When I had finished writing the manuscript of my thriller novel, Smokescreen, I made the mistake of giving it to a relative of mine to read. Unfortunately, he did not share my enthusiasm about many things. “Far-fetched,” he said, particularly the idea of a secret cave underneath the island of Singapore.
I was bothered by the comment, but after a day of brooding, I realized that the opinion of one person, two, three or even five million should not matter or get in the way of my imagination. So I kept the cave scene. And I was thankful that I trusted my gut feeling.
A few months down the road, The Straits Times, the island’s daily newspaper, ran a front page story about a rock cavern being built in the ground off a smaller island on the western coast of Singapore. The Jurong Cavern will be the first underground oil storage facility. In fact, it is much more deeper than I had even imagined.
While my cave stored something else in the story (needless to say why I can’t tell you more …), I scanned the newspaper article and emailed it to this relative of mine, just to make sure he did not miss the story. Well, guess who paid for dinner one evening?
[Photo: Glenn Van Zutphen]
