Category: plug

online publications: who benefits?

Here is a fact: we will never run out of stories to read.

This is more evident now than it ever has been before. Online speculative fiction publications easily number in the hundreds, including many new publications looking for worthy submissions and just itching to get up and running (e.g. GigaNotoSaurus and Smash Cake Magazine). Just to illustrate: to date, Duotrope lists166 fledgling markets, or those markets with a publication history of less than six months.

Even the Philippines, horribly late in the technological race, generally speaking, has two active online publishing entities: Rocket Kapre, which has published Usok 1 and the charity anthology Ruin and Resolve; and Estranghero Press, which has published the anthologies The Farthest Shore (secondary worlds) and Demons of the New Year (horror). As in the rest of the world, online publications appear to be a growth industry, as evidenced by the upcoming launch of the POC Review (which is not genre-bound) and (a bit farther into the future) the online version of the Philippine Genre Stories.

So: why an online publication?

Read more here.

(re)gaming life

I’m no gamer. I don’t have the patience, or the required hand-eye coordination. The simplest challenges frustrate me: You mean I have to go to this room first and get this equipment before I can get that equipment to blast open that door – the hell with this, I’m reading a book. I’ve given up on Chrono Cross (too convoluted), Suikoden, Left4Dead (I can’t figure out how to pick up the guns, so I gave up before I could even shoot a zombie), and Resident Evil (too scary; there was one point during the game when a huge crowd of zombies burst through a door – in real life, I threw away my controller). My default gaming strategy, it appears, is that if I can’t get it right the first time, then it probably isn’t worth it. (I don’t apply this to real-life problems, like clothes shopping.)

Then I met my boyfriend, who’s a proud member of the Hobby Gamers’ Circle, a gaming organization based in UP Diliman, a group of like-minded individuals who’d probably throw me down a pit should they ever read this piece of blasphemy.

Read more here.

catch that story idea!

I’ve set aside Falling Man to read this. Thanks Jaykie for the pressure buying me a copy. Note the lace bookmark. (I make bookmarks out of everything. Folded receipts, shirt tags, etc. This one came from a top I own. I still wear that top – amazingly the subtraction worked.)

I have an idea for a story, but every time I sit down to start writing it just runs away. It simply won’t take shape. Very frustrating. One of these days I’ll sit down in a quiet corner with a pen and my Spongebob notebook (the white, empty screen of my laptop is making me puke) and a cup of coffee and brainstorm until I churn out an outline. (“Outline” is a fancy term I use for snippets of scene descriptions and dialogue arranged in more or less chronological order. I don’t do the academic outline with the Roman numerals and shit, I’m not that crazy.)

Also, I just learned at the PSF V launch (thanks Charles for the head’s up) that my poem, “Tour Guide” (the last poem I wrote before the pesky poetry writer’s block hit), is in the April 4 issue of the Free Press. Yeah, I’m late, I’m sorry, I forget to monitor these things. Hope you can get a copy. :) National Bookstore and the convenience stores (7-Eleven, Mini-Stop) carry back issues; Jaykie and I even saw some inside a Mercury Drug branch. So yes, my poetry can be found inside a drug store, or on the shelf beside the booze. Coolest thing ever.

book launch

From Dean Alfar’s blog:

Philippine Speculative Fiction has become one of the country’s most consistent and highly-anticipated yearly anthology series, showcasing the continuing development of the exciting field of speculative fiction writing. This fifth volume, edited by Nikki Alfar and Vincent Michael Simbulan, collects a broad spectrum of short stories that define, explore, and sometimes blur the boundaries of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and all things in between—featuring the work of both literary luminaries and very new voices, from across the archipelago and the globe. PSF 5 contains stories by:

Angelo R. ‘Sarge’ Lacuesta Dean Francis Alfar
Rica Bolipata-Santos Paolo Gabriel V. Chikiamco
Timothy James Dimacali Joseph F. Nacino
Charles Tan Dominique Gerald Cimafranca
Isabel Yap Christine V. Lao
Raymond G. Falgui Mia Tijam
Joseph Anthony Montecillo Ejay Domingo
Apol Lejano-Massebieau Veronica Montes
Alexander Osias Fidelis Angela C. Tan
Andrew Drilon Gabriela Lee
Aileen Familara Marla Cabanban
Eliza Victoria Kate Aton-Osias
Kenneth Yu

The fifth volume will be launched on April 24 (Saturday), 3 pm, U-View Theater, Fully Booked High Street. If you see me there, say hi! (And, if you have money to spare, buy the book!)

This post has way too many exclamation points!

Flashback! Look at them covers. :) I am also in the fourth volume.

vacation, or this incredible heat

Bulacan till Easter Sunday. Halu-halo. My mother’s caldereta and kare-kare, yum. Sex and the City. How I Met Your Mother. Some Big Bang Theory. One story, done, but needs re-reading and edits. One story, edited, final read, done (hopefully). Silly computer games, like Diner Dash, to kill time. Jollibee with my brother. Re-read Atwood’s The Robber Bride. Drank Mint Choco Bailey’s with my father while watching a godawful action film.  Made my brother watch The Ruins, and of course he hated me for it, hehe.

