The Cleaner

Author Brett Battles was kind enough to send me an advance copy of his debut novel THE CLEANER. It is the kind of thriller that I love. Smooth, unpretentious prose, with superb pacing.

Jonathan Quinn is a cleaner for hire, working with a covert agency known only as The Office. He disposes of bodies, eliminates evidence, and performs all manner of cleanup. Methodical and intuitive, Quinn is very good at what he does.

But one day, things go bad when Office operatives are targeted for assassination. Barely escaping with his life, Quinn embarks on a quest that will take him to Vietnam and Germany.

THE CLEANER is an intriguing start to what is likely to become a popular series.

You can read an excerpt here.

How to Leave Iraq

How would a U.S. pullout from Iraq look like? TIME Magazine explains:

The reality is that it’s difficult to get out fast.

It took the Soviets nine months to pull 120,000 troops out of Afghanistan. They were simply going next door, and they still lost more than 500 men on the way out.

Pulling out 10 combat brigades — roughly 30,000 troops, along with their gear and support personnel — would take at least 10 months, Pentagon officials say. And that’s only part of the picture.

There are civilians who would probably want to head for the exit when GIs started packing. They include some 50,000 U.S. contractors and tens of thousands of Iraqis who might need protection if we left the country.

Bush Proposes Sending Transformers to Iraq

July 17, 2007 - Increasingly frustrated by the Iraqi government’s failure to meet a series of defined benchmarks, President George W. Bush today proposed sending a group of giant robots known as the Transformers to Iraq.

Read the full story here.

Imagine

My friend Yi Liang has written a piece that deserves a read:

Imagine someone 12 years old.

On the verge of a new set of hopes and prospects for her.

The future would seem endless. She could be a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer.

She has the potential to be a pillar of society, a leader and an example to follow.

She works hard, she learns, she dreams of spreading her wings and being somebody.

Now imagine, she’s attacked in a riot just over 2 months before her birthday.

Whacked and bashed up so bad she’s left in a coma.

Check out the full text here.

Malaysia’s Shame

Farish Noor dissects the troubling rise of Malaysian fundamentalism:

The victims of this politicised religious politics, like Revathi, are left to fend for themselves with only the help of the country’s small NGO community and the international media to highlight their cases.

Yet the verdict is clear: After being detained for six months, Revathi confesses that she “hates Islam even more now”.

Hardly surprising when one considers what she has been put through in the name of ‘saving her soul’.

The question is, what is the current government of Malaysia going to do about the current state of affairs?

Malaysia’s religious authorities have proven to be a menace to themselves, and some would argue the country as well.

Read the full article here.

2002 Chinese New Year Apology

I have posted this up in a previous blog, but it seems that several friends have trouble locating it.

So here it is, once again, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark’s official apology to the Chinese community for past injustices:

It is my pleasure this evening to welcome all our guests to this celebration of Chinese New Year at Parliament.

I extend a special welcome to all guests from the Chinese community, many of whom have travelled from other parts of New Zealand to be with us this evening.

In the Chinese calendar, 2002 is the Year of the Horse.

Those born in this year are said to be cheerful, popular, wise, hard working, and good with money.

Our special good wishes this evening go to all those born under the sign of the horse.

Chinese New Year is the oldest and most important festival in the Chinese calendar.

These days with New Zealand’s significant and growing Chinese population it is also an important festival in the New Zealand calendar.

For us all, it is an opportunity to see the richness of Chinese culture and to celebrate the diversity of culture in New Zealand today.

There was of course a time when New Zealand was fearful of cultural diversity and distinctly unwelcoming to migrants of Chinese descent in particular.

That was so despite Chinese people being among the earliest migrants to New Zealand.

Chinese came to the goldfields in the 1860s, around the same time as my great, great grandparents did.

The open air museum at Arrowtown today tells us something of the lives they lived and the hardships they endured.

Read the full text here.

Short Story (excerpt)

Excerpt from a short story I have just finished up:

I am a grown man yet I am crying.

It is two o’clock in the morning and the air is so humid, my shirt sticks to my skin.

Alone in my living room, I work quickly, taping boxes shut, strapping them secure.

The repetition is exhausting. My hands are rubbed raw. But I have a dateline to meet. So I push on, my body on autopilot, my mind close to breakdown.

The tears just won’t stop. They tighten my cheeks, turning my lips salty.

In five days, I will be forty years old.

But I see no damn reason to celebrate.

My Personal Rules

 

My personal rules:

(1) When in doubt, underdescribe rather than overdescribe. Leave your readers wanting more, not wanting less.

(2) Keep a tight rein on adverbs and adjectives. Don’t use them unless absolutely necessary.

(3) Form must follow function. If a word or a sentence isn’t moving things forward, cut it out.

(4) Treat your work like a radio drama. Read it out loud. You spot mistakes easier that way.

(5) You need conflict: your character wants something but isn’t getting it.

(6) Take sight for granted. Focus on sound, smell, taste, and touch.

(7) Start with action. Explain later.

I admire lean, laconic prose.

It is like a marathon runner, powering towards the finish line, weighed down by nothing. All muscle. Zero fat. Little chance of a heart attack.