Righteous Fire :: 'When the favoured son of the Chang family dies, it is up to his outcast sister to unravel the truth.' I originally submitted this for a first-chapter contest, for which I won an honourable mention. It even led to a publisher asking to take a look at the full manuscript. Alas, I aborted the story early on because I felt it just didn't have the legs to go the full distance as a novel.

The Reckoning :: A techno-thriller that I started but never finished. It goes like this: a group of UN diplomats have grown tired of seeing war criminals escape justice. So they take it upon themselves to form a death squad. Their target? A man known as The General, inspired by real-life despots Charles Taylor and Robert Mugabe. In the end, though, I felt the story was just too cynical to ever see publication. The fact that it kicks off with an omniscient viewpoint is also a major weakness. Have a read and decide for yourself.

Surveillance :: Yet another thriller that I abandoned. In this one, a covert unit of the Special Branch (Malaysia's Gestapo) carries out surveillance to gather dirt on an important figure. However, I found the premise too sordid and misogynistic. It just didn't seem plausible. Then several months after I wrote this, Malaysian Health Minister Chua Soi Lek was forced to resign under circumstances remarkably similar to my story. Truth truly is stranger than fiction.

Homecoming :: A tale with a high concept. A writer returns home from abroad, expecting to see his family at the airport. But what he gets instead is the Special Branch waiting for him. This one had the potential to be a suspenseful story in the vein of Six Days of the Condor. However, I found myself questioning the first-person viewpoint. If the protagonist is narrating the story, what's to stop him from lying or exaggerating? I couldn't get past it, and I was betting my readers wouldn't either.