Category: maximum volume

maximum volume book launch

A big thank you to readers and friends who joined the launch of Maximum Volume at Powerbooks in Greenbelt 4, Makati, on Feb 28. Thank you to editors Dean Alfar and Sarge Lacuesta for including my story in their baker’s dozen, and to Anvil and et al for publishing the collection.

I had a really great time seeing old friends and meeting new people, and hearing authors read a short excerpt from their story.

Here I am reading. Photo taken by Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. Thank you!

But listen: Gregorio Brillantes, one of my favorite writers, asked for our autographs. He asked ME to sign HIS copy. This is absurd, of course, so I asked for his. I was SO thrilled. (Ask seatmates Tin Lao and Daryll Delgado, I must have looked like an idiot.) I wrote in his copy, Your fiction SHAPED my writing. I am honored.

And I am, I am. I wish we had more time; I would have talked his ear off about how much I loved “Faith, Love, Time, and Dr. Lazaro”.

To stories!

I hyperventilated a little when I saw the table and the name plates. We had to sit up front???
View from the table.
Sarge and Dean.
Photo credit: Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta
Photo from Mookie again.

And here’s my dinner date after the launch. :)

The book is available in the stores for PhP 295 (around US$7). Or you can order it online here. Please support the book so the editors can make this an annual event. 

especially heinous, and other stuff to read

“Outcry”: Only after the sixth small black girl goes missing does the police commissioner finally make a statement, interrupting the season finale of a popular soap opera. The enraged letters start coming soon after. “Are you going to tell me if Susan’s baby belongs to David or not, Mister Police Commissioner??????” says one. Another person sends anthrax.

…

“Design”: “If this child is part of The Plan, then The Plan was that I would be raped. If this child is not part of The Plan, then my rape was a violation of The Plan, in which case The Plan is not a Plan at all, but a Polite fucking Suggestion.”

Those are passages from Carmen Maria Machado’s “Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU“, first published in The American Reader, included in the massive 2014 Campbellian Anthology, which you can download for free by following the link (thanks Phil for the tip). It’s a great boulder of a collection that I have been chipping at for the past days, and oh my God what a beautiful, funny, clever, brutal, haunting piece of art this story is. I have described this as episode recaps of Law and Order SVU — if the show were written and produced by David Lynch.

The year’s just begun but this is definitely going to be included in my year’s best reads.

My thanks to M. David Blake for compiling these amazing stories and making the collection available!

M. David Blake’s magnum opus, the 2014 Campbellian Anthology, is now available for download! This book attempts to collect in one volume representative works by most of the writers eligible for this year’s John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. We don’t have them all—there were a few we couldn’t get—but all the same, this book contains more than 860,000 words of fiction by 111 authors, and best of all, it’s not merely free, it’s DRM-FREE.

Also:

  • The Nebula Award nominations are out and some of the nominated work can be accessed online here.
  • Maximum Volume is launching tomorrow. Read an excerpt of my story, “The Missing“, on the anthology’s website.

‘maximum volume’ launches on feb 28

See you at the Powerbooks Store Greenbelt on Feb. 28 (6 pm) for the launch of Maximum Volume, edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo Lacuesta.

Also, here’s my face. (Source.)

Are you going to the launch?

COMING SOON FROM ANVIL PUBLISHING!

Maximum Volume edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo Lacuesta.

“MAXIMUM VOLUME is not about making noise but about creating space for emerging Filipino writers and new narratives.”

—Excerpt from the book’s introduction by DEAN FRANCIS ALFAR

Launch will be held at Powerbooks Store Greenbelt on February 28, 2014! See you there!

fiction nation

Inquirer Lifestyle features the editors of Maximum Volume (formerly, Volume 1), Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo Lacuesta.  Read on!

Alfar’s and Lacuesta’s big idea is a yearly selection of outstanding short stories, called “MAXIMUM VOLUME,” published by Anvil Publishing, Inc. The inaugural book, “MAXIMUM VOLUME: Best New Filipino Fiction 2014,” is due for release in February and, according to Alfar, is meant to “celebrate the best new Filipino fiction and encourage its writing.”

…

“Maximum Volume” features the following stories: “The Case of Two Husbands” by Heinz Lawrence Ang, “Posing” by Noelle Q. de Jesus, “The Other Woman Narrative” by Daryll Delgado, “Basta” by Glenn Diaz, “Journey Back to the Source” by Gino Dizon, “Man of Letters” by Marc Gaba, “Little Places” by Crystal Koo, “The Red Cup” by Francezca C. Kwe, “The Secret Adobo Wars” by Kate Osias, “My Life as a Bee” by Michelangelo Samson, “The Missing” by Eliza Victoria and “Cruising” by Isabel Yap.  All in all, the line-up of writers represents an intriguing mix of experience and promise, of talent and polish.  Alfar and Lacuesta speak of the selected stories with overwhelming pride and awe, with Alfar describing the writers as “luminous lights.”

Read more: http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/145593/fiction-nation#ixzz2pVoEM2ZZ
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The article does not list all of the stories. Here’s the complete TOC:

My Life As A Bee by Michelangelo Samson

Exchange by Christine V. Lao

Posing by Noelle Q. de Jesus

Other Woman by Daryll Delgado

Cruising by Isabel Yap

The Secret Adobo Wars by Kate Osias

The Missing by Eliza Victoria

The Red Cup by Francezca C. Kwe

The Case of Two Husbands by Heinz Lawrence Ang

Man of Letters by Marc Gaba

Basta by Glenn Diaz

Little Places by Crystal Koo

Journey Back to the Source by Gino Dizon