In this episode of Before We Get There, host Nicholas Braman talks to Malaysian author and artist Erica Eng about her inspiring journey in the world of art and storytelling. Erica shares how her love for art began with book illustrations and developed through influences like Little House on the Prairie and Roald Dahl’s works. She discusses her creative process, the emotional impact of her experiences, and the journey of writing her Eisner Award-winning book Fried Rice. Erica also delves into her struggles and triumphs, from balancing a full-time animation career with personal projects to navigating life’s challenges while staying driven by faith and family support.
Erica’s links:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paprikapeprica/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/paprikapeprica
Buy Fried Rice (SG): https://sg.shp.ee/2Ye1fzT
Podcast links:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2h9gsrWKH9C1KY1OzR12kr?si=2a4d19970632465f
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/before-we-get-there/id1775182252
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beforewegettherepodcast/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/nicholasbraman
Website: https://nicholasbraman.com/before-we-get-there-podcast/
00:00 Meet Erica Eng: Malaysian Author and Artist
01:22 Falling in Love with Art
03:24 Creating Fried Rice: Inspiration and Process
07:18 Handling Rejection and Moving Forward
12:09 Publishing Journey and Winning the Eisner Award
19:42 Balancing Career and Personal Projects
24:48 Creative Process and Inspirations
28:53 TEDx Talk and Overcoming Vulnerability
37:00 Future Aspirations and Closing Remarks
Nicholas Braman: Welcome to Before We Get There, the podcast where we explore people’s journeys, how they got to where they are, what keeps them pushing forward, and where they eventually want to get to. I’m your host, Nicholas Braman.
And today, I’m joined by Erica Eng. Erica is a Malaysian author and artist whose first book, Fried Rice, won a prestigious Eisner Award. We discuss her creative process, how she fell in love with art, which authors and illustrators she looks up to, how she comes up with ideas, what to do about putting out work she isn’t proud of, and much more.
Enjoy the show. Hi, Erica. Thanks so much for joining me today.
Erica Eng: Thank you so much for having me.
Nicholas Braman: So I wanted to start off with and start at the very beginning and ask you how you fell in love with art.
Erica Eng: I was really young. I loved looking at book illustrations and that’s how I really fell in love with art.
Guys Williams who did the Little House on the Prairie books, so I loved his drawings, and then because I loved Roald Dahl, so I fell in love with Quentin Blake’s illustrations as well. And then my sister got me this giant book, like a collection of Roald Dahl’s stories, and I think I might have been, I forgot how old I was, but I was in primary school, and that book had all of Roald Dahl’s short stories and poetry.
that had been illustrated by different illustrators. So I really fell in love with that book. And I would say that my first exposure to art was through books. And I fell in love with Helen Oxenberry. And then when I went to high school, I found out about animation. Then I started reading more about animation and started to fall in love with the art behind animation as well.
Nicholas Braman: That’s cool. And you’ve been drawing since you were very young as well, right?
Erica Eng: Yes, uh, my parents say that They first remembered me drawing when I was around two years old, with a pencil. Yeah, that was one of my favorite hobbies, I would just draw and draw for hours. And it continued until high school, that’s when I started becoming more serious about it.
And then, I started to study it more, take art history lessons online, and also watch art tutorials, like how do I draw people. Realistically, and became more serious about art in high school, around 15 years old.
Nicholas Braman: That’s really cool. So let’s talk about your book. I just finished it earlier last week. And I, first of all, I really love it.
It’s a really beautiful book. So congratulations on that. And you’ve shared how the character in the book, Min, has some similarities with your life story. Um, can you share about how you got started writing this comic? And, um, did you know the whole story from the start or did you develop it as you went?
Erica Eng: So when I was, I, I wanted to write a story for a long time and I was in college. So I was writing like bits and pieces of different stories while I was in college. And during the final year of college, I was deciding, like, do I want to work or do I want to further my studies? And I decided that, okay, I want to have a degree because ultimately I still wanted to work overseas and I studied for a diploma locally in Malaysia.
