Let me share the story of how this book came about. Ever since my childhood days in Colombo, I was fascinated by the story of Major-General Sir Thomas Maitland, the British Army General who had fallen in love with a local woman named Lovinia Aponsuwa. She was the half-Sinhalese, half-Portuguese lead dancer of her father’s … Read More
So you’ve finally finished writing your book— you poured your heart and soul into the writing and spent countless hours editing and revising. Perhaps it’s been a lifelong dream—and now you want to get it published. What do you do next? Maybe you’ve done your homework on the do’s and don’ts of publishing a book, … Read More
The first writer I watched at work was my grandfather. He would close his study door and sit down to write a letter to his long-separated son and youngest daughter, one living in Melbourne and the other in faraway London. He had seen neither since they had left Colombo on their various life journeys many … Read More
The legend goes in Fiji, that a princess escaping a marriage arranged by her Father, sought refuge underneath a tree, beside a remote mountain lake. In her sadness, she cries in her sleep. Her tears become the beautiful red flowers of the Tagimoucia plant, the national floral emblem of Fiji, used by the villagers for medicinal purposes. Adrian Nicholls is fiercely … Read More
No Comment, and don’t quote me on that. Book review by author Roderic Grigson It takes years to write a good book and in this insightful memoir, Thalif Deen, a former UN Bureau Chief and Regional Director at Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, recounts colourful and amusing stories from his 40-year career, ‘reporting from … Read More
When I wanted to become an author, I had to work hard reinventing myself from being an information writer to becoming a creative writer.
People write books for many reasons and most have a common goal. They want to see their work in print, displayed in bookstores and hopefully, listed as a bestseller.
Much of what I write about in my books is based on real events both in and outside of Sri Lanka. Although the stories may be fiction, many of the settings and what the main characters experience are taken from actual fact.
Sri Lanka has a documented history of over 2,000 years, mainly due to ancient historic scriptures like the Mahawamsa, and with the first stone objects dating back to 500,000 BC.
With a recorded history of nearly 2500 years and an unrecorded history of at least the same period, Sri Lanka is home to many legends.