I decided to open up a Smack Jeeves account as a home to my webcomics (and it surely saves up my webspace here, yes/yes?).  My profile is here.

Currently there are four webcomics hosted there:
The Daimon Mythology
Breathing the Driven Snow.
Funeral Pyre: a part of the Noble Book of Arthur
Uroki

And Cocona has been so kind to put two Sasuraiger fanarts that I made in the J9 fansite. It’s a great site for fellow J9 fans, so go visit it! :)

I decided to release a novel I wrote several years ago in Goodreads.  For a start, I’ll post six of the twenty-five chapters of the novel.

Read the novel here. Your comment and critics will be very much appreciated.

It’s scary to think that one of the places you think you might return to someday - the one that resides strongly in your memories - is now gone.

A neighbouring family once lived, like us, in Tangkahan Lagan/Pangkalan Brandan in North Sumatra.  When we were there, the area was a thriving one, supported by the oil industry.  But my neighbours, who just visited TL/PB again, said that there was nothing there now anymore.  Pertamina has packed up their things and left.  The housing complexes are now guarded by marines, and my neighbours had to ask for permission to enter the area.  ”My children were born here!”

So they let them in, only to find a saddening, devastated, lonely place. Where there used to be thousand of people living now are ruins of buildings that 15 years ago were still in a very good condition — many of them were new when we were there.  It’s practically a dead town.

Read the rest of this entry »

So because AniGA won’t work with the latest version of WP, I tried to switch to NextGEN. Due to my stooooopidity, it took me like 3 hours before I finally grasped what to do with the new gallery.

Try to click on the new gallery, and see whether it works (if not, just comment here!). I will upload more soon.

During upgrading, unfortunately the content of the gallery was lost, so here I claim the gallery down.  We’re trying to fix it all up.

The good news is this:  Threads 01, my comic compilation, is now available.

42 + 2 pages
Rating: 13+ (nothing explicit)
Price: IDR 17.5K (no tax, but shipping cost excluded)
Language used: Indonesian and English (different chapters may use different languages)

 Content:

Data 06 of my previous publication, BL x BL x BL, now rechristened BLx3

Germain of the Heart: Bleed, a bud off my series Regus of the Eyes.

Uroki
Eye 1: Surya Rajaprana
The first chapter of my post-apocalyptic series, in which people called Skans and Cyclops roam the Earth. This series is heavily influenced by Klaxons. Well… Regus of the Eyes too were influenced by Klaxons…

Samples here

I am very proud to announce here that a workof a long-time friend of mine, Bayou, has been published by TOKYOPOP.  It is called The 9 Lives.  I can’t wait to get it in my hands and read it.  Maybe I’m going to review it, if I have the time to just sit and write something between my hectic schedule.

Once again… congratulations, Bayou!

I know.  The title’s silly, but this comic started out as a joke I pulled on my male friends who were confused about why girls love BL at all.  Now I’m working on the second volume, but this will come out coupled with another comic in a compilation the title of which I haven’t decided.  (Any suggestions?)

This is a rather hastily done image of the main characters.  The second character from the right is a new character, Alam.  Probably I thought about New Young Pony Club girls too much when I designed him :D  Oh well, let NYPC’s songs be his character songs then! :D

I have never, literally, visited Cilegon.  I just passed through it several times.  And the town always woke up some nostalgia in me.

Because I too was raised in a sleepy small town like Cilegon, that breathes her life thanks to an industry, or several industries, that may one day also bring about her demise, with the destruction of the environment or when they stop operation and leave just like that.

But I read somewhere some days ago that Cilegon has one of the best spatial-plannings of all regions in Indonesia.  I hope that is true, and I hope that Cilegon will continue living as a wealthy town - I’d love to see the lights of the factories in the night again, dancing around in the dark like some gigantic fireflies.  But I also observed that several of the hills around the town have been half-destroyed by diggings to extract the minerals or the sand, I don’t know.  I’m afraid such exploitations will one day make Cilegon inhabitable anymore - I heard there have been some regions lacking water, which is natural when you destroy the forest and vegetation around you like that.

My best wishes for you, Cilegon.

So are we having a dry season or a rainy season?  Just a couple of weeks ago we’re still in the middle of the killing heat of a dry season; the roads were dusty, the grasses retreated underground waiting for the next period of enough precipitation to emerge again — but nowadays almost every day the sky is dark and some rain falls to the thirsty land.  Global warming has stopped us from having our seasons regularly, eh.

A friend of mine, Shawna, sent me a wall decoration as my birthday gift.  I was struck when I unwrapped the package, because I’d just seen a similar thing painted on the cover of Ayu Utami’s latest book, Bilangan Fu.  A friend told me that it’s a Greek protection charm.  Looking at the appearance, could it be a charm against evil eye?

Am trying to read all books there are in Joan Aiken’s James III/Wolves Chronicles saga.  I still need to buy Black Hearts in Battersea, The Stolen Lake, The Witch of Clatteringshaws and Dido and Pa and to complete my reading.  I’ve read Is and Cold Shoulder Road when I was younger; my sister borrowed them from the school library, but now I want to have my own copies too.  Wait, is The Whispering Mountain part of the saga too? Woah!  I saw a copy in PIM, I have to buy it.

So far I’ve read Midwinter Nightingale, The Cuckoo Tree, and Night Birds on Nantucket.  Am reading The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, and Limbo Lodge is waiting on my bedstand.

I’m alive, yay.

I finally received my Association of Indonesian Translators (Himpunan Penerjemah Indonesia/HPI) membercard. It’s a great achievent for me, because I got the membership and the card because my skills were approved by professionals (I was invited to join the association–I was really honoured!). The membercard isn’t something like ID card or ATM card–it shows that I’m a professional!

And so last Saturday I attended the second member-meeting in Kafe Dapurku, Kuningan. (The second, because although HPI has been around for a long time, it once went to sleep for some years, so it’s all been reset to zero). The first speaker was Pak Kukuh Sanyoto, a Spanish/Indonesian interpreter/translator, once a weatherman for RCTI. Enviably slim and lively despite his age, he told us about, among others, how he got into the business. He said when he was 19, he had a fight with his diplomat father–at the time was posted in Africa–so he left home for Spain. He only took 500 dollars with him, and so he lived a life of a renegade there for months. He spent some more years there to learn Spanish in college. Wow. Isn’t that a very interesting experience?

The second speaker was Pak Widodo, with 30 years ‘ experience of being the translator for former president Soeharto. (”I’m also a son of a diplomat, but my youth was tame compared to Kukuh’s… and currently I don’t have as much hair as he does.”) There were also other interpreters/translators who shared their experience. All in all, it was very interesting.

Current project:

• I’m still continuing Regus. (Currently up to chapter 005A are available to download.) In fact, it is the only comic I’m working on right now; I planned to join the forthcoming magazine to be published by Megindo, but I don’t think I have time for it right now.
• Talking about Megindo, we have a new book division. A children book that I wrote will be published by the division, with illustrations. Right now I’m preparing to write the sequel, and another book not included in the series. We also have other plans for books to be published. Wish us luck.
• I’m currently translating the 8th edition of Campbell’s Biology, Dan Green and Basher’s Why Matter Matters (a very interesting physics book), and Plantagenet Somerset Fry’s The History of the World.

And there’s a plan for me to appear in m&c!’s Deathnote/Bleach-related events in Citos. Will update more about this.