Advice to young writers: “Don’t lose your heads when flowers bloom”

The sepalika flower: A literary sensation’s namesake that has spawned a 40,000-copy phenomenon.

File Photo 

• From Wattpad sensation to print phenomenon: Cherry Minshi’s masked mystery adds intrigue to Sri Lanka’s unlikely bestseller

Sepalika is the name of a flower. It also evokes songs by Srilankan singers Karunarathna Divulgane and Jayasiri Amarasekara. And don’t get this mixed up with a teledrama called Sepalika, either, telecast many years ago. Right now, Sepalika is the name of the latest Sinhala literary sensation.

A friend called me breathlessly to inform me that a two-volume novel titled Sepalika has sold 40,000 copies. Both volumes run to more than 1000 pages. You have to buy both together, and they cost Rs. 4000. All print copies have sold out, and now they are taking pre-orders. 

When it comes to the digital world, I am sometimes quite late with the news. This was the first time I heard about Wattpad. The print version of this book came after becoming a hit on that digital platform.

For the uninitiated, Wattpad is a platform for creative fiction writing. Contributors can read, write and share original stories for free. Writers can publish their work chapter by chapter and get feedback. Genres include young adult fiction, horror, LGBTQ, romance, thriller, etc.

Most titles are in English. But now that Sepalika has hit the spotlight, there could be a flood of Sinhala titles on Wattpad.

40,000 prints of a Sinhala novel is a phenomenal figure, and amounts to a bestseller. Very few authors have gone beyond that, and that’s mostly what is unkindly called ‘Jukie literature,’ or romance novels aimed at garment factory girls. A respected, award-winning Sinhala novelist told me that, apart from an award-winning book, others rarely go beyond 2-3000 copies. Newbie writers rarely go beyond the first edition of 1000 copies.

For serious writers, both in Sinhala and English (and one assumes it’s the same for Tamil), it’s getting harder to find a publisher. Gone are the days when Lankan publishers, big and small, undertook to publish almost anything. Payments only came as a trickle, per-book sales, but authors were happy to get published without too much fuss. 

Those days are gone. Now, our publishers ask writers to cover the share of publishing, as they do in the West. Good books get rejected. Publishers are looking for juicy books that will bring in a quick return. 

In this context, the ‘Sepalika phenomenon’ can be devastating to serious writers who toil at writing complex stories. As an experienced writer, I would like to offer them some advice, but let’s leave that to the end. For now, don’t feel devastated, but read on. ‘Sepalika’ has spawned a heap of online camp followers. There are heaps of YouTube shorts, with views ranging from a few hundred to 20k or more. They have names such as ‘Her favourite book is Sepalika’ (whose favourite is not told in the video) and ‘End of Sepalika’. 

Some show the book, some show young men (more Far Eastern looking than Lankan) just running, or walking about, or lying in beds – neither mind-blowing nor mind-enhancing. So much for content creation — Camp followers can make hay, or enough for a soft drink, while the sun shines. I am not going to read Sepalika – not out of prejudice, but I fear it may not live up to expectations. Do I risk turning my back on a literary gem? I doubt if this is the new Arundhati Roy. While we can’t argue with success, we can safely bypass it. Though not a seer who can foretell the future, I can tell with authority ‘Sepalika’ will not be up there with the classic romances that won my schoolboy heart and set me on the path of writing romances myself. But does it matter? You can’t argue with money, and Sepalika now has a smell of success that can overwhelm the best of deodorants.

Literary success, like other variants of this much-desired phenomenon, spawns a bewildering variety of followers. Not everyone lining up to buy Sepalika is a teenager with a throbbing heart. A friend said that his neighbour, a sixty-something who has never read a book, discovered Sepalika on his phone and wants to buy it. People who hesitate to spend half that amount to buy a serious novel are lining up to buy it, simply out of curiosity. I know readers of serious books who won’t touch War and Peace because they find it too long (1000 to 1400 pages according to the edition), but now we have people eagerly buying a 1000+ pages teen love book.

The author’s identity adds to the air of mystery. She uses the pseudonym Cherry Minshi. It has a Far Eastern flavour. There’s nothing wrong with using a pen name – even some of the best-known names in fiction have done that. Samuel Langhorne Clemens became known as Mark Twain, Eric Blair became George Orwell, and J. K. Rowling wrote a thriller as Robert Galbraith, while Agatha Christie wrote romances under the name of Mary Westmacott and Gore Vidal wrote crime novels under a pseudonym.

Cherry Minshi’s Facebook page shows a Japanese cartoon girl with no personal bio data. The only available photo comes from the FB page of Muses Publications, her publisher. It shows a young woman standing with the publisher and a few friends or associates, wearing a mask. That only adds to the air of mystery, though Sepalika is not a thriller.

The publisher says she wore a mask in her stall during the 2025 Book Fair, protected by two bodyguards. He says that was his idea, not hers. He thought it was necessary because writers in the BL (boy’s love) genre have been threatened. There were no threats in this case, but he took precautions just in case. This looks like a publicity stunt. If writers need bodyguards at a book sale, it’s a sad state of affairs. The only writer who needed bodyguards anywhere (as far as I know) is Salman Rushdie, and that’s because the Iranian regime ordered him killed. I doubt if Sepalika warrants a fatwa against the author.

Japan has a thriving BL book industry. A BL book is a novel within the Boys’ Love genre, which focuses on romantic and/or sexual relationships between male characters. According to Wikipedia, BL books originated in Japan and are primarily created by and for a female audience, and include a wide variety of content beyond novels, such as manga, anime, and games. 

There are a few BL classics, including “Maurice” by E.M. Forster, “Giovanni’s Room” by James Baldwin, and “The Song of Achilles” by Madeline Miller.

My advice to young writers is this – forget Sepalika. Don’t grudge this writer her success. The world runs to different rhythms and currents. The road of literary fiction is long and hard. Stay your course. Everyone wants to write a bestseller, but whether your book becomes one depends on factors far beyond your own imagination and writing ability. If money’s your goal, forget writing fiction — you have a better chance of success by getting into law, medicine, app design, business or cricket. But if you love writing and want to write good books, keep working at your craft. The real jackpot is to write a book that will be remembered and read long after you are gone.

Also, remember that Sepalika came out as a print edition only after becoming a hit on Wattpad. Look at it this way. If your book wins a wide enough audience on a digital platform, you don’t need to run after publishers. They will come to you. There are thousands of titles on Wattpad, ranging from silly to serious. It’s a good platform to test your ideas. Wattpad pays (check it out). Also, you may try writing in a different genre. You could also try writing under a pseudonym. It’s perfectly all right – Agatha Christie and J. K. Rowling have done it, using an assumed name to write in a different genre. Try your hand at writing something different – it will challenge your creativity and – who knows – you may even make some money.