For U.S. Readers, "Fated and Fateless" $0.99 Kindle Sale!

A countdown sale is on from Amazon.com Kindle Store at $0.99 until December 14, 2014 1:00 pm (PST), after which the price will go up to $2.99, again effective for a limited time (53 hours).

This is a novel that paints a culturally vibrant period in colonial Hong Kong. Did you know that in the early to mid-1900s, Hong Kong's Chinese society was very much influenced by the Portuguese, other than the British?

Tony, a leading character in the novel, is a Eurasian from Macau born of a Chinese mother and a Portuguese father, who is the offspring of a well-known historical Macanese figure.

A major character, John Woo the lawyer, is of mixed Chinese and British descent.

Other interesting characters include Jean the French teacher and Jill Simmons, the Eurasian stockbroker, who comes from mixed British, Portuguese and Chinese origin.

Wendy the working girl and Diana the apparent heiress (the two leading female characters), and Edward the doctor (the other leading male character), are Chinese, as are most other major characters (like Mr. Lee the property tycoon and Ms. Yeung the secretary).

Fate throws them onto one another's path and creates distressing chaos in the lives of Wendy and Diana….

"Fated and Fateless" Excerpt Part 2

Here's Excerpt Part 2 (continued from Part 1):-

[Diana had witnessed the amazing growth of Sun Tai Land on her frequent trips back to Hong Kong while studying in England – the number of staff shot up from a couple of dozens in 1966 to a couple of hundreds now (1972). The company structure had evolved from a simple single-tier one into a multi-department, many-layered management hierarchy led by her father. Her knowledge of the company’s operations, if perfunctory, had come from her attendance as an observer at board and management meetings during all her school vacations.

During those company visits, she couldn’t help noticing that her father had regular secret meetings with Detective Ngan in his private conference room, which was annexed to his large and lavishly furnished office, where valuable Chinese paintings by Cheung Tai Chin were randomly hung. She was going to find out all about the meetings from Ms. Yeung some day.

As she lay reposed on the gold-trimmed velvety couch by the sheer-curtained French windows looking out onto the terrace, she was thinking that it was high time to take the company public and use the public offer proceeds for further expansion,. She must set up a meeting with John Woo, Sun Tai Land’s legal adviser, and Ewen Saunders, the investment banker. She was not going to tell her father yet what was on her mind until she had all the information she needed. She must be able to impress him with her first presentation. But before that important meeting, she must first have a chance to hold an internal meeting with all the department heads to get an update on the company’s business outlook and financial situation. The matter was now of top priority as John Woo had told her that the KHS Group was also planning to go public.

On that thought, she rose from the couch and walked across the chandelier-lit living room to the fireplace, above which hung a huge, three-panel mirror. She picked up the antique phone on the side table while admiring her own reflection in the mirror, and dialed Ms. Yeung’s number. Ms. Yeung had been her father’s private secretary for as long as she could recall and knew the company’s staff like the back of her hand. Diana was aware of the rumor that had been going round the office in recent years: that her father had taken Ms. Yeung as his mistress and had bought her a high-end apartment in Happy Valley. For this reason, no one from the office dared to cross her and everybody was trying to please her. If there was anyone apart from Mrs. Lee, to whom Ms. Yeung would care to show some courtesy, it was Diana. Diana had once casually dropped the question on her mother, but she had shrugged it off in an unaffected manner without saying anything. She had thought it best to feign ignorance in front of her father.

“Hello Ms. Yeung, how have you been?”

“Hello Diana, it’s good to hear your voice again. When did you arrive? Did you have a pleasant trip?”

“I arrived on Saturday. The trip was OK – you know, as usual, I slept during the flight. Look, I was wondering if you could set up a meeting of department heads for 10 o’clock on Tuesday, if my dad doesn’t have anything on.”

“Let me just check his diary – yes, he’s free. I’ll have the meeting set up right away. Is there anything else?”