So I was like, okay, let’s start applying for a degree program. So I was going, looking at different schools in the UK and also in the US and considering other universities. So as I was going through that process, it reminded me of when I was in high school and applied to CalArts, which was my dream school at the time.
So because of that, like all these memories started coming up and I was like thinking about a time of how much I idealized this journey of becoming an artist and going to a particular school and being successful in a particular way and at the same time I had the opportunity to this tension in myself of I want to leave Malaysia and I want to leave my family.
And like, I was very angsty. And I thought that there was a story there of being, wanting to become my own person and wanting to become an artist. And I remember this specific memory of being at my aunt’s house for Chinese New Year and checking my email to see if I’d gotten the acceptance letter. But in the end, if you read the story.
Even though that it was not an acceptance letter, it was a rejection letter. That memory was very significant emotionally, and it still held a lot of, uh, emotional significance, you know, when I remembered it. So I felt like this is a good starting point for writing a story. This one feels, feels like there’s something there, right?
And all the other stories that I was writing didn’t feel like they were going anywhere. So I was like, okay, maybe I’ll just write a story that’s really close to my own experience. Because it felt the most, like, the most straightforward, honestly. Felt like the most obvious decision. And I didn’t really know how it was gonna go.
I would write different scenes, and usually it would be like, conversations between characters. No, I write those out. And in the end, I would rearrange scenes according to how I felt like the story should flow. And then I’d delete certain scenes if it felt unnecessary and add some more in if it felt like, Oh, this is moving too fast.
I need more. I need another scene in here. And that was how I write it. And I wrote, I think I finished writing the first act, like the first chapter before I began drawing the pages. And then I finished writing the last half of the book while I was drawing the comic.
Nicholas Braman: Wow, so, in the book, when that rejection email comes, The character is like quite relaxed and it doesn’t, she’s not like very start crying or very emotional about it. What she does, she just seems to carry on and then with her parents started making other plans. Was that the same for you or how was your feeling when you got that letter?
I
Erica Eng: think, can’t really remember how it was like from the outside. I don’t think I was very expressive because. I was at my aunt’s house, it was Chinese New Year, there were lots of people around. So there really wasn’t a lot of time for me to process that internally. But I remember feeling quite disappointed.
And, oh, maybe I wasn’t, like, I don’t know if I wasn’t good enough for that school. Like, why wasn’t I good enough? If I’m not good enough for CalArts, then maybe I can’t make it in this industry. I remember something my sister said, she was like, at least you apply. You gotta be proud of, of yourself for doing that?
Yeah, I think I just kept carrying on after that. I was like, okay, what’s next? I gotta apply to other places.
Nicholas Braman: So then you ended up going to school, was it in Malaysia? Eventually. And you chose animation as you shared earlier, because you thought it could be a, a more solid career path along with doing your own projects?
I think in, again, in the book. The character is quite very family oriented and always around with her, as you said, her aunt and her parents. Were your parents very supportive of your career path?
Erica Eng: Yes, they were because, um, Um, they saw how driven I was about it. And I was hardworking in school as well. Cause I was like, mom and dad, I’m not doing this.
I’m not choosing art cause I’m lazy. Like I can work hard. So if I choose something, I’m going to work hard at it. So I was clear with them about that. And thankfully, my parents are very kind and supportive people. And they were like, you know, if this is what you want to do, we’re going to support you in that.
Um, Yeah, and I also have a similar background with, I rotate, so I share that with Min that I’m very close to my family, to my extended family as well. Um, and my mom’s family especially, they play a huge role in my life. Like I have, I think I have, how many aunts do I have? Seven, six aunts. I have six aunts.
And, uh, so growing up with a big extended family, especially celebrating Chinese New Year together is like the big thing in my life.