The heat was torture. I’d take a long cold shower when I wake up and in a few hours I’d be swimming in my own sweat. I’d take a shower in the afternoon, and I’d start sweating while wiping myself dry. How can we live like this?

I hate the summer. I love beaches, the feel of the sand, the look of the water and the sky, but I hate the heat. Hate it hate it hate it. If asked to choose between an airconditioned hotel room and swimming at the beach under direct sunlight, I’d choose the hotel room in a heartbeat. I’m a worthless tourist like that. Seriously, we should hold tours at night, and swim only when it’s dark. (Boy, I sure hope the sun would hide behind thick clouds during the Bohol trip with Jaykie and Friends next month.)

Anyway, met up with the boyfriend after Lent. It was so hot during the commute back to the metro that I was SERIOUSLY this close to punching a stranger. Seriously. Seriously. So I had a shower first in my airconditioned room. Airconditioning. It is bliss.

Went to UP. Lunch at Choco Kiss (airconditioning!), had the Chicken Kiev. Some The Office. On Tuesday we planned to stay indoors, but ahoy rotational blackouts. Even a moron wouldn’t want to stay indoors in this heat, so off we go to UP, which also experienced a blackout (fuck – it’s as if it’s following us), played cards with Mark who happened to be at the HGC tambayan, then off to the mall.

We watched this! (Mark mentioned that Jme wanted to watch it on Saturday I’m sorry Jme it was hot and I was miserable and I wanted to laugh please don’t hate me for dragging Jaykie and watching it ahead of you guys. T_T)

As I was saying –

Photo from Filmofilia.

I love this film. (Despite the fact that the children speak with an American accent while the adults speak with a Scottish accent – despite the fact that they’re all supposed to be Vikings.) It’s  one of those few 3D films that you won’t mind paying extra to watch through the funky glasses.  (Now, if I can find me a theater where your chair tilts as the dragon spins and descends…)

3D tech has been abused lately, but in this case, it’s quite effective.

Oh, and have I mentioned that I was sweating while we’re waiting in line to buy our tickets inside the mall?

I was sweating. Inside. The mall.

It was seven p.m. when the film ended, so it was safe to venture out since the sun’s finally disappeared from the sky. But before we went home we tried eating at this Vietnamese restaurant (whose name I can’t remember! The heat’s killing off my brain cells!) for dinner. I enjoyed the salad. The vegetable’s really fresh, and the dressing’s light and tasty.

All in all, great vacation. (But still – the heat’s a real fucker.)

* * *

In other news, my story “Once They Were Gods” will appear in is in the April issue of Expanded Horizons soon. Watch this space.  Go click and read! :)

I’m also looking forward to the Summer Komikon and the Philippine Speculative Fiction V book launch this month. Yay!

early reviews for “Salot”

The story won’t advertise itself (it certainly won’t put on a glittery dress and a feather boa and strut its stuff for more readers) so I posted the Demons of the New Year link at the LJ comm ontdcreepy (it got the LJ spotlight some weeks back). Some of the members were kind enough to leave comments about my story:

of course, I had to sit here and read at least yours before starting the day. I loved this! I particularly loved how you ended it, and I won’t say anything more along those lines so as not to spoil it for anyone else. You’re an amazing writer! :-D (dark_sinestra)

Wow! Loved it…you really have a way with words. :) (chromachord)

I love your writing style! You’re certainly very talented. The story had a very dreamy, almost nightmarish tone, and you balanced the narrator’s skepticism and half-belief very well. Amazing. (rtuko)

Thanks, guys!

If you want to read my story, come on over. (Edit: I forgot to say – this story’s based on a personal experience Almi related to me one slow day at the office. I first encountered the “salot” imagery in an article about diseases during the American occupation. I believe it was by Gilda Cordero-Fernando, let me go check. I have used it in my story “Reunion”, which appeared in the Philippines Free Press, and in the prose poem “Dreams After the Storm”, which appeared in the Ruin/Resolve charity anthology.)

If you have an LJ account, you can add me. My LJ blog’s called blissery blogs.

Feel free to share the link to the e-anthology. Orayt! :D

demons

The e-anthology “Demons of the New Year” is now live! (-live -live)

From Karl de Mesa’s introduction:

From the traditional bestiary of underworld nasties literally knocking on our door (Eliza Victoria’s “Salot”) to the breed that’s bent on inciting us to sell our souls (Rommel Santos’s “Best Served Cold”), up to the very 2000s variety of whispering devils that motivate us to go walking through the urban abyss unarmed (Don Jaucian’s prosaic “Different Degrees of Night”), or the flimsy reasons that incite us to perpetrate vile things upon our kind (Marguerite Alcazaraen De Leon’s “K-10 Mushroom”). All of them, their name is demon.

The stories are here. My story is here. Enjoy!