This post has turned to another four-days-in-the-making post as I got swamped up with work that I was unable to finish this post. This several-days-to-make-a-post thingy has become something of a norm of late.
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Last Monday morning, I finally managed to type out the 3.5 pages of fiction that I wrote while flying in from Koronadal City last week. Using MS Word with Verdana 10pts and single-spacing format, those 3 and a half pages became 2.5 pages of virtual print with a total 985 words. Not bad.
Now that it has been typed, I can work on it on my free time and hopefully finish it up by August, edited, re-edited, copyedited and all.
Tentatively titled The Dance of the Twilight, it's a love story and I hope to be able to weave fantastic elements into it. Let's see if I can make this work. While I've got the outline roughed, I'm still fine-tuning the details so the ending story might end up different from what I have right now. What I do want to make sure is that it retains its "happy-ever-after" feel at the end.
Like a fairy tale, yes, because I promised to tell this story to my little ones when I do get it down pat. I promised Ikai I would tell her the story when it's done as she has seen me scribbling in my little black book and she didn't let up asking me what I was writing until I answered her. She then made me promise to tell her the story when it's done.
*UPDATE* The story is now 4.25 pages long as I've managed to sneak in a few paragraphs here and there in the past four days. It's being done chopsuey-style in that I'm writing it in no particular order at this time, hoping that the end product would be palatable. I already have a beginning and just yesterday, after a couple of nights debating how I should end it, I scribbled several paragraphs of what would be the ending. I've got the middle portion outlined but it hasn't been typed in yet. Hopefully, I'll get it done soon. After which, what will happen is that I'll thread the entire thing -- make the story cohesive and make sure the elements all work well.
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Talking about short stories, speculative fiction anthos from the Philippines are now available or forthcoming ...
Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 7, edited by Kate and Alex Osias will be launched this Saturday, July 28, at The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf - Shangri-La Plaza, EDSA at 2:00pm. I won't be able to make it to the launch as I am committed to a parent-teacher thingy but what's different about this volume is that PSF7 will be a digital book but at the launch packaged CDs will be made available by Flipside Digital.
Incidentally, the PSF team have made several of the earlier volumes of PSF available digitally as well on Amazon (just search query "Philippine Speculative Fiction") and, locally, on Flipreads.com.
Lauriat: A Filipino-Chinese Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Charles A. Tan and published by Lethe Press is forthcoming in August. From the Amazon description:
"Filipinos and Chinese authors have a rich, vibrant literature when it comes to speculative fiction, the realms of the strange and fantastical. But what about the fiction of the Filipino-Chinese, who draw their roots from the folklore of both cultures? This is what Lauriat attempts to answer. Featuring stories that deal with voyeur ghosts, taboo lovers, a town that cannot sleep, the Chinese zodiac, and an exile that finally comes home, Lauriat covers a diverse selection of narratives from fresh, Southeast Asian voices."
A Bottle of Storm Clouds is also forthcoming -- Eliza Victoria's first collection of short stories will be published by Visprint with cover art and design by Naermyth author Karen Francisco. The book collects Eliza's stories that have graced the pages of other anthologies including Alternative Alamat, Usok, Philippine Speculative Fiction and will show to us why Eliza is one of Philippine Spec-Fic's most prolific writers today.
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I'm going to Cebu next week, seven years after I last went there.
Of course, the reason I'll be there is because of work for the Desk, but any trip has its own perk. For me, usually it's the chance to try out the local cuisine and check out the local happenings. Last time I was there (Sinulog 2005), my co-workers and I managed to watch a concert of Kitchie Nadal and, yes, somehow stalked her a bit. We were also into the Sinulog spirit as the company I worked for then, Cebuana Lhuillier, was one of the float participants and I think I spent about a week there for the preparations. Noel and Erwin, my cohorts in that Cebu sojourn, had it worse as they were there for some three-plus weeks to monitor the progress of the float production.
This time's trip is rather low-key, just an overnighter. The Desk is a table sponsor for an upcoming financial event and I'll be there mainly for the setup and to cover the first day of the event (although I will only be there until lunch-time as my flight's in the afternoon).
Nevertheless, depending on available time, I'll try to see what's up probably in Ayala Center Cebu, check out the Cebu music scene that Wednesday evening, and score some diabetes-enhancing masareal :P
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Why will I check out Ayala Center Cebu? Well, to score some tee's. I found out years ago that there's a marked difference between prices of shirts in Metro Manila versus those available in Cebu. In past trips there, I managed to score a shirt or two from the usual boutiques (Bench, Lee, Wrangler, etc.) at a much lower price than if I bought them in Manila. Will check out if the same is still true nowadays.
And of course, will check out the local bookstores if possible and see if I can score some gems of a read. Who knows, I might get lucky.
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I like the flow of Way of Kings, Book 1 of the Stormlight Archives by Brandon Sanderson. Too bad Book 2 isn't available yet but at least there's still a couple of Sanderson books waiting on the wings after WoK.
