Author: elizavictoria

floating dragon

Floating Dragon could have knocked my socks off, but unfortunately the novel’s middle part got bogged down by too many abstractions, too much 80’s horror imagery – the pulsing red light, blood everywhere, visions in various stages of decomposition. Granted that it was written in the mid-80’s, but I’m reading this now in 2011, and it was just too much. Many times the horror becomes ridiculous, even cheesy, even laughable, far from the subtlety of his short story collection, Houses without Doors, for example.

But it starts and ends beautifully enough. The beginning reminded me of Straub’s The Hellfire Club (which, by the way, did knock my socks off), with its huge cast of characters, its Gothic feel, invented history, and invented pop culture legacy referenced throughout the story (the show Daddy’s Here in Floating Dragon, the novel Night Journey in Hellfire Club). The novel starts like a crime story: a woman named Stony Friedgood is found brutally murdered in the idyllic, middle-class town of Hampstead. But then the story gets a hint of scientific disaster: an experimental chemical called DRG is released accidentally into the air, and settles on the town. This chemical, when inhaled, either kills instantly, or turns the person insane. Did DRG just create a serial killer? All over Hampstead, birds fall dead from the sky.

Still, that’s not all: when the town of Hampstead was built in the 1800’s, a man named Gideon Winter arrives in town and brings with him a destructive force that will visit Hampstead time and time again.

It’s worth a read, if only for Peter Straub’s superb writing.

 

The Mighty Reading List!

Saturday

Feast for Crows

The Kobayashi Maru of Love

Showbiz Lengua

PGS Horror issue

Floating Dragon

El Bimbo Variations

The Tesseract

The Dispossessed

100 Bullets

Our Story Begins

‘slow and steady, slow and steady’

I found this from this blog I’ve been reading, but I’ll pretend the letter’s addressed to me as well:

Though I don’t consider my lifestyle a diet, I live the way I do because I know that “health” is a never-ending journey. There will be NO point at which I stop striving for health. So I figure, since I’m relatively young, why not learn how to eat in moderation NOW? Why not learn to love exercise and CRAVE it NOW? Why not learn to indulge in healthy ways NOW? That way, when I’m 30, 40, 50, 60, etc., all of that won’t feel anything but completely normal.

The trick is to PLAN for indulgence. PLAN for screw ups. PLAN for lazy days when you don’t feel like working out. If they’re part of the plan from the beginning, you won’t ever feel like you’ve messed up and want to throw in the towel. Because indulgence? Screw ups? Lazy days? Those will never go away. They’re part of life. The key is to figure out how to deal with them in a healthy way. Example: Too lazy to do your scheduled run? Go for a leisurely walk! Craving a piece of a coworker’s surprise birthday cake? Have a piece, but just one.

I used to be a very all or nothing type of girl. If I ate poorly, I was going to do it all day/week/month. Now, I know it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. I can have the cookie. I can skip the workout. I can have one drink. I don’t consider myself a failure, I just figure that I’m handling life and preparing myself for forever. I live by the saying, “Don’t do anything on a ‘diet’ you aren’t prepared to do for the rest of your life.” Slow and steady is the way to go… you’ll be able to live this way forever! You’d never be able to work out every day and only eat 1,200 calories forever.

I hope all of that made sense. Your mantra right now should be slow and steady, slow and steady, slow and steady.

weekend update

Busy weekend. Had to wake up at 6 a.m. on my days off, but it’s all for the sake of productivity.

Friday. I was in QC since Thursday night. However, Jaykie had a morning job interview scheduled on Friday in Makati, so we woke up at 6 a.m. I didn’t have to, but I decided to tag along instead of staying in QC because I would end up either sleeping or shopping. (And of course I wanted to show my support to my boyfriend.)

We had a McDo breakfast because none of us had the motor skills to cook at such an ungodly hour. We also brought our running shoes and extra clothes for our planned jog in UP later that afternoon. Then the drive to Makati. We couldn’t find the building, so after going ’round in circles (and one-way streets), we left the car at a paid parking lot, took a taxi, and walked. That morning involved a lot of walking and getting lost. Jaykie did well, which was exciting. We had lunch at Tempura (I had a Kani salad and some sushi), then walked some more, trying to find the paid parking lot. We couldn’t find it. Makati has the shittiest street plans. The people we asked gave us conflicting directions, so in the end, we took a taxi again. That was frustrating, but at least we found the car and it was intact.

