Artemis Draws

I have taken quite a break with my blog posting and am only catching up retrospectively here. I am spending part of my summer break abroad, in SE Asia, and I guess the highlight of the month of June has been my visit to Books Actually, a well-known independent bookstore in Singapore. I’d sent a copy of Painting Stories a year ago to the proprietor Kenny Leck about a year ago, and he most kindly agreed to stock my books in the bookstore. I am really grateful for his unstinting support of SE Asian artists and writers, many of whom are just trying to get work distributed to a local audience.

So, you can now purchase copies of Painting Stories and Cabaret Voltaire vol II at Books Actually in Tiong Bahru, Singapore. The street address is: 9 Yong Siak Street, Tiong Bahru, Singapore 168645. An afternoon spent browsing in the bookstore should be considered time well spent. They are also located in one of my favourite neighbourhoods in Singapore, Tiong Bahru, whose art deco architecture has made it a candidate for a ‘heritage’ listing by UNESCO. Hipsters have recently claimed Tiong Bahru as their own and the place is changing rapidly (some would say for the worst). There are also a few trendy cafes in the area now, one located directly opposite the bookstore – finding a free table is not necessarily easy on hot weekend afternoons, where do all these hipsters come from?!

On another note, I am mulling over short stories for a third issue of CV; it looks likely that I will have to skip producing anything in 2014 and set a deadline for the following year, I would like to sell some more of my back catalogue before printing yet another issue. I had a flash of inspiration after watching an (admittedly very bad) movie about the poet, Elizabeth Bishop and spent some evenings mulling over a prose-poem I might eventually write, something about how autobiographical films don’t ever accurately portray the reality of someone’s life but will always be mostly a fictional construct. The next issue of CV will probably contain two short stories but that is really all I can reveal for now.