a few loose ends before flying off to sushi-land

One more week to Japan, and I'm scrambling to get as much work done before I leave - which explains my absence from this blog. From year-end projects at work to editing Neverland (yes, again) and planning for the next novel, Before I Remember You, to preparing a script for the Singapore Writers Festival panel (you know, just a brief outline of what I'm planning to say so I don't seem like an utter fool up on stage), I'm swamped!!

In the meantime, here's something that's been keeping me busy at work: ZALORA Community!

After a whole year of planning and writing and executing (back-end is waaaay more complicated than you'd think), after months of soliciting help from service providers and the IT team and coordinating with everyone in all the eight countries ZALORA is present in, after all the frustrating glitches and back-and-forth emails, this baby is finally born and ready to roll!

Not sure if I've explained it before, but Community basically a fashion/beauty/lifestyle/entertainment content site curated by in-house content managers at ZALORA (including me - I oversee all eight countries but I mainly handle the Singapore site). It's called Community because the content comes from a community of writers, in-house and external - bloggers, freelancers, anyone with the passion for trends and the ability to write a grammatically-sound and engaging article.

I'm super excited to grow this site, so if you're keen on contributing, send us your samples (all instructions can be found in the Our Contributors tab) and we'll take it from there!

Meanwhile, Neverland is calling. Will I ever be free of that magical place? Do I even want to be free of it? I want to live there! (And so does my critique partner - hi, Jenna! If I haven't said this already, I love my crit partner.)

Okay, back to the fourth round of edits for Neverland! And hopefully by the time I get back from Japan, I'll be ready to start writing Before I Remember You - just in time for NaNoWriMo!

Have a great evening, everyone! :0)

Monday link salad

A post full of random stuff today:

Funny fashion memes. Anna Wintour meets Mean Girls, anyone? Also:

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Strange things people found in walls. Money and shoes, I get (sort of), but fingernail clippings and hair?

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This old post from ex literary agent (now author), Nathan Bransford that offers a really useful tip for figuring out your novel: creating one-sentence, one-paragraph, and two-paragraph pitches.

A query is basically a two paragraph pitch with some query-related detail. But sometimes you'll want to use a one sentence pitch (for a bio, if you're into that whole brevity thing), or a one paragraph pitch (for briefly describing in real life conversation when you don't want someone's eyes to glaze over). 

My feeling: get it all out of the way at once. Save yourself the headache and come up with a one sentence, one paragraph, and two paragraph pitch before you even start to query. Then: practice and memorize your pitches. You never know when you're going to need them.

Speaking from experience, it really does help to have a pitch ready even before you plunge into the novel. You get a clearer sense of where your story is going, what the conflict is, and what the stakes are. You also get to pare down your character to his/her most basic trait, the one that defines her and her actions, and the one that you as a writer set out to change by the end of the story.

I should have done that for Neverland. (Actually, I should have done that for all my novels.) Maybe then I wouldn't have gotten stuck.

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Also, I've started blogging for work.



One of the plus points of working for an online fashion retailer is that I get to fangirl over fashion trends and celebrity styles unabashedly in the name of work and write about them. Is this the marrying of two loves?

I've written quite a number of these articles so far, but the team is selective about what goes on the blog, and when. Here is one article I wrote about "must-have tops". 

Of course, they're not really must-haves -- people just write that to get you to read the article ;0)

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Blood Promise, otherwise known as The Manuscript That Will Not Yield, is in the midst of some radical changes right now. I intend to rip out the awful saggy middle and whip it into something that will put Victoria's Secret models to shame ... 

Okay, that's quite a mean feat. I mean, it'll be really hard to top this:

Favourite VS angel ever, Doutzen Kroes.

But it's okay. Because I HAVE A PLAN NOW. So let's do this.

In the meantime, I will heed this advice.

And this: 

And keep happy with these:

from allthingsshabbyandbeautiful.tumblr.com

Peter Pan quote

Oh, stop. What are you trying to do to me?!

by Gelrev Ongbico

The view from the pier yesterday

Also, I'm really loving D&E's new album. Aside from When You Cry, which I shared in an earlier post, this song, Teenage Queen, is another favourite. So catchy and upbeat!

And on that note, have a great week, everyone! :0)