elizavictoria

after lambana update + new poem + new story + surprise!

So! Some announcements.

1. I have a new story called “At the Diazes’” in LEAP + , magazine of the Asia Pacific Writers & Translators.

ESSAY : Filipinos write back by Jose Dalisay Jr.
FICTION: The Passport by Noelle Q. de Jesus
POETRY : A colony by Allan Pastrama
POETRY : If to measure the brief length of the plane by Allan Pastrama
POETRY : Octopus by Enrique S. Villasis, translated from Tagalog by Mikael de Lara Co
POETRY : Sing Like You Mean It by Joel M. Toledo
POETRY : Man vs. Himself by Joel M. Toledo
ESSAY : American Visa by Jack Wigley
FICTION: At the Diazes’ by Eliza Victoria
POETRY : Zoo Sonnet by Isabela Benzon
POETRY : Brief Letter by Isabela Benzon
ESSAY : The Functional Value of Plain Jane by Augusto Antonia Aguila
POETRY : Beneath the Underdog by Jessica Hagedorn
POETRY : The Evolution of Bruno Mars by Jessica Hagedorn
POETRY : The Day a Storm with my Mother’s Name Came by Kristian Sendon Cordero, translated from Bikol by Marne Kilates
POETRY : The Sorrow of Ancient Fire by Kristian Sendon Cordero, translated from Bikol by Marne Kilates
INTERVIEW: The 5-Spot Interview: Andrea Pasion-Flores by Tim Tomlinson
INTERVIEW: The 5-Spot Interview: J. Neil C. Garcia by Tim Tomlinson
POETRY : The Sadness of a Tongue by Genevieve L. Asenjo, translated from Kinaray-a by Ma. Milagros Lachica
POETRY : The Water I Love is a Stranger by Genevieve L. Asenjo, translated from Kinaray-a by Ma. Milagros Lachica
MEMOIR: Sa Loob by Sandra Nicole Roldan
POETRY : How Our Towns Drown by Gemini H. Abad
ESSAY : Arsenal by Jhoanna Lynn B. Cruz
FICTION: Dai vidas du’l grandu investigadores: El caso du’l toro perduto by Dean Francis Alfar. (From The Lives of the Great Detectives: The Case of the Missing Bull)
POETRY : Charcuterie by Krip Yuson
POETRY : Disguise by Krip Yuson
POETRY : A country of bees by Brylle B. Tabora
FICTION: Enough of This is True by Ian Rozales Casocot
POETRY : One Life by Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
POETRY : Self-Help by Carlomar Arcangel Daoana
FICTION: Stress Management by Glenn L. Diaz
POETRY : Ballistics by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
POETRY : País Tropical by Marne Kilates
ESSAY : A List of Advice for Traveling to the Country Your Family Departed by Laurel Fantauzzo
FICTION: An excerpt from “First Job” by Gabriela Lee
POETRY : The Traveller’s Song by Jose Rizal, translated from Spanish by Marne Kilates

This is one of the pieces in the collection of interconnected science fiction stories that I have been working on. Another piece is “The Target”, which will be included in the tenth volume of Philippine Speculative Fiction.

Click through to read, and of course feel free to share the link.

This is how it begins:

Chi was going through an inconvenient personal crisis that evening, and so he could hardly focus, or care, when the representative from the family said, “You’re not the Chief Engineer?”The girl, the homeowner’s eldest daughter, looked like she just stepped out of a cocktail party. Black dress, white pearls, no-hands glowing blue deep in her ear, probably the party host urging her to come back. Her, whatever her name was. Joanne told him on their way there but now he couldn’t remember. “Good afternoon,” the Hestia SmartHouse’s front door chirped, for the third time since the moment they arrived on the front porch.“There are no visitors listed in the log for this hour. Please enter the passcode to let yourself in.”

“No, ma’am,” Chi told the client, and out of nowhere came her name. Georgia. Georgia Diaz.

“He’s tied up in meetings at the moment and sends his regrets.”

“Ma knew the Chief Engineer,” Georgia said. “The lady who took my call said he’d come here personally.”

“We’re Senior Engineers, ma’am,” Joanne said. Stress on the senior, making it sound like Chief, only without the fringe benefits. “We’ve got you covered.”

