A little life update to kick this edition off. After some rest, I’ve started writing again. The headaches are still there and they still hurt like a motherfucker, but I visited a very enthusiastic doctor at our neighbourhood polyclinic who wants me to go through a battery of tests, and I’m all for it. I’m gonna reach out to my therapist too, in case this is a psychological problem manifesting itself physically.

As my badass of a wife says every time we’re going through a difficult period, one day at a time. I’ve worked on three scripts this week, and gave myself a ton of breathing room for each of them. Not the pace I’m used to, but maybe that might be a good thing.

Also, hey, I’ve got some updates about my books.

First up, there’s a lovely review of Work-Life Balance on Pages and Panels. It was written by Britt Hanson, who very clearly got what we were trying to do and was totally along for the ride. I reached out to Britt after she shared the review and I’m happy to report that she’s not just a person with great taste in books, but really cool too.

Then there’s this also lovely review of How Are You Feeling? on Graphic Medicine. This one was written by Ishani Anwesha Joshi, an Assistant Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan University in Bhubaneswar, India. I’m obviously glad that she liked the book on a whole (and Worlds Apart specifically) because I’m always glad when someone likes my work—but also because now I can tell everyone that an Assistant Professor of English gave something I co-created a positive review. Yeah, come at me, all you losers who don’t think that comics are “real” literature.

Through that review though, I learned that folks based in America can now pre-order How Are You Feeling? on Bookshop.org. It’s released internationally in around a month and I’m hoping that we’ll be seeing more positive reviews leading up to that.

In the meantime, if you’re living in the States, please pre-order How Are You Feeling?. I’m really proud of the story that Jannah and I created—and an Assistant Professor of English thinks it’s good too. If you don’t live in America, you could still share that link with your friends stateside. (I’ll be updating my site with more purchase links whenever I get them.)

I’ve started reading somewhat regularly again, though somehow even slower than I did before. Here’s what I’ve read so far this year:

1. The Faceless Thing We Adore by Hester Steel

2. A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu

3. Goethe’s Faust, translated by Walter Arnold Kaufmann

4. The Spider and Her Demons by sydney khoo

5. Standing the Test of Time: Celebrating 100 Years of the Eurasian Association, Singapore, which was a very informative, albeit clearly sanitised, history of the EA and Singaporean Eurasians in general.
   
   (You can still watch Teng Bong! The Eurasians of Singapore, the short-form docu-series by Kyle and me, by the way.)

6. The Unfinished Business by Stephanie Campisi. Stephanie’s one of the friendliest people I’ve met online, and she’s very supportive of her fellow writers. How supportive? Well, aside from constantly sharing my posts about Work-Life Balance on Bluesky, she also got our book into the Rancho Mirage Library in SoCal.
   
   I figured buying her latest as a birthday present for myself was the least I could do to thank her (on top of actually thanking her profusely, that is). Unsurprisingly, I loved it.

I’m currently rereading all of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips’s Criminal, before I jump into the series’s latest graphic novel, Five Gears in Reverse. I swear, I’m enjoying it even more this time, which, considering this is my third go-around for almost all of these stories, says a lot about how damn good Criminal is.

I have most of the series in oversized hardcovers and they’re too unwieldy to take out of the house with me, so I’ve been reading the second issue of Mynah Magazine whenever I head out. I hadn’t read anything beyond their first issue up till now, but I went for the launch of their fifth and decided to hunt down as many of the back issues as I could, which, as luck would have it, was almost all of them. (I have no idea what happened to my copy of the first issue and, hilariously, that’s the only one I now don’t own.) I’m really enjoying it so far and it’s got me thinking about an article I’d like to propose whenever their call for the sixth issue goes out.

Luca is snoring next to me on the spare bed in our home office as I write this, so I had to snap this photo.

He’s been even more of a sweetheart recently. During his most recent vet visit, he didn’t terrorise the staff like he normally does. And, last weekend, while Nadia stayed over at the hospital for a night (as a precaution whenever she has a fever these days ‘cause of the chemo) and I nursed one of those work-induced headaches, he quietly gobbled up all his food and let me rest, instead of doing his usual thing of taking his sweet time to finish his meals.

I know every decent cat owner says this, but I really lucked out with this guy.

Last edition, I ended by telling you what I was listening to, so I thought I’d do that again. It’s been a lot of Massive Attack recently, since they’ll be in town next week. I’ve grown to appreciate their other releases beyond Blue Lines and Mezzanine, but man, there really isn’t anything quite as good as “Unfinished Sympathy”, is there?

(Until their set kicks off, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the relevant authorities here don’t get cold feet over the band’s unwavering support for Gaza.)

That’s it for now, folks. See you when I see you.