The Encounter with Ellanor

The Encounter with Ellanor

Before telling the story, I must first admit that I am not a big fan of fantasy fiction. 

I like The Lord of the Rings movie, but never finished the book; I like the first three volumes of Harry Potter, but somehow stopped after volume five. The only fantasy fiction I like is The Dragon Raja written by Korean author Lee Young Do, it is a story with amazing worldview, sharp characters and lots of touching moments. To me, it is a must-read for every fantasy fiction readers, the book should be published worldwide with many different language versions and made into a TV series…The book should have earned much more popularity it deserved.

Ok…back to the topic.

The story of encountering Ellanor began in Hong Kong Book Fair. Hong Kong Book Fair is a boring event where publishers and retailers offer huge discounts to offload the stocks, other than that there is pretty much nothing worth mentioning. But it was not quite the case in 2015. Author Kathryn rented a booth in the fair selling the first two volumes of the chronicles: Ellanor and the Search for Organoth Blue Amber and Ellanor and the Curse on the Nine-tailed Fox. I walked pass the booth and was surprised to see there were only two books available for purchase, and it’s from an indie author. I soon became interested, admiring the author’s dedication and was happy to discover something special among the boring booths, so I bought the copies without much thought. It turned out to be a worthy addition to my bookshelf and it gave me a glimpse of hope that there are gems in the sea of self-publishing. Kathryn published the first two volumes of the series through self publishing, it is actually a good way to have your book published this way instead of sitting there waiting for publishers’ call of interests. But believe me, good writing craft comes from nurture, either it be through professional training, or self-taught through enormous amount of reading (good books). Many people would go on the self-publishing route to have the works appear in bookstores. Some of them have great ideas, but most of them fall into the “professional editing / writing class required” category. Kathryn’s work ticks the all the good boxes, and good writers deserve to be noticed, right? 

Fast forward the clock to four months ago, when Hedgehog Publishing was born, and I was piling up a title list for publishing, this book came to my mind again. It took me quite a while to make the decision (large amount of the time spent on thinking how to approach Kathryn and present her my ideas). But thankfully Kathryn is willing to work with me and so far things have been smooth. 

Now the book is almost put to print, this is not the end of a story but rather a new beginning of it. Just let’s see.

Currently reading before sleep:
The Shanghai Free Taxi: Journeys with the Hustlers and Rebels of the New China by Frank Langfitt, on Kindle, progress: 53%
Country Driving:A Journey through China from Farm to Factory by Peter Hessler, TC version paperback, progress: below 20%

What I bought recently:
A compilation of mystery stories written by Hong Kong authors, a cooking 101 recipe book and a special edition if Zhi Japan magazine talking about the history and development of Japanese video games.
偵探冰室 — 陳浩基、譚劍、文善、黑貓C、望日、冒業
輕鬆成為烹調高手 — 馬達 甚麼值得吃
日本游戲完全進化史 — 知日