“Please tell my dad that the purpose of the meeting is to let me catch up. Oh, and please ask the chief accountant to let me have copies of the audited accounts for the last five years – have them on my desk first thing tomorrow morning. Another thing is that I want you to place an ad in the English papers for two personal assistants for me. Also, ask the fung shui master Mr. Yau to come by the office tomorrow. That’ll be all for now.” Mr. Lee had hired Mr. Yau as the company’s fung shui master on a retainer basis right after that house-warming dinner in 1970.

“Yes, I’ll get on to it. See you tomorrow morning, Diana. Welcome back.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Edward hauling himself up agilely from the water. His lanky torso and tight butt, dripping wet and exuding life in the bright sunlight, looked even more sensual. As his elder sister, she felt she had a duty to watch over him, not letting him fall prey to those tramps hovering around him. He was always such a naïve and warm-hearted big boy. It was a good thing he didn’t want to go into the business world – he was just not cut out for it.

She walked out to the sunlit terrace and picked up a white thick towel from one of the wooden poolside benches to hand to him.

“I’m going shopping at Lane Crawford’s this afternoon. Want to come along?” she was hoping he’d say yes.

“Umm, I don’t think so – there’s some reading that I have to catch up on. Why don’t you ask Mother to go with you?”

Masking her disappointment, she said in a teasing tone: “What a bookworm you are! Mother has her mahjong party to go to. She wouldn’t be a great help anyway. Don’t worry, I don’t mind shopping alone.”]

Giveaway of "Fated and Fateless" at Goodreads

One signed paperback copy of "Fated and Fateless" is available as a Goodreads Giveaway from March 8 to March 15, 2014. Enter to win the copy!

 
 

    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 

   

       
   

   

     

          Fated and Fateless
     

     

          by Alice Poon
     

     

         
            Giveaway ends March 15, 2014.
         

         
            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         

     

   

   

      Enter to win

"Fated and Fateless" Excerpt Part 1

The book excerpt that I'm going to post consists of almost a full chapter. As it is too long for one post, I've split it into two parts. This post contains Excerpt Part 1.

 [The last thought on her mind, as she climbed out of the Mercedes, was that she needed to advertise for a personal assistant, or maybe two, on the first day she started to work at the office.

Diana had never quite gotten over the spat she had had with Wendy when they were kids. She had never forgiven Wendy for ruining her new pink frock that day. She had the nerve to say it was my fault! She wondered where Wendy was working now, and how she was making out.

“Whatever income she may be earning, I can always give her an offer she can’t refuse.” The corners of her lips turned up in a sly smile with this thought.

The next morning, which was a Sunday, she had a chance to have a long chat with her mother at the breakfast table, her father having already gone out to the Deep Water Bay Golf Club to play golf and Edward was doing his daily laps in the terrace pool.

In the Lee family’s Sai Wan Ho days, Chuen Fat Kee had been used as a cover for a big word-guess gaming (字花) operation which was run by Ah Chuen and Ah Fat. The brothers had come from Chiu Chow like Mr. Lee. Being a sociable and astute businessman, Mr. Lee had found out about the operation during his casual chats with the brothers. He had offered to inject capital into the operation to make it bigger, using his commission earnings from broking land deals. Immigrants from Chiu Chow had a natural habit of sticking trustingly to one another. The brothers had accepted his offer without hesitation. Two years into the operation, Mr. Lee had suggested to the brothers to start a horse-racing bookie business alongside word-guess game betting. The party of three had it so good ever since that they were virtually swimming in cash.

The word-guess game was a game in which thirty-six names of well-known ancients, or of places, or of animals or profession, were put up for betting on a daily basis. Each operator would have a number of couriers who acted as collectors of bets from street gamblers. Each morning the operator would announce by word-of-mouth to the couriers which group of names would be put up for betting that day and would write up numbers in running order against the thirty-six names on a piece of paper. He would randomly pick one number (name) by marking it and would then put the piece of paper inside a porcelain container that would be hung from the beam of the flat. Bets could then be accepted by the couriers. The payout multiple for the winner was thirty to one. Thus, the odds are heavily in favor of the dealer. Such operations were illegal gaming and had to be conducted underground. The flip side to running such operations was that it would often attract triad members as well as policemen to come around to collect protection fees and bribes.

