Tag: novel

no news is good news, but new news is also good news

Tiffany Tsao2 Comments

The problem with good news is that when it happens, I am so excited about and caught up with experiencing the goodness of the news happening that writing about it afterwards seems a little anti-climactic. Especially if the goodness of the news is producing much to keep one busy with.

Those who follow my goings-on, here and elsewhere, know that there has been a lot of good news that I have been accumulating, which I will list here, partly because lists are satisfying, and partly because they have indeed accumulated and I don’t want to bore you with blow-by-blow details:

  • My novel But Won’t I Miss Me was published in May through June (depending where you are in the world)! It received starred reviews in Shelf Awareness, Booklist, and Library Journal, and has received solid attention and coverage of a solidly good sort. Occasionally, I find out someone has read it and feels really seen, or that their mind has been blown and they are shocked anew at the things women must endure, or that they are impressed at the craft and structure of the novel. Huzzah, I say, and pat myself on the back.
  • Three of my translations of Indonesian writing were published: The Patient by Naomi Midori in May (original title: Pasien); Olenka by Budi Darma in July (original title: Olenka); and Night of a Thousand Hells by Intan Paramaditha (which I co-translated with Stephen J. Epstein) just today or yesterday, depending where you are in the world. I can hardly believe it myself. Where do I find the time? The answer: although they all came out this year, these projects were in the main, done, respectively, in mid-2024; over 2024 and the first months of 2025; and (at least my portion of it, which was my pass through/deep-dive into Stephen’s manuscript) in a crazy-marathon-late-night-every-night-squeeze-translating-into-every-crevice-possible three month period in 2025.
  • In celebration of International Translation Day, Meanjin invited me to write something for them on something related to translation, or translation-adjacent. Thus invited, I wrote a short piece titled The Iceberg of Translation, mulling on how much unseen (submarine) labour and love can go into translating something without it being visible in the final ‘product’, and detailing how much loving labour went into translating Budi Darma’s Olenka for Penguin Classics.
  • It has been pleasing to enjoy the fruits of my labour when I have time to take breaks and stand idle in the orchard, bite into one of them, and let the juice dribble down my chin. Olenka has received good coverage from Publishers Weekly and Words Without Borders, among other outlets. Which leads me to my next list item:
  • Night of a Thousand Hells came out today in the US and Europe. And it has already been named a finalist for the National Book Award for Translated Literature! I am feeling that my mad-translate-every-spare-moment-marathon aforementioned was not for nothing, and Intan, Stephen, and I are high-fiving virtually across the globe (Intan’s now on the US East Coast; Stephen is in New Zealand; and I am in Australia). Let us now spread a picnic blanket beneath a tree, crack open this pomegranate, and feast on the sweet ruby-red crunchy insides. In fact, pomegranates all around!

In my essay for Meanjin above, I note that ‘[r]oughly 10% of an iceberg sits above the waterline, meaning the other 90% goes unseen (at least to us surface-dwellers). Literary translation is not unlike an iceberg: only a small part of the labour involved is visible in the finished copy. The rest is not so apparent – a submerged and hidden base, upon which sits the beautiful blue craggy structure bobbing along up top.’

Similarly, I feel that, in boiling down this year’s major happenings into this list, I have performed something similar. I am not sure this list has had the pleasing or satisfying effect I intended it to have. When all the care and labour and time, time, time that is spent planting a seed, watering and tending it, nurturing it into a sapling, then into a mature tree that produces many individual fruits, and then that fruit is harvested and placed into a basket, and then the contents are put into a press to have the juice squeezed out, to be gulped down in a single thirsty go, then is that satisfying? I’m not so sure.

Late April News

Tiffany Tsao4 Comments

What better way to celebrate writing a 85,500-word document than by writing a blog post? But I want to share some exciting news: I’m finally finished with the manuscript for my most recent standalone novel But Won’t I Miss Me?

Towards the end, it was a marathon and sprint rolled into one: weeks of revising the draft late into the night (I hardly ever work late at night), resuming first thing in the morning and spending all the cracks in between kid-caring and household chores revising, revising, and revising. I’m a heavy reviser too, so this basically involved rewriting pretty much everything. On Saturday night, I sent it off to my agent. Since then, I’ve been incredibly hungry all the time and my body aches, as if I actually ran a marathon (not that I would know because I don’t run marathons). I feel an extraordinary amount of elation and relief. I know that my agent will come back to me with notes soon, and that, still later, I will have to work on it further with the editor at the publisher. But it is still a tremendous feeling to know that it is in as good shape as I can get it by myself. Thank you eternally to the Copyright Agency for giving me a Create Grant so I could write it!

I’ve mentioned the premise for this one before, but in case you missed it: But Won’t I Miss Me? occurs in an alternate-but-close-to-our-reality where having a baby also means birthing an identical but fitter self who will take your place. This bothers the protagonist, but no one understands why.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Don’t you have one unpublished novel manuscript already? Why add to their numbers?

I do! For Oddfans still awaiting the third Oddfits novel – my agent has informed me of some potential bites. But in case it doesn’t work out, I attended a one-day workshop on self-publishing back in February, taught by the lovely Michael Winkler, whose originally self-published Grimmish went on to win awards then secure a publisher because everyone loves a sure thing! I took this workshop so I could be prepared for the challenges that await if I do decide to go rogue and self-publish the Oddfits trilogy.

I know you mainly from your translation work. Tell me what’s going on with that side of things because I am not as interested in your self-authored work.

Okay, more of a demand than a question, but I’ll roll with it. I’m currently translating two Indonesian novels. One is a novella called Pasien (Patient) by Naomi Midori – a thriller that opens with a murdered family (which, by happy coincidence, is also how I chose to open Under Your Wings / The Majesties, so obviously I am the translator-soulmate for this book). This is a job commissioned directly by the Indonesian publisher, Penerbit Haru. The other translation-in-progress is the novel Olenka by Budi Darma. I am honoured to be translating another of his works. Olenka won the S.E.A. Write Award in 1984. It was composed during the same period as Orang-Orang Bloomington (English title: People from Bloomington) and is also set in Indiana, though it is very different, to my mind, in tone and style.

What else are you doing at the moment?

This year, I’m a judge for the translation category of the Singapore Literature Prize, so: Lots of Reading! I’m returning as a judge for the non-fiction category of the Woollahra Digital Literary Prize. I had a late-night chat on Holy Saturday / Easter Eve with Santai Ngobrolin Buku book club in Indonesia. And I was the speaker for Universitas Bunda Mulia’s Stadium Generale this year on “The Challenges of Translating Indonesian Literature.”

Keeping busy! But easier to keep afloat now that the novel manuscript, for now, I hope, is cleared. As my nine-year-old told me today, “Enjoy it while you can.”