I get my ideas from a variety of sources; usually from real-life incidents, or things I see from movies. it doesn’t really matter, because I’m still learning and training myself. Once I get more experience from handling ideas and creating complete stories from them, more ideas should follow. To foster this, my current aim is to work my way through all the genres, producing short stories based on my interpretation of each genre. The challenge, I suppose, is to avoid falling into a cliched reworking of something. That said, so far it has been a success - most of my stories cross-over into other genres, which is a good sign of diversity and being able to mix a variety of themes.

Here’s a list of where the ideas for each of my stories came from:

Shirley’s Story: My house is fairly close to the train station, and while by day you can’t hear them, by late night you can hear the clicky-clack noises of the trains. There was a period of time when I couldn’t get to sleep until late at night, so lying in bed listening to these noises, this story just popped into my head. Pretty dark stuff.

A Chinese Ghost Story: Based on a ghost story by a Chinese writer, Po-Tsun-Ling. This story is so famous and well-known that I had to give it a shot.

Twins: This story was done for a competition, and the inspiration came from me reading a description of a Rumiko Takahashi short story, called “Diet Goddess”. It’s the story of a girl trying to lose weight so she can fit into a dress to go dancing with her dream date. I never actually read the RT short story, so I felt free to give my own spin on it.

Air + Space: I wanted to write a romantic comedy, so I looked for the most basic of all plot devices in a romantic comedy. A girl and two guys. That said, I think skywriting is very cool, and the two sort of merged.

A Short Ghost Story: I heard this ghost story off a friend, though I changed it quite a bit because the story I was told was harmless, just a little unsettling. The ambience of the story made it seem something bad was going to happen, so I had to change it to accomodate that.

Keeper of the Soul: This was the FIRST story I ever came up with. I was about 16 then, and wanting to think up a plot for a video game, which could also double as the plotline for a computer game I was programming for a school project. I wanted to do a fantasy plotline because I was inspired by the Final Fantasy games. The computer project of mine was long gone, but the plot stuck in my mind. Let’s just say that since then, it has grown monstrously in scale. Here is just a small part of it.

Greenhouse: I was asked to write a teeny weeny 10-page short story for a small anthology project that was to be published exclusively in Australia. Now, I’ve never written a story this short before, and for a while was stumped on how to approach this task. Luckily, I had an Adatchi Mitsuru short story for inspiration (from his “Short Program” series), called “Earthquake”, which was short, cute and enjoyable. So I decided I would channel A.M. and write something in a similar vein. I quite liked the end result - no dialogue, for once.

Block 6, 34 Alvina St: Once more, I was called to demonstrate my remarkable inability to give my stories good or interesting names. This story was named after a real apartment block I saw in Hong Kong. Coupled with the cramped living conditions and dark corridors common there - especially in older buildings - it made an ideal setting for a “freaky” horror story. Seeing “A Short Ghost Story” was so popular, I figured there was a real demand for horror stories that wasn’t about blood + gore, but about dark corners and closed spaces. Everything I was ever afraid of will get a mention in this 100+ page manga.

A Girl Called Marian: Believe it or not, this story was originally conceived after a viewing of the movie “Wild Wild West”; voted the worst movie of 1998. Luckily, after numerous re-inventions, it now bears absolutely no resemblence to that movie, with the exception of a “Western” setting. “A Girl Called Marian” is only a short snippet of the actual story, called “N. S. E. W.”.

Yuen: This story is really called, “Cho-Han-Wan-Shen-Gi”, which in english translates to “The Supernatural Story of the Cho and the Han”. Which is a lousy translation - perhaps “Gods and Mortals” may be better. The title aside, it’s the content that’s interesting - this is a historical fantasy. It’s historical because real figures from Chinese history appear it in, and things happen as they did in history; and it’s a fantasy because Chinese gods in the Taoist pantheon also appear in it, along with popular myths, legends and Taoist philosophy. This story is really a chance to indulge my passion for Chinese culture and Taoist mysticism… with an interest in these sort of things, it was just waiting to happen. Even the art style was especially created to suit the “story”.

Blood of Snow: I came, I spun, I drew. I’m sloooowly and methodically working my way thought the genres. And so - I spun the wheel of genres, and it was pointed at “samurai swords”. So here is the samurai sword story.