We went to UP to cool our heels. Stayed at the HGC tambayan for a bit, then we changed (it was so hard to get out of my jeans in the backseat of a car – I don’t know how the teenagers do it) and went jogging.

It was the eve of Ate VJ’s birthday, so we had a great dinner with Ate Budz and Jael: pasta, palabok, cassava cake. There was fried rice, but I couldn’t touch it due to the blasted diet. Then drinks (the Arbor Mist wines were delicious, and I couldn’t get enough of the mustard-flavored pretzels!) and quality daldalan.

Saturday. Jaykie had class, and I wanted to jog, so we woke up at 6 a.m. again. Another McDo breakfast. I had my jog, went home, washed the dishes from last night, and went to sleep for an hour and a half.

That night we went out for dinner with Jaykie’s family at the Marriott Cafe.

Seafood buffet! It was awesome. I didn’t eat a lot, but I went crazy with the desserts.

Jaykie’s parents and sister, VJ:

Kuya Ben and George:

Hi, Jake!

armin’s birthday bash

It’s a fourth-floor partay!

Happy happy birthday Armin!

Pizza! Booze! Videoke!

Cake!

Boss Chito looking unhappy with the bedlam in their office. LOL.

Armin made a mix of Gatorade and vodka, but I can’t have any due to my vodka allergy.

Sadness.

But at least I got a lot of chocolate.

Parteh!

Armin’s costume change. I switched to my phone camera because my camera died from all the awesome.

You wouldn’t want to know what Armin used for boobs. He used two computer mouses! Mice? Oh crap I told you. :-p

More photos at my Facebook account. (Album’s f-locked, though.)

who’s late to the ticker-tape parade?



Weight Chart

Saw this via Livejournal. Cute!

But I’m a bit sad. My weight is the same as my weight in Jan. 11. So after 15 days I didn’t even lose a pound?

Sad.

psf6 lineup revealed

From co-editor Kate Aton-Osias’s blog:

After several months of reading (and reading, and reading), intense discussions, emails and follow ups, Nikki and I are pleased to announce the Philippine Speculative Fiction 6 line up (in no particular order):

  1. Alternative Histories by Ian Rosales Casocot
  2. Strange Adventures in Procreation by Andrew Drilon
  3. Lament of the Counselor by Jay Anyong
  4. The Grim Malkin by Vincent Michael Simbulan
  5. A Smell of Mothballs by Mailin Paterno
  6. Ashland by Elyss G. Punsalan
  7. Carpaccio (or, Repentance as a Meat Recipe) by Arlynn Despi
  8. Eternal Winter by Maria Pia Vibar Benosa
  9. From the Book of Names My Mother Did Not Give Me by Christine V. Lao
  10. Hollowbody by Crystal Koo
  11. Offerings to Aman Sinaya by Andrei Tupaz
  12. On Wooden Wings by Paolo Chikiamco
  13. Prisoner 2501 by Philip Corpuz
  14. Resurrection by Victor Ocampo
  15. Simon’s Replica by Dean Alfar
  16. Break in at Batay Street by Francis Gabriel Concepcion
  17. The Big Man by Asterio Gutierrez
  18. The Bookshelves of Mrs. Go by Charles Tan
  19. The Impossible and the R.S.C. Gregorio del Pilar by Alex Osias
  20. The Kiddie Pool by Kenneth Yu
  21. The Storyteller’s Curse by Eliza Victoria
  22. Villainoguing by Joseph Montecillo
For those interested in stats (like me, haha) this year, we have 22 stories total, of which 21 will see their first publication in PSF6. There are 15 guys and 7 gals in the anthology and the story subsets include horror, sci-fi, 2nd world and urban fantasy.
The book is slated to be launched in March. Congrats to my fellow contributors! Can’t wait! :D