The Blood Prince of Langkasuka

A manuscript I started researching while in Zagreb, Croatia in 2013 may have found a home at last. Huge sigh of relief after a writing journey which involved six revisions and five rejections 😫  There is even an advance! 😜 I'm so grateful the manuscript will now be a published book 😊 

The story was first written for the Calistro Prize, when I came across the call for submissions on the Malaysian Writers Community page on Facebook. Living in Croatia, a central European country where vampire myths are rife (Rumania is just a few hundred kilometers away) I decided to write a story based on the legend of Raja Bersiong, Malaysia's very own vampire.

As the rules were fairly vague, asking for manuscripts which were 6,000+ words, I submitted a 12,000 words  manuscript. Sadly, it was not even shortlisted. I later revised it and added another 20,000 words and submitted this to MPH Publishing and Hachette India, but this was also rejected. Another round of revision and an additional 5,000 words later, a submission to Gerakbudaya resulted in a positive preliminary review! I was under the impression that they would publish the manuscript but the trial went cold... But still the review assured me that I was not barking up the wrong tree, so another round of revision followed. I understand the reluctance of Gerakbudaya to publish this book since they are known mainly for non-fiction and I am grateful to them and to the anonymous Editor who did the preliminary review, otherwise I might have abandoned the manuscript at that stage. It should be apparent by now, that I'm a short story writer and my novellas are usually short stories which have been stretched a lot, with sub-plots added!

After the last revision, I made a submission to Tor.com, the publisher famous for all things Science Fiction & Fantasy. Sadly (in hindsight, fortunately) The Blood Prince of Langkasuka was rejected. I wasn't all that devastated because they usually publish digital books and I still prefer physical books. I mean, you can't show people a Kindle and proclaim, 'This is my new book!' Meanwhile, Nights of the Dark Moon, a collection of dark folktales from Asia and Africa, was published by Marshall Cavendish in November 2017. And in 2019, Gerakbudaya published The Principal Girl, an anthology of feminist tales from Asia, edited by Sharifah Aishah Osman and I. We were delighted that The Principal Girl turned out to be quite a hit with Malaysians readers.

In 2018, there was a lot of publicity around Penguin Random House setting up an office in Southeast Asia and the fact that they were looking for manuscripts. So, it seemed logical to make a submission in 2019. It took eight months for them to reply, but I'm delighted! Many thanks to Nora Abu Bakar, the Associate Publisher, for picking up the manuscript.



Nov 2019 Reimagining the legendary Raja Bersiong (the Fanged King) - as an angst ridden 12th Century Sri Vijayan prince. Perhaps the first vampire in recorded history, as the name is mentioned in ancient Kedah genealogy. The Blood Prince of Langkasuka is dark folklore fantasy and a chilling crime story... and yes, I'm writing as the 'other'  #asianvampires #asianfolklore #thebloodprince #vampires





Cracking the emoticon code: The Blood Prince of Langkasuka will be published by Penguin Random House SEA. For me, an achievement unlocked 😅. Many thanks to the publisher for accepting the manuscript and to Singapore children's writer, Don Bosco, for pointing us in the right direction. #asianvampires #asianfolklore #vampires #thebloodprince 

Someone on Twitter asked for the reason behind the title of our books. So the reasons for choosing this particularly long winded title were:

1. Refers to the term Prince du Sang/Prince of the Blood - a person legitimately descended in dynastic line from a realm's hereditary rulers. The term has a slightly different meaning in French, but I'm using it as meaning 'a prince from a royal bloodline.'

2. The 'Blood Prince' also implies that the Prince in the story is a vampire. 




Apologies to a few old friends for cancelling lunch and failing to follow up. Revisions were completed at 6pm on 30 Jan 2020 and emailed on the same day. 




Feb 2020 Update: The Blood Prince of Langkasuka. The manuscript went through two revisions with the Development Editor - including expansion of critical moments in the story i.e. slowing down the pace to create more tension; restructuring one chapter and an entirely new ending! I probably added another 4,000 words to the manuscript; now in the hands of the Copy Editor who will look at grammar and syntax 🤔 #bloodprince #bloodprinceoflangkasuka #asianvampires #asianfolklore #langkasuka



The secong stage, Copy Editing, was completed in March 2020. Apart from fixing a minor plot hole, most of the changes at this stage involved getting the manuscript publishing ready in the #penguinsea house style. Apparently, Penguin uses single inverted commas and not double inverted commas, which I thought was the standard. however, according to Editor/writers such as Martin Bradley and Leon Wing (find them on Facebook!), single inverted commas are actually the British standard. 

I was also impressed by the fact that both the Development Editor and the Copy Editor were unfazed by the many Malay words such as gulai bayam and Tok Batin, and a sprinkling of Sanskrit words used in the manuscript. In fact, the Copy Editor corrected the spelling of Vidhyadhara Torana, which I hadn't realised was misspelt!

#bloodprinceoflangkasuka #bloodprince #asianvampires #asianfolklore #malayfolklore — in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.