The first book he read as a child, he recalls, was Michael Crichton’s “The Lost World”. It was probably an old book: Sario remembers the cover being torn. Yet this “Lost World” proved to be a gateway to him to the exciting world of writing.
“I didn’t know writing was a job at the time! I just thought, wow, this guy has such a cool job, getting to write about dinosaurs. It led me to try picking up other books later, such as those by Sidney Sheldon and Stephen King,” the jovial Sario, 29, told FMT Lifestyle.
This encounter let Sario down the path to becoming an author, and this year, he published his debut novel. No, it’s not about dinosaurs: instead, it’s about murders in a seaside Sabah town. Not a lost world, but “Big Trouble in Little Paradise.”
Sario’s crime novel beat about eight other entries to emerge the winner of publisher Fixi Novo’s 3rd Malaysian Novel Contest.
“The writer successfully explores the dark side of tourism and development through this clever whodunnit. The manuscript was at times darkly funny with the characters sometimes struggling with very recognisable problems,” reads the citation from judges Jérôme Bouchard and Devina Sivagurunathan about Sario’s novel.
The interview with Sario takes place at a coffee shop in a shopping mall here: an extremely fitting venue, as he wrote much of his crime novel here.
“I used to work at a company just across the road. I would accompany my colleague here, who would come here and work on her Masters. So what was I going to do in the meantime? I thought I might as well write my book,” said Sario, who hails from Kota Kinabalu but has been based in Kuala Lumpur for the last seven years.
“Big Trouble in Little Paradise” centres around Wesley Lawrence Moysin, a former news reporter who returns to his hometown in Sabah after a traumatic incident. He ends up retreating to Darat Kumut, an idyllic seaside town famous for its seafood and glitzy casino resort.
Things take a sour turn after Wesley forms a rivalry with the abrasive Tommy Asandu, a local pariah: things only get worse after Tommy is suddenly discovered dead. More corpses are discovered, and Wesley becomes the prime suspect. The poor man must investigate the crime and discover the true killer, with the help of the lovely Delilah from the local convenience store.
“I really love small towns- you can blame Stephen King for that!” laughed Sario. “Many of the towns in Sabah are close to the sea, so I’ve wanted to write something with that setting.”
He added that reading “The Searcher”, a 2020 book by Irish-American author Tana French, proved instrumental in the crafting of his novel.
Sario said winning the competition and getting the novel published had been a poignant experience for him. He had submitted manuscripts to publishing houses several times before, but was rejected every time. This had made him doubtful if he would ever become a published author.
He decided to try his luck at the competition: oddly, he only learnt news of his win from his friend, a local Bookstagrammer.
“I blanked out. I think I cried. I mean, I had previously had a few short stories published, but a novel? It was hard to believe. I was so thankful, there was this sense of validation that all your hard work had some meaning to it,” Sario said.
The author has many other irons in the fire: this includes a potential sequel to “Big Trouble in Little Paradise”. As the public waits for those, Sario hopes readers will enjoy reading his novel.
“It’s a crime story, but it’s also a story about someone trying to find their way back. And the process of writing was also about me trying to remind myself that I was a writer. And what had happened in the years before, I had to get over,” Sario concluded.
“Writing a novel is never an easy job. But having it finished, and seeing your work in print … the feeling is indescribable.”
‘‘Big Trouble in Little Paradise’ is available at all major bookstores.