Nicholas Braman: That’s cool. One thing that I really liked about the book is that you share a lot about Malaysia and everyday scenes of getting breakfast and going to the store. Do you think that you did that because that’s what you’re familiar with?
Or was there also a part of wanting to share about this kind of everyday everyday kind of activities that people have in Malaysia.
Erica Eng: I think it was quite a conscious decision to do that. My taste in stories tends to veer realistic. So I love Eric Romer, who’s a French, who was a French director and he makes very slice of life movies.
I also love, like, as I mentioned, the little, little house and a Perry books and rolled out. So all of those writers have that in common where they will write very closely to their, uh, so the kind of lifestyle that they are familiar with. So it would, it just made sense for me to write that kind of story ’cause my tastes are in that area.
I like these kinds of stories. And I also liked reading lats mat some a lot. I was hungry for a story that would show a more modern take on Malaysian life, how life is now in Malaysia, like not just how it was like in the 70s when Lard wrote his books. Cause I felt like there was this missing gap. Yeah.
Nicholas Braman: And so as you were writing and illustrating the book, uh, were you sharing it as you wrote it or was it all complete before it was public?
Erica Eng: I was posting it online as a web comic, which was how it won an Eisner and how I gained recognition for it. But it wasn’t very well known. Even after the Eisner, I think it had some readers and some people would come up to me and do like, Oh, I loved it.
Reading a webcomic in 2020, those people are very few because not a lot of people knew about it. And I didn’t share it, like I didn’t share the story with anyone else. I just posted it online and wrote it in my room and that was it.
Nicholas Braman: And so were you, did you feel like you were getting any feedback? Were people leaving comments?
Or could you see the number of readers going up as you were going? I
Erica Eng: don’t remember how many followers I had on the site. It wasn’t a lot though. I would say it’s not more than 200 or 100. Even after the awards. I realized that when I started posting art from the comic, I would get, I was getting more attention.
And not just from regular people, but from people like artists I admired. And they said, oh yo, this is really good. And it seemed to resonate in a way that my previous stuff hadn’t. So I knew that I was going in the right direction.
Nicholas Braman: Was, were there, when you submitted it for the award, you, I think you shared somewhere else that you weren’t really, you didn’t have high expectations.
Uh, and in contrast to your university application, you got some good news back for the ISD award.
Erica Eng: When I submitted it, I only had, I think, 30 something pages. So I was like, there’s no way they’re going to consider me. There’s no way I could win. And when I won, I got an email telling me that I won before the actual live stream of the award show because it was COVID.
So it was just live stream on YouTube. There was no like actual award show, like in person. So I got an email telling me beforehand that I had won. And it was like early in the morning, the first thing I saw when I woke up and I I was like screaming. So I went to my parents room with my sister and I was like, I’m there, I won, I actually won it.
And then my, we started praying, got on our knees and started praying. And we felt very strongly in our spirits, like my mom and I, especially, that this is from God and. This is like God showing you a way, a path into your future. Like this is where he wants you to go. And I didn’t think it was possible before to make a living from books.
I’d always wanted to, loved books growing up, but I just thought that this is something that maybe in the future, after I have a more established career and people respect me, then I can do this. I didn’t know that I could do it so early.
Nicholas Braman: And so at that time, were you still in school?
Erica Eng: Yes, I was still studying for my degree, which was how I had the time to.
Make the book because I would study I was in school. I didn’t have a full time job then.
Nicholas Braman: Well, obviously can congratulations and So after that, I think you’ve been featured in some media and been telling more people about your book So is that when you decided to do the print version of it or how did that happen?
Erica Eng: Actually, even before I was writing the book I was looking at ways to publish a comic book and I was researching like, How do you get a comic book published? And then it was taking too long. So I was like, you know what? Scratch that. I’m just gonna write my book and figure it out after it’s done. But after I got the Eisner award, I was like, Maybe I can find an interested publisher now.
