Eurasian pens romantic thriller

First book: Peter showing his debut novel ‘The Eurasians’.

KOTA KINABALU: For more than a decade Donald Peter sorted through thousands of books, reading and cataloguing them.

And now, the 55-year-old librarian-turned-businessman has become an author.

He has penned a romance-thriller novel based in his native Sabah, weaving in its natural beauty and the Eurasian community in the state.

His debut novel titled The Eurasians tells the story of a British military officer who was despatched to Sabah on a secret mission during the height of Indonesia’s confrontation with Malaysia in the 1960s. Injured in a battle, he eventually settles down in Sabah and marries a local.

The 300-page book tells of his life and tribulations in the state after the formation of Malaysia.

Peter, a native of Kota Kinabalu, is the great-grandson of a Scottish planter who came to North Borneo as Sabah was known in the late 1800s.

“I wanted to express what Sabah is all about, how we have been blessed with a pristine environment that is constantly under threat,” he said.

He said the story and characters came largely from his imagination, but added they were also inspired by his personal experiences as well as those of his family.

“There were a few details which I read in the newspaper that I incorporated into the story,” said Peter.

Many years ago he read a story about the mother of a murdered girl who dressed her daughter in a red dress and placed a mirror on the body in the belief that her ghost would haunt the murderer.

“It’s these nitty-gritty details that piqued my interest and so I used them in the story,” he added.

Peter began writing the novel in 2006 and finished it in just three months but was unable to find an editor or suitable publisher for a decade.

So he began blogging about his passion, travelling and golfing around Sabah (borneogl.blogspot.com), and that was noticed by someone in the Singapore-based Partridge Publishing, under Penguin Random House.

“When they suggested I write a book about what I had been blogging, I told them about the manuscript and everything just took over from there,” Peter added.

Partridge Publishing has also produced a trailer for it (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UVUUItg6vs).

The book was launched on Oct 5.