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Non-FictionThough I've always wanted to be an author of fiction, my published writing career began in non-fiction. This was way back in 1995 when the Sri Lankan "Sunday Times" was looking around for a columnist to do a regular IT column. I was selected and the column, "The Cyberian" ran for over two years. I had to finally end it when I left Sri Lanka to go to the US. In the meantime, I had actually gone on to write a couple of more regular columns, movie reviews, interviews and news articles for "The Sunday Times". On my return to Sri Lanka in 2001, my editor at "The Sunday Times" asked me to write a new column for them. But, we never seemed to hit upon a subject that worked for both of us and so I never got around to writing a regular column for the paper again. However, I have written for several Sri Lankan magazines since then. Of these, "Adoh!" and "Travel Sri Lanka" are probably the most prominent. I wrote a regular column on gadgets for "Adoh!" while I wrote a series of articles on Sri Lankan kings and several other articles for "Travel Sri Lanka". Here are some samples of my writing through the years (please note that none of the articles have been updated since they were first written and so, some of the information might be outdated/incorrect): Travel Sri Lanka (2004 - To-date)"Travel Sri Lanka" is a magazine aimed at visitors to Sri Lanka. It strives to provide tourists and residents alike with useful information, both topical and historical, about the island. I originally wrote a series of articles for them called "Legends of Lanka" about various monarchs of the island and the legends surrounding them. Since the conclusion of that series, I've done a few other miscellaneous articles for them.
Urban Brown (2004)"Urban Brown" was a magazine aimed at the hip young urban youth of Sri Lanka. I came on board to do their leisure section but had to bow out after my first article since a sudden change in employment around the same time made things too hectic for me to continue writing for several publications at the same time. Adoh! (2003 - 2005)"Adoh!" is one of the first digest-style English magazines published in Sri Lanka. The target audience was minaly the English speaking, urban youth of Colombo. I did their gadgets column for over a year before handing it over to my wife to continue due to a heavy workload and the desire to concentrate on my fiction writing.
The Sunday Times (1995 - 1997)"The Sunday Times" is one of the longstanding and established weekend newspapers in Sri Lanka. They were the first publication to print any of my articles. My first column with them named "The Cyberian" soon evolved into a series of columns, "Off My Bookshelf" (about different genres of fiction and different authors), "The Mysterious & the Mundane" (about unexplained phenomena) and a few others. I also did some interviews (the most notable being with Sri Arthur C. Clarke), movie reviews and other articles for them. My editor at "The Sunday Times" allowed me to experiment and to try out new styles and it was there that I first tried out the style of writing I call "faction" - a blend of fact mixed with fiction :p One of the best examples of it would be "The Search", which appears below.
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