So I started emailing agents. I was like, Hey, please represent me, blah, blah, blah. And nobody, there were no takers. I was like, okay, put that on pause. And I felt like God was telling me, just trust me, I’ll see it through. So in 2022, I finished the webcomic and I was like, okay, I have to really find someone now.
And I was about to sign with a local publisher until I got an email from Chi Ming Boy. Who’s a Malaysian artist and self published author, quite successful one. So he emailed me and he was like, do you have a publisher yet? Because I may have, I’m starting something and maybe you can, maybe you can be my, one of my first artists that I deal with.
So he was like, essentially acting as an agent with distributors. And then, but it’s a self published model. So it’s, I’m self published, but I work with Boyi to arrange for events and to help me manage that I don’t have no clue about marketing and distribution. And then I also work with a distributor. an official distributor, Garabudaya.
So that, in the end, was what I ended up doing. I was like, okay, if this works, then great. If it doesn’t work, then it’s fine. It’s my first book. I learned. And I also get to own all my IP in the process, which is great. That’s what I did. And then that was at the start of 2023, when I signed with Boii. And then it took one year before I could actually release, launch the book.
Nicholas Braman: Wow, so it sounded like in the end the timing worked out just perfectly for you. So then, what was it like once you got the first book in your hands and you got to open it and see your drawings in physical form?
Erica Eng: I don’t want to, I want to say it was underwhelming because I’d been working on it for so long.
And the layout, I had to learn to do, to use InDesign, and it was a beast. I was like, I hate this so much, and I had to arrange all the page numberings. And if you got the first edition of the book, some parts of the page numbering, I forgot what pages they were, but Some of them were bigger and that was a mistake.
So I had to fix it in the second edition. So when I got the first book, I was like looking for mistakes. I watch, what do I have to fix the next time? Yeah. But it’s very, it’s cool to see my book in the hands of other people because that’s what I always imagined the comic to be. on the shelf in someone’s home.
That was the ultimate goal for me. So that’s really cool. But now that I have the book out, for me now the task is, okay, how do I make it better? What do I have to fix in the next edition?
Nicholas Braman: So a lot of practical stuff. I’m really glad that I got the physical version and I have a two, almost two and a half year old daughter, so she’s not quite old enough to enjoy it now.
But I can’t wait until she’s a little bit older and I can share the book with her and we can read it together. So I also wanted to talk to you about after, so you were writing the web comic and then doing the publishing and everything while you were in school, but now you’ve graduated and you’ve started your career in animation, but you’re still doing your own projects on the side and obviously promoting the book and that sort of thing as well.
So what’s it like for you? How do you balance both your full time job and your side projects?
Erica Eng: For the past 2023 to 2024. I almost didn’t work on my comic, on my personal projects at all. I was applying to jobs in 2023 and figuring out what I wanted to do. In 2024, I was promoting my book and also had a lot of things happen in my family.
My sister got married, my grandma passed away, and she was living with us. So there were lots of things that were happening. So all of those things, Like I was like drowning, like trying to do my day job and deadlines on client projects, do like life stuff and I would say that I haven’t done a good job of balancing my own creative projects for the past two years.
And I was filled with a frenetic, anxious energy throughout the whole year and not knowing what I wanted to do. Not knowing even if I. Wanted to keep writing, to be honest, but then in December, we did a missions trip to Sarawak as a family. We went to Sarawak and did ministry together and I had to preach a message one night.
I was like, okay, I have to write a message and I knew that, knew the text that I had to preach from Isaiah 50 verse 11. I was like, okay, Isaiah 50 But the whole process of writing that sermon took me like five hours and I was crying and praying through it the whole time. But I really felt a breakthrough at the end of the day.
It was quite interesting, the whole thing that happened at that house church that I went to, Because when I went there and I preached a message and people came up to accept Jesus and we prayed for them. And then after that, I went to pray for a lady and her mom who was sick. And then after that, we had some biscuits and tea and then we left out.