They got the call an hour ago. Georgia planned to just drop by the house for a minute or so, grab a shawl she forgot in her room, when she was greeted by an empty house. She was afraid her family—her parents, her younger sister, and three younger brothers—got locked up in one of the rooms, activated the SoundEraser, and forgot the passcode to deactivate it. It had happened before, Georgia said. One time her mother forgot to close the door to the master bedroom, and her youngest brother, aged seven, slipped inside, locked the door, and accidentally soundproofed the walls. A bedroom in a Hestia SmartHouse could let you in but wouldn’t let you out without a passcode. It was one of the SmartHouse’s Anti-Theft features. Families had caught burglars that way. Or cheating husbands. Unfortunately, with the SoundEraser up, Georgia’s youngest brother had already screamed himself hoarse for two hours and his sisters didn’t even hear a peep.

Sometimes the SmartHouse is just too smart, Joanne had said with a shrug. It happens. Aside from the SmartHouse, Hestia Industries also designed manacles and jail cells, so it was a no-brainer, really.

2. I will have a new poem in an upcoming issue of Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

3. We won’t be able to release After Lambana in time for Komikon this month, but we will have this out by early 2016. Here, let me distract you with some art from Mervin Malonzo.

4. I will have a new novel out from Visprint before the year ends. We’re done with the copyedits, and I’m just waiting for the cover and chapter art. More about this later.

See you!

pinoy reads pinoy books reads ‘a bottle of storm clouds’

I was supposed to meet with Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books on October 18th, but Lando had other plans.

We finally met up on October 24th at Lucky Bean Coffee Bar, in front of De La Salle University. I stressed out over this meet-up because 1) meeting new people makes me anxious and 2) unfamiliar places make me anxious (I got lost on Taft Avenue because of course) and 3) talking about my work makes me anxious.

It was fun, though. I had fun talking about the origins of the stories (one question that delighted me was “Are these two guys lovers or are they just really good friends? But why not??”) and my writing process/progress/aspirations, and I hope the book club members had fun as well.

I also signed books using N’s lovely gift from a couple months ago.

Thank you to Jayson and the rest of Pinoy Reads Pinoy Books. Check out the links below if you want to join them.

We are Filipinos who patronize Pinoy books, our very own. When we say “Pinoy books” we mean all published works written by Philippine and foreign nationals about the Philippines or the Filipino experience, written in (1) our national language, Filipino (Tagalog), (2) other Philippine languages, (3) English, and (4) any other foreign languages but translated to Filipino or English.

Visit: www.pinoyreads.com
Follow us: twitter.com/pinoyreads
Like our page: fb.com/pinoyreads

robots and humanity (speed magazine, january 2014)

The following essay originally appeared in the January 2014 issue of Speed Magazine.

What if we had robots? What if we had robots when Yolanda (Haiyan) struck? Imagine a quadripedal military robot carrying medical and survival equipment, helping residents evacuate, carrying loads surpassing the weight our own soldiers can feasibly carry. Imagine a bipedal robot swimming against the current and pulling survivors to safety, or else digging through the rubble and pulling out the dead so the bodies can be reunited with their surviving loved ones. Imagine little insect-like robots suturing wounds and applying gauze.

Sounds fantastic, but even a storm the size and strength of Yolanda seemed far-fetched, until it wasn’t.

Robots figure prominently in the world of Project 17, the science fiction novel I wrote in 2012 and which was published and released by Visprint in September 2013. In February 2013, I saw this article which said that Francis Tolentino, chief of the Metro Manila Development Authority, is thinking of having “robot traffic enforcers”. “The Robocop will spell the end of the kotong cops,” he says. I shared this with my publisher, amused, because this was what I was thinking when I started writing the novel.

Corruption is an insidious, perpetual problem in this country. Its roots run deep. Every single one of us has been touched by a form of it, from the petty (traffic cop asking for “pang-meryenda” with a smile and a knowing wink so he won’t write you a ticket) to the systemic (politicians who had managed allegedly to appropriate billions of pesos of taxpayers’ money). Some of us have even been participants, handing over that hundred-peso-bill just so we can shift gears and go on with our day.

Humans are fallible. They have desires and motivations, connections and limitations. Why do cops ask for bribes? We can consider several factors: 1) they are underpaid; 2) they have family with needs that exceed the salary they can bring home; 3) the system allows it (i.e. they can get bribes without legal repercussions due to poor monitoring and public participation – some people actually offer it to wiggle out of tough situations).

Now, let’s go back to Mr. Tolentino’s robot traffic enforcers. You can’t bribe a robot. You can’t “appeal” to its good nature. It won’t be moved by your tears, and they won’t complain to you about their poor salary. Actually, they don’t have salaries, same way your cell phone is not on your payroll despite the fact that it works so hard for you.

