that means! 😀

Stay special and stay true to yourself, people!

The End

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I’m not writing about the end of my writing journey. This is something more of a reflection.

Looking back at the stuffs I had written (and never see the light of day), since my manga days, I realize that I have always had the same problem: ending the story.

I love writing and making up stories (duh, who doesn’t?). Whenever I get an idea, I’d get excited about it and start writing … and before I know it, I’m already on page 100. In my daily job, I have the same problem. When writing a work-related email to anyone, I just end up writing a short story instead of an email.

But anyway, back to the topic. I have a confession to make: out of hundreds of stories I’ve made up all my life (including the mangas), the ones that actually have proper endings are but 4 stories. Out of those 4, 2 are short stories. Something must be wrong with me, right?

I thought so, too. Until lately, say, for the past 15 years, I keep running into books that have vague endings. You know, the kind where the story hangs mid-air, and you flip to the next page and find out that that is it, and it leaves you feeling unsatisfied because, well, where’s the ending?!? You’ve spent hours reading it, and then the end is not an end at all. I feel like the authors of that kind of books may have the same problem as I do in terms of ending a story.

Some people like it, I guess, because they are free to imagine what the ending actually is. But, pardon me for being old-fashioned, in my opinion, if you’ve made a story to which people actually invest their time (and money, no matter how small) to read or follow, you’re obliged to give a proper ending to the story. Give your audience a closure. And I don’t mean a vague one, but how you, as the author, want it to end.

A few years ago, I ran across a book called The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. I do like the story of the book, but the thing that made me love the book is the fact that the main character of the book said the one thing that is, in my opinion, very important in writing a story: for it to have a beginning, the main story itself, and then, of course, a proper ending.

Ever since reading that book, I try to keep that in mind, and always give a proper ending to my stories. Those 4 stories that I told you about? Those were done after reading The Thirteenth Tale.

If you have gotten my book, you’d see that I even divided the chapters that way: the beginning, the main story, and the ending. It’s hard to end a story, believe me, I should know. Most of the time, I just want to keep it going! Or then, even worse, I don’t even know how to end it, ha! But all things must come to an end, and I find that it’s sometimes easier to do things backwards, as in first find an ending you want, and work your way to the beginning from there.

Now, to end this post, as a newbie author I promise that whenever you read my book, I will have a proper ending for you. No vague, free-to-imagine kind of endings from me, ever.

 

The Cover

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Guess what? The D-day is in 12 days!

Time for ‘last-minute’ checks and preparations for me, but I want to give a small update here in my blog.

As mentioned on previous posts, the book will be available in paperback and e-book version. Once they are launched, I will post the links here. And now I can safely say that they will be published on the same day.

So when will that be, exactly? June 27th, 2019.

And just to make sure you won’t buy the wrong book, here’s what the cover of my book looks like.

 

To Have And To Hold

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When I was still writing the book, the thought of holding it in its physical form seemed far-fetched.

But now the proof print of my book is right here in front of me, proving it further that nothing is really far-fetched if you put your mind to it.

17 days from now, the book will finally be ready for the world.

It will be ready for all of you, to have and to hold.

PS. If you prefer to read it from your phone or tablet, the digital version of the book will also be available starting from the same day.

Is It A Nightmare?

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About a year ago, I was visited by my dream-giver in the form of a nightmare.

The terrible feeling I had in this particular nightmare stayed with me for a long time afterwards, and one big question arose to the top of my mind: what if it wasn’t a nightmare? What if it was someone’s story, whispered to me through this nightmare?

So I decided to write it down, to make it into a story, to breathe life into it. And soon, I hope to share it with you all.

It’s All About The Setting

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Setting the stage before performing is just as important as the performance itself, in my opinion. So this time, I’ll try to do just that.

The story in the book revolves around Lafayette, Louisiana – USA and a small town right next to it, called Souk. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of Souk town, it’s a product of the author’s imagination, along with all the characters and everything else in this book.

While the main events took place in 2011, a lot of things began in the 1990s. The main characters were about 30 years old in 2011, so that means in the 1990s they were teenagers.

Does that sound familiar to you? It should. Because, maybe, you will find bits and pieces of yourself in this book.

Remember Or Not Know? (part two)

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Have you seen the latest teaser? I asked this question to my husband earlier this year, and I think we both agreed that the latter is more frightening to us.

It was just the push that I needed to start writing this story, knowing that I was not the only one thinking how scary that would be. I thought, maybe, this was worth the shot.

During the process of writing the book, I kept the discussion going with him. It helps to get a second opinion, especially if the second opinion comes from a different gender.

I hope in the end I managed to make the story as good as I imagined it would be, and as scary as we discussed it to properly be, considering that this is still a psychological thriller, not some nail-biting horror book.

But you can be the judge of that.