And on the drive back, I was like, yay, great ministry. People came to know God and successful, successful day of ministry. Okay, now I can go back and sleep because I was so tired. And then my family was like, Yeah. Did you notice the smell in that longhouse when we were there? Did you notice the smell of alcohol and cigarettes?
And I was like, what smell? And they were like, people there were drunk. A lot of people there were drunk the whole time. And I was like, I didn’t even notice. And I realized that God had blocked my physical senses. I didn’t smell anything. And when I was looking at these people, all I could see was that. Wow, these are lovely people.
They’re so sweet and kind and I love them. But there were so many things that were so clear to the naked eye and the nose, but had been completely invisible to me because of what God had wanted me to do in that place. And after that, like, it felt so significant to me because I knew that God is the one guiding me.
And even though I.
like physical circumstances may look a certain way, appear a certain way to me. I may be stressed out and anxious about the things that are happening around me. But I know that if I’m trusting God and being led by the Spirit, then I don’t have anything to worry about because He will accomplish what He needs to accomplish through me.
So that was really significant. And it also helped me trust God in the writing process as well. And since then, I’ve been able to write. Like, it just broke through my writer’s block for some reason after that. So I’ve been able to get back to writing and I’ve been writing every day and still using the same process that I use for Fried Rice, which is I write scenes and then figure out, rearrange them, edit stuff out and all that jazz.
So I feel really optimistic about the new year and being more consistent with my writing and thankfully now with the whole tour for Fried Rice mostly and ending. I will have more time to write.
Nicholas Braman: Thanks for sharing that story. And I’m sure people will be glad that you are back to writing and creating.
But I’m not an artist. I wanted to ask more about that process because I didn’t realize that you write the scene first and then you illustrate it afterwards. Is that kind of the normal procedure?
Erica Eng: Yes, that’s usually what happens in comics. You’ll have a script and then People will keep editing down the line if the script doesn’t suit the drawings or if they find, like, um, Like for me, if I will write, because I’m both the artist and the writer, I’ll write based on what I think will look good as well.
Because sometimes something looks nice in the script written down. But if you want to draw it, it’s boring, it doesn’t look nice, and you have to think about does this scene have visual appeal as well, because it’s a visual medium of storytelling. So, I would write the script, and then I thumbnail it, so I make a rough sketch.
And when I was working on Fried Rice, I would thumbnail it page by page. But sometimes if there is a sequence, Of pages where the flow really matters, you, you want it to, like, maybe it’s a conversation that carries on for five, six pages, then I’ll thumbnail it in that, like in a batch of five to six pages, see whether it flows right, and then I’ll draw it and then paint it in Photoshop, letter it and export it.
Nicholas Braman: I’m curious about how you come up with your ideas. Yes. Because you shared a little bit for, for fried rice, but on, you have lots of other projects and shorter projects, we’ve talked to some video producers and other creative people on the podcast, even so many of the arts, even being a chef or having a restaurant have this creative process of where you get your ideas from, how does that work for you?
Erica Eng: A lot of it stems from memories that would surface. And if I can’t not think about something, I’m like, okay, I think I should use this. And I feel like that’s how I would say that writing stories is a form of therapy for me. So writing out my memories and kind of processing them and reframing them in a certain way is really helpful.
And I think that’s how God speaks to me as well in bringing up memories from the past. I don’t know how, I don’t know why that is, but It would be like, that’s a huge part of my inspiration is I’ll think of something that happened in the past or a conversation, something that someone said, and if it had an emotional weight to it, then I would want to write about it.
And then I’m very much inspired by
sometimes even something I’ll see in a dream. I have very vivid dreams. I dreamt of it, had recurring dreams of a tiger in a forest. So in my new comic, I drew the beginning, there’s a tiger there and then it’s just something to just catch my fancy. I love cooking and I love food. I like to draw food in my stories.
