The Earth Spirit's Favorite Anecdote — Author's Notes

 

I wrote the first draft of this story when I was 19. It only got published quite a while later. At the time I cited as inspiration: Legolas & Gimli, "When are you going back?", Russell Lee's Singapore Ghost Stories, that one excellent seafood restaurant in Selayang. Which means:

The forest spirit is Legolas and the earth spirit is Gimli. (Kind of. The earth spirit is female. I don't know if that's obvious to readers.) I've always loved the story of Legolas and Gimli, which is a story of racists who learn better and make friends.

Malaysians use "back" in a different sense from other English speakers. It's one of the more subtle distinctions between Manglish and "standard" English, and one I enjoy.

Like everyone else I used to read Russell Lee's Singapore Ghost Stories under my desk at school. They're trashy purported non-fiction of the "here is a totally true story of this one time my cousin-in-law saw a pontianak" type. They have a lot of stories about local hantu, which is a large part of their appeal — as everyone knows Asian ghosts are about a million times scarier than Western ghosts.

I don't remember what the seafood restaurant has to do with anything at all, though the food was good.

 

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