Now Diana remembered when she was in primary school, her father had a habit of placing before her each day a list of numbers and Chinese names and would urge her to pick out a number or name on the paper. Ever since she took on the job of “the gold finger”, money was flowing in faster than her father could ever have hoped for. It was thus that she became her father’s good luck charm.

As the underground operation was bringing in more and more cash, it had caught the attention of the Wo Sing Wo triad gang. Gangsters had begun coming round to extort protection fees from Ah Chuen and Ah Fat. By a stroke of chance, the brothers had got acquainted with a police detective named Ngan from the vice squad attached to the Shaukiwan Police Station. Ngan had also come from Chiu Chow and once he came to know the brothers, they just hit it off in no time. Ever since they had befriended each other, gangsters had stopped showing up. But of course there was no free lunch. Instead of paying ever increasing protection fees on demand to triad gangsters, the brothers and Mr. Lee had had to allow Ngan a cut of the gaming profits. Diana had picked up much of this information from the chauffeur Ah Wong during her car trips to and from the airport on her annual vacations. Ah Wong was a second cousin of Ah Chuen and Ah Fat. Her mother now confirmed those stories.

When the Lee family had first moved to Repulse Bay in 1960, they had settled into a 2,000 square feet apartment unit which Mr. Lee had bought with the hard cash that he earned from his underground business. Then in 1970, they had moved again into the huge 4,000 square feet, two-storey beachside mansion, which had a large manicured garden at the back and a sun terrace with a full-size swimming pool at the front facing the beach. By this time, Ah Chuen and Ah Fat had also moved out of Sai Wan Ho to live in a luxury apartment on The Peak. Together, the brothers were now the second largest shareholder in Sun Tai Land, although they were content to leave the day-to-day management of the company in the hands of Mr. Lee.

Starting from the early 60s, Mr. Lee had begun to focus his time on buying land for his own company and building low-end residential buildings in urban Kowloon for the newly arrived mainland immigrants. The business had taken off in no time and he had begun to look for land in the New Territories. In 1967, the communists in Hong Kong had started up a riot that had threatened to turn uncontrollable, which had scared a lot of rich people into running for cover overseas. The unexpected exodus had given Mr. Lee and a couple of other gutsy developers, including the Lee family’s current neighbor Mr. Ko, a golden chance to load up their land banks at negligible costs, when land and housing prices had taken a dive.]

A Note About the Kindle Format of "Fated and Fateless"

A couple of friends from Hong Kong have asked me the same question recently: how could one get to read the Kindle version of my novel if one didn't have the Kindle device?

The answer is quite simple: just download the Kindle App for free from Amazon's website as you purchase the Kindle version from Amazon. If you want to download the book to your smartphone or tablet, there is a Kindle App for smartphone or tablet. If you want to download it to your laptop, there's a Kindle App for PC. It's just a click away on the right-hand column of the Product Page (either click on "Available on your PC" or click on "Free Kindle App for smartphones or tablets" as it suits you). The retail price of the Kindle version is US$7.99.

As presently the paperback version is not yet available in Asia, the most efficient and economical way for potential Asian readers to access the novel is by purchasing the Kindle version. That being said, the paperback version is actually a nicely done product and could be had for US$12.99. But the shipping charges can amount to US$20 and it takes 5 to 10 days for the shipment to arrive in Hong Kong. It would be nice if you could get friends or relatives living in the U.S. to buy and mail it to you.

For potential readers in Canada and most European countries (U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy), both the paperback and Kindle editions are listed at the respective local currency (e.g. in Canada, the Kindle version is listed at C$8.50 and the paperback at C$14.40). With the paperback version, delivery may be free or may involve a small local shipping charge.

In my earlier post I provided links to the Product Page on Amazon's U.S. and European sites but inadvertently omitted Amazon's Canada site. Here's the link:-

Amazon Canada's Product Page


My Twitter Account:

https://twitter.com/alicepoon1




 

 

Brief Synopsis of My Novel and BigLychee's Plug

Brief Synopsis of "Fated and Fateless":-

"The story is set in colonial Hong Kong and spans four decades from the late 1940s.