Nicholas Braman: I can tell that was one of the things I also really liked about the book is just for background. I’m, I’ve been in Singapore for 10 years, but I’m actually American. But one of the things that I love most about living here is the food. And I know we have the Malaysia and Singapore rivalry with different dishes, but it was great to see in the book.
I think there was youtiao and dumplings and kaya toast and all these really great local foods that you put into the comic. Another topic I wanted to discuss with you is that you recently spoke at a TEDx event. I’m also involved with TEDx for Singapore. So we just had our annual event in December. We had a theme called Telling Time.
So we had, I think, ten speakers from various backgrounds. Quite a few of them were talking about heritage. And other aspects of time, we had a doctor who was talking about longevity and that people are going to be living to 120 soon. So what does that look, what does that make our lives look like? Our career paths, retirement, all of that’s going to shift as humans start living longer.
But how was it being on stage and then watching the video? It’s up on YouTube now. I’ll put the link in the show notes, but how did you feel seeing yourself on the stage?
Erica Eng: I didn’t watch the video. I can’t bring myself to watch it.
When I got there, uh, It’s a very girl thing. I planned my outfit for the day. I was like, this is what I’m gonna wear. And that was mostly what I was thinking about, like looking forward to wearing the outfit and matching my nails to the tan color, like red. I got red nails. And then, yeah, the whole thing was really fun.
I enjoyed it because I was already prepared with my talk and, and I got to talk to some of the students there. It was really fun because it took place in a university. So a lot of the people there were young.
Nicholas Braman: So you not bringing, being able to bring yourself to, to watch the recording brings me back to another thing I wanted to ask about your art and putting stuff out online.
Are there times when you finish something, you have an idea, and you complete it, that you post it, but you don’t put it up, you think it’s not good enough?
Erica Eng: I wrote this short sci fi story for the Philippines International Comic Festival because they published an anthology. And so I submitted a brand new comic for them, even though I didn’t need to.
They were like, you can I submitted an existing comic to them and they accepted it. But afterwards I was like, actually, I want to write something new. So I did, and I’ve not read it since. In fact, I feel quite embarrassed to share it. So it only exists in the anthology. But yes, I do that quite a lot with drawings or stories.
I think it happens to every artist where you feel like. You feel a bit vulnerable and anxious about sharing a part of yourself that you feel like is not very, not very appealing or not fully formed with other people. I think I just have to get over that fear and the fear of people expecting too much or I guess the fear of not meeting expectations.
because I really do love writing and if I didn’t do it because of what I was afraid people would think of me then it would be such a shame.
Nicholas Braman: Do you feel like you’ve set the bar for yourself very high winning the Eisner award and getting recognized for your first book? Do you think that will make it more difficult for for you to feel your next works are are worthy of your name and your reputation now?
Erica Eng: I’m just focusing on, I don’t think it’s my job to worry about that actually, because I think that would just make me self conscious and unable to write actually good stuff because I’ll be writing for, writing for a purpose that is not good. So now I’m focusing on writing stuff that I think is good and, and according to my taste.
Also, I think, uh, There’s a healthy, healthy level of comparison. I do want to be inspired by people who do stuff better than me. So I study works by other artists and think about how my work measures up to theirs. And I’m not thinking about the award.
Nicholas Braman: I think that’s, that’s probably healthy, more healthy.
Um, but speaking of, of comparison, because I think with anything artistic, maybe it’s just because I’m not in the field, but to me, it seems hard to, to compare because everything is, is different, right? And it’s also there’s personal taste of the reader involved and all of that sort of thing. When you say that you’re comparing your work to other people’s work, what does that mean to you and how do you do it?
Erica Eng: It’s mostly a matter of knowing my tastes. And having a clear vision for what I like, because some, I’m trying to think of an example, because I don’t want to shade anyone unintentionally. Yeah,
Nicholas Braman: maybe we can take a hypothetical work by.
Erica Eng: Okay, hypothetical work. I was watching a lot of movies in December, because my uncle came over from the States and he’s a movie nut.
