Bi Ming

Author’s Preface

Writing novels is hardly the most lucrative profession these days. My friends often laugh at me for coming home exhausted after a ten-hour working day, only to keep writing until the early hours—all for what they consider a trivial sum of money. Is it worth it?

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“Yes.”

 

Someone at work once told me that if I wanted to keep writing novels, I would have to split my royalties with the company or donate them all to charity, because the company did not allow employees to take on a second job. How did I feel about that?

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All I could do was smile bitterly.

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So why did I carry on? Why leave myself only two or three hours of sleep each night, then drag my exhausted body back to work and force a smile? On holidays and after work, other people went out to enjoy themselves or sing karaoke. I stayed at home alone, writing and writing. What was it all for?

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“Because I love it. I love seeing the satisfaction on readers’ faces as they hold my novels. And I love it even more when someone tells me online that they finished a book in no time and found something meaningful in the story.”

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Even now, many people cannot understand why I gave up a steady job to pursue a dream. Can a dream really matter that much?

“Yes.”

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Those who have never had a dream of their own have no right to judge those pursuing one. We each treasure different things in life.

I have never been a writer crowned with the glory of literary awards, nor a familiar name with a permanent place on the bestseller lists. I am simply someone who loves writing, loves writing thrillers, and loves encouraging creative work.

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To have readers enjoy my books is a stroke of luck, and I thank you all. To have my novels succeed and sell well is an even greater blessing, and I am grateful. To become friends with readers in the real world through my words and stories is the greatest good fortune of all.

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If, one day, my novels can support my whole family, that will be the greatest additional gift life could give me.

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Finally, I must thank the third champion of my writing journey: 明日工作室. Without them, this novel would not be in your hands today. I hope you enjoy Pact of the Unborn, the second book in the 靈異出版社 series, and discover the meaning I hoped to convey through it.

I hope that, before long, we will meet at reader gatherings in different parts of the world. Until then, the internet will remain our only means of keeping in touch.

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We will meet again in my next novel. Thank you for giving me the energy to keep writing.

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Jones Tam · Veteran Hong Kong Media Professional

Benny B.M.’s prose has always been clear and precise. Many of his scenes are so vividly drawn that the words alone make it easy to picture what is happening. The effect is gripping and unsettling, drawing readers into the story to experience, alongside the characters, a succession of scenes where reality and illusion meet.

Pact of the Unborn also moves at a brisk pace. There are no complicated subplots or contrived twists to distract us, allowing us to concentrate on the clues surrounding the pact. I found myself ready to turn each page before I had even finished reading it.

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The story’s span across several decades deserves particular attention. Between the lines, we discover different forms of human affection and different faces of human nature. More significantly, against a historical backdrop where fact and fiction blur, the novel reveals the changing attitudes of three generations in Hong Kong.

The shared drive to get ahead during the economic take-off of the 1960s and 1970s gives way to a desire for a quiet, untroubled life amid the economic stability of the 1980s, and then to the helplessness felt by today’s younger generation. Whether deliberately or otherwise, these attitudes permeate the story.

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Throughout the book, Benny also holds firmly to the belief that young people should never be dismissed simply because they are poor. This gives the horror novel another layer of meaning—and another reason to reflect.

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Sunny Wong · Manager of Hong Kong’s 綠野仙蹤 Bookshop

Benny B.M.’s novels reward slow reading. Their effect takes time to reveal itself.

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To describe his work using today’s fashionable language—to praise its lavish descriptions or spectacular imagery—would not feel entirely honest. So let us put that aside. The truth is that Benny has always written with care and sincerity. The essence of his writing lies in its simplicity.

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Another distinctive feature of his horror fiction is that it does more than tell a story. Beneath the narrative, he quietly expresses views on—and criticism of—the realities of everyday life. That is a rare quality in fiction written primarily for entertainment.

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陳夏民 · Editor-in-Chief of Taiwan’s 逗點文創結社

The atmosphere of horror in Benny B.M.’s 靈異出版社 series differs from that of comparable Western or Japanese works. It has an unmistakably Hong Kong flavour.

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Reading the series, I found the use of a publishing house as its central premise wonderfully inventive. At the same time, I sensed the psychological pressure that hangs over a densely crowded metropolis like Hong Kong: unless you belong among the successful, you are an utter failure. There is no grey area.

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Rather than saying Benny writes about ghosts, I would say he writes about the demons within us. Every story concerns people standing at the edge of a cliff, about to be blown off—or already falling. They would trade everything bound up in their love and hatred for one chance to turn their lives around. To rise again. To rise again. To rise again.

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That obsession is terrifying.

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After reading these two books, scenes from the Hong Kong television drama 《義不容情》, which I watched as a child, returned to me. I have long forgotten the plot, but I will always remember the character played by 溫兆倫: his obsession with climbing higher, his willingness to sacrifice those around him for a chance to get ahead. It cast a shadow over my childhood.

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People are the most frightening creatures of all.

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藍醉蝶 · Reader from Taiwan

Does human greed come first? Or can every sin be blamed on the temptation of original sin?

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More than forty years ago, a young Uncle Chung went on a business trip and returned with a cursed pact. He could never have imagined that carelessly losing it would set in motion the events that followed.

At the lowest point in his life, Lee Man-ka was betrayed by both the person he loved and his closest friend. In a drunken moment, he signed a pact with the Kikuko doll. He received the wealth, fame and status he desired, but the price of that exchange was the destruction of his family.

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Ten members of his family were slaughtered. His daughter, the sole survivor, later met a gruesome death… His granddaughter was drawn into the tragedy too, fulfilling the pact’s condition: “Until your bloodline is extinguished.”

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Only after Ching Ching’s death did the ordeal finally come to a close. Over several decades, the pact had claimed more than a dozen lives—all for wealth, fame and status.

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Was it worth it?