Will having these robots lower the rate of corruption? Maybe? Maybe it can improve traffic, make those buses waiting for passengers move along faster on EDSA. But consider the hurdles before we can even get such a project approved. Who will build it for us? How do we go about bidding the project to private entities?

Remember the government’s $329-million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with China’s ZTE Corp.? The project, which aimed to link government offices throughout the country, was alleged by whistleblowers to be overpriced (in the hundred millions) to cover kickbacks. It was eventually scrapped.

The path to a world without corruption is, well, paved with corruption.

Technology is a tool. It can negate our fallibility, or magnify it. Advances in medicine such as minimally invasive surgeries now equip doctors with the technical and technological ability to remove kidneys through a single tiny incision, while the availability of the semi-automatic assault rifle (among other factors) gave us the heart-wrenching tragedy of Sandy Hook.

What will stop politicians from accepting bribes so our hypothetical quadripedal military robots will reach certain families first? What will stop them from sticking their names on the face of our fantastic bipedal robot? From making the robot surgeons turn away women seeking post-abortion care because abortion is a sin?

A high GDP and technological advancements will mean nothing if we – and our officials – continue to act without conscience and compassion. Robots can’t help us there.

Only our humanity can save us.

Eliza Victoria is the author of the short story collection A Bottle of Storm Clouds and the science fiction novel Project 17, both published by Visprint. Visit her at http://elizavictoria.com.

For more information about Project 17, please click here.

‘writer’s block’ on the galvanizers

This is a bit old (published in July gasp what old content), but I may have forgotten to share this here.

Isa Garcia of The Galvanizers asked me about writer’s block, and I said:

Charlie Jane Anders wrote a pretty good article over at io9 called “The 10 Types of Writers’ Block and How to Overcome Them“. I’ve always defined writer’s block as that period when you can’t write anything, but as Charlie illustrates, you can have writer’s block even while working on something. And how do you define “writing” in this context anyway? “Writing” as in the actual act, the sitting down to type and string words together?

In writing (and any other creative endeavor), the work that requires the most energy and brainpower is not the act of writing itself, but the planning phase. An idea often comes unbidden, and before you can execute this idea and turn it into a story, a poem, a painting, a song, you need hours and hours and HOURS of thinking.

quezon city food trip, or quezon city, you’re so far away now that you may as well be a province, or we had to book a hotel room to do this

Our group’s original plan was to go to Cebu. Book a hotel room, play games, eat. Then one of us suggested: well, why don’t we start with Quezon City? With the traffic and the horrible road constructions happening simultaneously in Metro Manila, QC may as well be Cebu, in terms of distance.

On the first week of September, we booked a hotel room in Red Planet Hotel (formerly Tune Hotel, photos later) because there was a promo on Agoda, making it cheaper and affordable. The site says it’s 30 minutes away from the airport. The only sane response to this is hysterical laughter and some tears.

Day 1

First stop: Steveston Pizza in UP Town Center.
Recommendation: Black pizza (Honey glazed chicken breast, fig Gorgonzola and mascarpone mousse, walnuts and arugula julienne)

La Lola Churreria, UP Town Center
We enjoyed the chocolate-dipped churros. They’re served cold, with a chewy center.

Photo taken while in Xocolat, waiting for Jammi to finish getting papers from the printer. Check out Jammi’s page here. She does tarot readings, sells crystals, and teaches classes on Reiki.

Photos taken in Red Planet Hotel. The room is small, but we didn’t mind. (I would probably mind if we paid full price. The price point is similar to Remington Hotel, which is located near NAIA 3.)

For dinner, we walked to Don Andres, a Peruvian restaurant.

Don Andres

Courtyard Building 26

Sgt. Esguerra Ave South Triangle

Quezon City (02) 364-4145

We recommend everything. Day 2

Breakfast at Breakfast & Pies.

Breakfast & Pies

39 Malingap St

Teacher Village – West

Quezon City

Some of the dishes we tried:

Ultimate Bacon Rice

Huevos Rancheros Day 2

Caramelized Spam (I had the rice removed, which probably confused everyone in the kitchen because it took them a while to get the order right.)

Day 2

Pieesss. They have a lot of great desserts, but I really enjoyed their key lime pie. We also checked out Pipino, the vegetarian restaurant next door.