So he’s, you gotta watch this and this and this. So we’re watching movies. And I liked some of them. Others I felt were objectively funny, objectively good, but were not to my taste, were not the kind of stories that I wanted to tell. And then recently I re watched Licorice Pizza by Paul Thomas Anderson, who is one of my favorite directors.
And I was just like, in awe of the way that he paces his shots and paces his films and the way that he writes dialogue and the way that he lights his scenes. And the cinematography and everything. And I was thinking like, this is where I want to be. And this is the, this is what I resonate with. And it helped me have clarity on the story that I wanted to write as well.
Because for a while, I was so confused about the tone that I wanted to set. Should I make it funny? Should I make it loud? And should I make it over the top? And then somehow, like, just seeing that sequence from Flickery’s Pizza when he gets arrested by the police and the girl is running alongside the police car and banging the window and then he gets handcuffed to the bench.
Like, I don’t know why that whole sequence just stood out to me. The whole pacing of it felt so real. And I was like, you don’t need to be over the top too. It would feel, um, like sometimes I think storytellers try to manipulate a feeling out of you by portraying something larger than life. I don’t think that’s necessary.
You can actually tell something quite realistically and still evoke an emotional response. And it doesn’t feel forced because it feels like you’re actually watching it unfold in front of you. And if you care about the characters, then you feel for them. And I was thinking like, wow, this movie really does a good job at that.
And that’s what I want to do.
Nicholas Braman: That’s cool. Yeah, I think that definitely resonates from your book that as you mentioned, just the feeling that it comes across when you read it. So I always like to ask people, as usually towards the end of the interview, What? success will look like for you if let’s say five years down the road we talk again and you’re looking back at what’s happened from now to then.
What are some things that could be on, come up during a conversation that would make you feel like you’ve had a successful few years?
Erica Eng: I suppose in five years I would like to have finished a book that I’m writing and have it published. That would be really nice. Also, I’m getting a little bit of Cabin Fever staying in my town, my hometown.
So I would like to have a change of scene scenery actually in five years. And then I don’t know if I’ll still be working in animation. Really depends on how things pan out in the publishing side of my career. Um, but I wouldn’t mind, honestly, I do working as an animator. Um, but it takes away time from my creative projects.
So I guess those two things, having more books out, plural if possible, but knowing me, it’ll probably just be one. And then maybe not staying in the same place, but I don’t know how feasible that would be.
Nicholas Braman: Any particular places that are on your mind? Is it still California or somewhere closer to home, like Singapore or KL?
Erica Eng: I don’t know, honestly. I have no idea. I loved Norway when I visited. And I had so dreams about Norway a lot. But I don’t know if it is probably just like an idealized version of Norway that I have in my mind that I want to move to. Yeah, I don’t know where.
Nicholas Braman: I was in Norway a long time ago. It’s definitely a beautiful place, but it’d be quite a stark change from
Erica Eng: Yes.
Nicholas Braman: Thank you again so much for being here with me. Where can people find you online and see your work and where can people buy your book?
Erica Eng: If you’re in Singapore, I think City Book Room has my books. Um, if you’re in Malaysia, you can buy it directly from Gorabudaya or Kinokuniya. I think Popular has it. Some branches of Popular.
Lit Books, Elite, Tsutaya. And you can find me on Instagram Facebook and Twitter. Or X now. And I also have a website, erikaing. nicepage. io.
Nicholas Braman: Okay, great. We’ll put some links in the show notes and I actually bought it from Shopee. So I hope that was authorized.
Erica Eng: Delivery.
Nicholas Braman: Okay, great. You can get it delivered in Singapore if you’re in Singapore on Shopee and we’ll put a link to webpage more of her work and learn more about it in the show notes.
Thanks again for joining us today. It was great to talk to you.
Erica Eng: Thank you so much for having me, Nicholas. It’s been a pleasure.
Nicholas Braman: All right, we’ll talk again soon.