Collin Piprell

I’m in the business of generating alternative realities and then exploring them. This, I claim, is not schizophrenia. A Canadian writer and editor based in Bangkok, I've also lived in England, where I did graduate work at Oxford, and in Kuwait, where I learned to sail, waterski, and make a credible red wine in plastic garbage bins. At the end of 2008, I resigned as editorial director at Dragon Art Media (Bangkok, Phuket, Koh Samui, Bali) to devote myself to writing. My chief skills are words and tunnels. Before the Oxford and Kuwait years, my employment experience included, among other things, four jobs as a driller and stope leader in mines and tunnels in Ontario and Quebec. (One of my few regrets in this life is having had to refuse a development mining job in Greenland.) There’s been little call for tunneling these days, but since moving to Thailand I've produced many articles on a wide variety of topics, four novels, a collection of occasional pieces, a diving guide to Thailand, another book on diving, and a book on Thailand’s coral reefs. I've also co-authored a book on Thailand’s national parks. I've taught writing at a local university (Thammasat), and I conduct occasional writing workshops for publishing companies and community organizations. I'm currently at work on a fifth novel, the second of a futuristic trilogy that begins with *MOM,*, now available on amazon.com. Books by Collin Piprell (currently out of print, aside from MOM and Diving in Thailand): *MOM* (http://tinyurl.com/y9am7lq) *Yawn* (A Thriller) Bangkok: Asia Books, 2000 *Kicking Dogs* (Bangkok: Asia Books, 2001) *Bangkok Knights* (Bangkok: Asia Books, 2001) (The previous three titles need a new home.) *Bangkok Old Hand* (Bangkok: Post Books, 1993) *Diving in Thailand* (Singapore: Times Editions; U.S.A.: Hippocrene Books, 1994, 2000), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. *Thailand’s Coral Reefs* (Bangkok: White Lotus, 1993), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. * Thailand: The Kingdom Beneath the Sea* (Bangkok: Artasia Press, 1991), photographs by Ashley J. Boyd. * National Parks Thailand* (Bangkok: IFPC, 1993, 1995), with Denis Gray and Mark Graham Prospective agents and publishers are welcome to contact me at collin.piprell@gmail.com.

Can the novel survive the demise of novelists?

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The demise of the novel? This has been predicted again and again over the decades, if not the centuries, yet people keep reading novels. Here’s a recent vote of confidence in their persistence:

“The book-length text is coded in our DNA and will never go away; it is the written version of the oral myths and histories told on consecutive nights around campfires for 80,000 years. In each new generation, roughly the same percentage of people is born with

… Read more

Writerly occupational hazards: Plagiarism

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Plagiarism has become more tempting and easier, perhaps, in this digital age. The danger of being found out may also be greater.

Here’s a copy of the letter I e-mailed a week ago to The Tribune, New Delhi (I’ve yet to hear from either the newspaper or the writer):

Dear Editors,

I must inform you that more than half of Uma Vasudeva’s review of C.Y. Gopinath’s The Books of Answers (The Tribune, New Delhi, 7 August 2011) 

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Cymbalalalazophobia: Things to worry about when the sky isn’t falling

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So  just the other morning I suffered something like a flash of cymbalalalazophobia, which is hardly surprising, Sara claims, given my lifestyle.

My recent “Hope in dark times” post elicited the following Facebook query:   Is there an official fear of hi-hat cymbals phobia?

If there weren’t, it stuck me that I had a friend who might be uniquely qualified to coin such an expression. Dr. Anthony Alcock is not only a fine classical scholar, linguist, Egyptologist, jazz & blues … Read more

Our friend the hookworm

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Bill the Mathematician—yes, that’s Bill of the unaccountably broken back—is not always fully recognized as the trendsetter he really is. Right now he’s in Phnom Penh, on his way to the Pasteur Institute to ask for a dose of hookworm larvae. “I thought I’d found a source yesterday,” he tells me, “as PP now has a National Parasitological Center. But somehow they can’t help because ‘it’s time for exams.’ But they did suggest I try L’Institut Pasteur, so I’ll … Read more

Hope in dark times

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Just when things couldn’t get any worse, they did. But it turned out they didn’t really, and Sara’s right, I worry too much.

I’ve just come back into my office, and I heard this horrible rasping from the left wing of my iMac. My mind is going, “It’s the fan, right? It can’t be the hard drive, it can’t be the hard drive, aiyeeeee.”

Careful investigation has revealed the real problem. I had an online jazz station playing, way down … Read more

English language needs *iktsuarpok*

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Iktsuarpok: an Inuit word more useful to us citizens of the digital universe than umpteen expressions for varieties of snow.

Here’s how the blogsite Mental Floss characterizes the expression:

“You know that feeling of anticipation when you’re waiting for someone to show up at your house and you keep going outside to see if they’re there yet? This is the word for it.”

And it occurs to me that iktsuarpok might enrich modern English, where it could just as

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The Book of Answers

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C.Y. “Gopi” Gopinath, a Bangkok-based writer of note, has just published his first novel, which promises even greater success than his globetrotting chronicle Travels with the Fish (HarperCollins India, 1999). The Book of Answers, released just this month, also by HarperCollins India, has already soared to #10 on the bestseller list in that country.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’m going to don my “let’s pitch this book to a modern market” hat, something I … Read more

Home-grown back therapies rool!

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Caption: Our adventurer, with his new office chair, just after summiting the roof of his apartment building five times in a row without oxygen.

Breaking news on the old-crockish falling-apart front: I’ve just cured a rogue back, gone bad in the prime o’ me loif and all, by giving my office chair to the guard downstairs in favor of sitting on an exercise ball at my desktop computer, alternating this with standing at my filing cabinet with a laptop on … Read more

Digital technologies: The great levelers

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Lonely Planet has long made everyone an adventurer, IMHO, thereby sapping much travel of any real adventure. The Discovery Channel and National Geographic, from what I hear in the street, have made nearly any experience you can imagine accessible from the comfort of your own armchair.

“So you went walking in Antarctica? (Yawn.) Whatever. I saw Antarctica on TV last week. Yeah, it was awesome. All those fuckin’ penguins, eh?”

Etc.

And now Google Goggles will make anyone with … Read more

Incoming, incoming! Or, the problem with glass houses

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I’ve decided one of the comments on my last blog installment merits a post in itself, together with my response. This is from a friend and professional editor:

“Is “Eyes filled with disquiet” a full sentence or is it a noun modified by a phrase? Do you mean to say the eyes, they filled with disquiet? Or these are eyes that are filled with disquiet?”

My initial response:

“The latter, of course.”

Then, following further reflection:

If that isn’t “of … Read more