Today’s The Day I Became A Legit Author

All the cliches are true. The one about how surreal everything feels when you’ve realised your dream. The one about how, when you find your true calling, that you’ll know in your gut that it’s what you're meant to do for the rest of your life. Even the one about how one should have enough courage, determination and persistence to pursue your dreams and not give up.

And it is on the back of these cliches, like those wobbly stepping stones in an American Ninja Warrior course, that I managed to be where I am today – opening a nondescript cardboard box with 10 copies of my first novel packed neatly into it.

Author’s copies of The Night of Legends

I won’t deny that from the moment I decided that I wanted to write a book – to actually writing it under the mentorship of Dave Chua, to self-editing it, to cold-querying Penguin SEA’s executive editor if she was open to reading an unsolicited manuscript, to being offered a book contract by one of the biggest publishers in the world, to working with editors to present the best version of the story, to proofreading the layout, to approving the cover – every step I took had been tentative, filled with false bravado and to an extent, plagued by impostor syndrome.

But since today’s the day my status changed from “aspiring novelist” to “published author”, I have to mark this milestone down, despite the niggling thought that beyond the cliches lies luck, the one wild card that people can’t quite agree on how it chooses its beneficiary.