"An Unemployed Person"

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.