Prior to October 1987, Wendy has her fill of bad experiences in her childhood and youth until she meets Tony, a Macanese magnate, and becomes his protégé. Despite her ascending career, her romance with Edward, her childhood playmate and Diana’s kid brother, suffers constant sabotage by Diana, who is also Wendy’s archrival by design. Meanwhile, Diana breezes through life and covets the throne of her father’s (Mr. Lee’s) property empire, but her heiress dream proves elusive. Her bad choice of lovers causes her more than a fortune and the love of her life turns out to be her cruelest life lesson.

In October 1987, Wendy and Diana finally come to a face-off when Wendy and Tony act in concert trying to take over Mr. Lee’s company, which attempt is foiled by Diana on a tip-off from a snitch. This reduces Wendy to ruins. At the same time, Diana discovers a startling secret about her mother which could change her fortunes forever."

Hong Kong Blogger BigLychee (formerly Hemlock) mentioned this in his blog post of January 23, 2014:-

“Don’t be fooled by the girly cover. Set in the 1950s-80s era, it’s (judging by the first few chapters) a tale of good versus evil, in which the rags-to-riches heroine works her way up into a position where she might be able to turn one of Hong Kong’s notoriously greedy, cheating real-estate empires into a force for social good, only to come up against a property tycoon’s spoilt daughter, who apparently comes to some sort of sticky end – hopefully, vividly portrayed and extremely unpleasant. It’s sort of Land and the Ruling Class: the Movie. There is possibly a dash of autobiography, as per a first novel; there are also plentiful resemblances to actual people, living or dead, which are of course entirely coincidental. Strictly for hard-core fans of Hongkongiana, obviously, though if/when it appears in Chinese, it could strike a chord like its non-fiction predecessor.”

I'll be posting an excerpt of the novel soon! Keep an eye on this blog!

Paperback Edition of "Fated and Fateless"

With the help of free online tools available at the CreateSpace Independent Publishing platform (an Amazon company), I was able to create a paperback version of my novel, which has just been launched on Amazon.com (U.S.), Amazon.co.uk (U.K.), Amazon.fr (France), Amazon.de (Germany) and other Amazon European sites. Obviously, print-on-demand technology has been instrumental in helping debut fiction authors who are constantly crowded out of the market to get published at no cost.

In about six to eight weeks' time, the paperback version will be accessible by bookstores, online retailers, libraries and academic institutions.

Link to the Product Page on Amazon.com

Link to the Product Page on Amazon.co.uk

Link to the Product Page on Amazon.fr

Link to the Product Page on Amazon.de

I have to admit that I am one of those book readers who still prefer to hold a physical book in my hands and feel the pages while turning, rather than just gluing my eyes to a screen.

My Debut Novel "Fated and Fateless"

Having spent part of 2009 writing the first few chapters of my first novel, I had to put the work aside in 2010 and 2011 as I found myself deeply engaged in activities related to the publication of the Chinese editions of my non-fiction title "Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong". In  early 2012 I picked up the writing where I left off and finished the first draft in the summer. The remainder of the year was spent in re-writing and polishing the work.

Throughout 2013 I patiently tried to approach, one after another, a select few U.K. publishers who are still receptive towards unsolicited manuscripts from unknown fiction writers, at about three- to four-month intervals. For reasons I cannot fully explain, I had opted not to try U.S. publishers at all. I guess I should count myself as lucky to have received two polite rejection letters from two well-known U.K. publishers, one of who indicated that although my novel is well written and is generally up to publication standard, it is not deemed a viable proposition financially in these particularly difficult times for fiction.

Then the Kindle Self-Publishing website caught my eyes late last year. I decided to give it a go.

Now the Kindle edition of "Fated and Fateless" is available for sale on all branches of Amazon.

Link to the Product Detail page.


Link to the Author Page.


Any feedback from readers of my blog would be most welcome. Better still, buy my book, read it and write a review on Amazon!