We dropped by Uno Morato so I can buy some poetry books and play Barbarossa. Look!

Barbarossa is a deck-building game featuring moe art. Jammi showed me some alternate cards featuring actual girls and they freaked me out. Let’s just stick with the moe.

My tiny book haul from Uno Morato.

Dark Hours, 10th Anniversary edition, Conchitina Cruz
Mula, Rosmon Tuazon
Shall We Be Kind and Suffer Each Other, Mark Anthony Cayanan

We moved to Ludo to play some games, and dinner was at Full Belly, but I was unfortunately not able to take photos.

My poor belly and wallet needs a break now.

36th manila international book fair: notes, tips, photos

My endless gratitude to those who dropped by Booth 78 (Komiket x Visprint) to say hi, buy books, and have their copies signed. I’m not a fan of crowds, but I always leave book events like this energized and pumped to write more.

Here are a few photos I was able to take. I wanted to take more shots but I was carrying a shoulder bag and a bag heavy with books, and the crowd. Oh, the crowd.

Before we headed to SMX, we went to the new Beni’s Falafel branch in SM MOA (South Building, near Gonuts Donuts if I remember correctly). Thank you to Honey de Peralta for the tip! If you’re in the area, you should try Beni’s Falafel.

Here is Booth 78 busy with buyers.

The Visprint x Komiket / Komiket x Visprint catalogue! After Lambana is already listed here. Hala ka, Mervin.

That empty spot was where copies of Dwellers used to be. The Visprint ladies said they bring 20 copies of each title every day. When I left, there was only one copy of Dwellers left for the day. Thank you, readers!

Jack Alvarez’s boots were so high and so awesome the guards thought he was going to the cosplay event. Probably my favorite story of the day. Haha!

3D printer. I enjoyed watching it at work, when a guy behind me said, “Last year pa kaya ‘yan.” E di ikaw na updated!

Saw this in passing. It was lovely, but didn’t get to buy it.

Signed copies.

Finally, my book fair haul:

Lunatic, Meganon Comics, various authors
Sixty-Six, Anino/Adarna, Russell Molina and Ian Sta. Maria
Janus Silang books 1 & 2, Adarna, Egay Samar
Histories, Ateneo Press, Charlie Samuya Veric
Cover (Story) Girl, Visprint, #romanceclass series, Chris Mariano (first read this as an ebook)
Piko, Anino/Adarna, various authors
Smaller and Smaller Circles, Soho Press, bought at the National Book Store booth, FH Batacan
Ang Autobiografia ng Ibang Lady Gaga, Visprint, Jack Alvarez
Married Women, Ateneo de Naga Press, bought at the Ateneo Press booth, Maryanne Moll

Some notes/tips:

The huge National Book Store booth has a good system for payment. Lots of cashiers, a single line, a la SM Hypermarket. Anvil, which shares space with NBS, has only two cashiers, I think.
Booth 78 is too small for signing, but I’m happy to see a lot of readers.
I don’t understand the booth numbering system. A map would be handy. I feel like I have missed a lot of interesting booths because I can’t figure out where everything was.
I do wish the aisles were wider, with seats where weary attendees can take a break and rest their aching feet.
Bring water. Definitely.
Wear a comfortable pair of shoes.

see you at the 36th manila international book fair!

I will be at the 36th Manila International Book Fair on Saturday, September 19, sharing the 3 to 4pm time slot with Jack Alvarez, author of Ang Autobiografia ng Ibang Lady Gaga and one of my co-Fellows at the UP National Writers Workshop.

See below for the map. Visprint books will be sold at a discount at Booth 78! Do drop by.

In other book-related news:

Dwellers is nominated for Best Novel at the Filipino Readers Choice Awards. Click here to vote for your favorite reads from 2014.
Visprint is going to the Frankfurt Book Fair this year from October 14 to 18. If you’re going to the fair (lucky you! shut up! you’re making me envious!) and want to pre-order some books, read on below:

We’re attending this year’s Frankfurt Book Fair from October 14 to 18!

If you’re in Germany, we’re open to taking orders for Visprint titles to be claimed at the book fair. Send your orders to bestbookproposal@visprint.net by SEPTEMBER 20.

Use the Subject Line “Frankfurt Book Fair Book Order”
Include contact details, including: your name and contact number. We will reply with payment options and pick up date/time.

Still speaking of books, are you in the mood for cheap, secondhand copies? I’m selling some of mine. Click here to view available titles. Thanks!

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