People used to say, if you love your job, then you don’t
have to work a day in your life. That is what I am now. As a writer, an author,
I don’t feel like I work at all. To me, writing is just as much fun as
videogaming, movie-watching, mountainclimbing, parasailing, bungeejumping, or
whatever great activities you could mention.
And moreover, I don’t work in the sense that I have to go
to the office every single day from Monday to Friday, 9 AM to 5 PM everyday.
Eversince I left Gradasi teens magazine in October 2010, I never had any
intention of going back to some office or company as someone else’s subordinate
or colleague. I have had enough of all of these crazy stupid office-politics I
have to deal with every single moment back then when I was still an employee.
Now my daily routines include no high profile “active”
and outward things at all people could mistakenly thought that I was an
unemployment. It’s no wonder, considering that I usually stay all day in my
rented room (Indonesian calls it with the term “rumah kost”) at Tembalang
District, Semarang, the capital of Central Java Province. An then, on weekends,
I go to my mom’s house at Borobudur, at a small rural village called Gedongan
(“gedong” in Javanese languange means big house) near the world-famous
Borobudur Temple.
But that is the way a writer works to make a living. Not
with some hard and difficult activities that could occasionally turned
dangerous, but just by fingers and thoughts and imagination. Our primary tool
is only a computer, a notebook, a netbook, or a typewriter back in those good
old days when we used to hear those terrible little noise when someone is
typing something. And our magic secret weapons are just determination and
consistency.
I still remember clearly when I first fell in love with
books and especially novels. It was in 1985, when I turned 14. I was in junior
high school at SMP 20 Semarang and enrolled into a special service by Semarang
City’s State Public Library called Perling or Perpustakaan Keliling (mobile-library).
Every Wednesday afternoon, my kid brother and I will go to a yard of Taman
Indrya kindergarten near our old house at Genuk Indah and wait for the blue van
of Perling to arrive.
And then, we’re all going crazy with the books the van
brought. It was a wonderful atmosphere back then, to see racks of good books by
Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, Arswendo Atmowiloto or Alistair MacLean which we
can borrow in the span of a week with only Rp 50 ($ 10-cent with current
inflation rate) each. Then I knew that my life was about to abruptly change.
And I dropped every grown-up-wishes I have (Indonesian calls it “cita-cita”) to
become a novel writer—an author.
Now, two and a half decades later, I am an author. Not
with the level of fame JK Rowling and Dan Brown has—not yet—but this is me,
with 10 novels, 3 short stories anthologies, 1 non-fiction book, and counting.
To me, miracle is when what we dreamed for could turned into reality that you
can actually smell, touch, hear, or taste. And I think I’m somewhat fortunate
to have one of those in my tiny short lifetime.
All of my novels are published by Kompas Gramedia, the
biggest publication company in Indonesia through two of its subsidiary
companies, PT Gramedia Pustaka Utama and PT Elex Media Komputindo. Eight of
those ten fall into a genre which is called Teenlit or teen literature. It’s
basically novels for teens, from 12 to 21 years old. The other two are from a
genre called Metropop, for mature women aged 25-40 years old.
My latest two books are www.gombel.com and Bukan Cupid
(He’s Not Cupid). The first one is a mystery-thriller story about an internet
site which contains ghost and horror stories that started to terrorize its
users. Some of them experience horrifying incidents such as saw ghost
apparition, heard mysterious unexplainable noise, or even brutally possessed
they have to be locked at mental institutions for their own safety.
It was published by Elex Media and released at December
14, 2011. This was my first horror novel to date. The cover was so intriguingly
scary so that some of its readers couldn’t bear of even see it at nighttime.
They have the nerve to read the book only at daytime. And when night falls,
they change the book to some ordinary sweet love stories that end happily ever
after!
My newest book, which was published by Gramedia Pustaka
Utama (GPU) at February 14, 2012, is Bukan Cupid. It is an anthology of
Valentine-Day’s-themed short stories, my collaboration with 13 other famous
Teenlit authors. Those authors, in alphabetical order, are Antonius Andrie,
Christina Juzwar, Erlin Cahyadi, Esi Lahur, Irena Tjiunata, Janita Jaya, Lea
Agustina Citra, Monica Petra, Nora Umres, Pricillia AW, Sophie Maya, Teresa
Bertha, and Valleria Verawati.
On Saturday, February 11, we held book launching and meet
and greet at Gramedia Bookstore, Jalan Matraman, Jakarta. The event was hosted
by the famous Boim Lebon of the “Lupus family” from the series Lupus by Hilman.
All of the 14 authors attend the event, except Erlin, Monica, and Nora. It was
soon followed by other meet and greet gala at Kompas Gramedia Fair at the
Istora Senayan on Sunday March 4, but at that time I couldn’t make it to the
event due some shedule clash.
On the same day, Nora, Sophie, and I held a similar
event, a talk show at Waroeng Taman Singosari at Jalan Sriwijaya, Semarang,
about the book Bukan Cupid and another short stories compilation entitled
Suburban Love by our dear friend, Catastrova Prima. Unlike Bukan Cupid which
was published by a giant publication house, Suburban Love was published independently
through a minor publication company, Nulisbuku.Com.
Now I’m in the middle of preparing a nonfiction book
about two idol groups from South Korea, Super Junior and Girls’ Generation. It
will be published by Elex Media somewhere at May. And hopefully, not very far
from now, I will have my newest Metropop novel, Fade In/Fade Out, out to the
market to become my 11th novel.