My short story, “Parallel“, is now live, along with the rest of the November issue of Expanded Horizons. “Parallel” originally appeared in print in the fourth Philippine Speculative Fiction volume, edited by Dean Alfar and Nikki Alfar.
Also in the November issue is this fantastic artwork (“The Key Keeper“) by James Ng.
Head on over to the site to read some stories and learn the tale behind the art.
1. It rained on my birthday. No surprise there. I was told, repeatedly, to lose weight. No surprise there, either, but I was surprised by the intensity. I ate cake, but it saddened me.
2. I need to lose 20 pounds. I will have to starve myself.
3. Look, pictures of my siblings play-fighting each other for my benefit.
4. My poem, “Bath Time”, will appear in the November issue of The Houston Literary Review.
5. Usok # 2 is up! My story “Elsewhere” is in it. Congrats to my fellow lady authors, and thank you to the artists, and of course editor Paolo C. for his patience.
6. Thank you to Jaykie and his family for treating me out to dinner last night. :)
7. I am 24. I am 24. I am 24.
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10. How the hell can I lose 20 pounds?
From Paolo Chikiamco of Rocket Kapre:
The wait is over. Be here on November 3, 2010 for the launch of the second issue of Usok, the webzine of Fantastic Filipino Fiction. Three all new stories, each with a custom piece of art by some of the best digital painters in the country, with a cover by CG Pintor founder K. Lapeña. Please spread the word!
Table of Contents:
100% of Me by Kate Aton-Osias
Elsewhere by Eliza Victoria
The Widow and the Princess of the Dwende by Elaine Cuyegkeng
Artwork by K. Lapeña, Mark Bulahao, MJ Pajaron, and VN Benedicto
The artwork, as always, is fantastic.
While waiting for Nov. 3, you can always visit the site. Look around. Paolo’s got interviews, news, articles, stories (check out Usok # 1), everything spec fic. :)
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I’ll be celebrating my 24th birthday on Nov. 1 (woo-hoo!). I’ll be offline for more or less four days, starting tomorrow. Will be spending time with family. Enjoy the weekend! :D
I had vertigo in grade school. Benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, to be precise, though of course I didn’t know it was called that. (I didn’t have Internet, then. Ha!) I’d get the dizzies if I lay on my side, or if I tilted my head up and down. Sometimes even when I lay down flat on my back. I would have to elevate my head with pillows when I sleep, and try very hard not to move. It faded away after a week or so.
I had the dizzies again on Sunday, and I still had it on Wednesday night, along with an excruciating headache that crawled down my forehead. I didn’t want to go to a hospital, and I was so sure it would just fade away like last time, but Jaykie was worried, which got me worried, so on Thursday morning I asked him if he could drive me to St. Luke’s.
I’ve always thought St. Luke’s was the shiny building in the middle, so I went straight there with my Medicard. Alas, outpatient clinics are in the more rundown buildings on either side of the shiny building. I went to Medical Arts first (“Strange term, Medical Arts,” Jaykie said), and was told to go to the PET building right across. So off I went to the PET building. I was told to go to Room 713.
Room 713, I was sure, was empty and locked. I waited some more (Jaykie was still parking). Finally I asked the busy Room 711 for directions. Apparently I was in the North part of the building. The Medicard room is in Room 713 also – but Room 713 SOUTH.
The world was spinning – literally – and I could only think, Which smartass sumbitch thought of giving the same room numbers to both wings?
(Actually, now I’m not sure. Maybe I was waiting in the South wing when I should have been in the North wing. The point is I was in the wrong wing standing in front of the same room number. You get the drift.)
So I went to Room 713. I said “vertigo” and I was referred to an ENT doctor in Room 812. There was a line, of course. The wait took TWO HOURS. I mean, wow. We were able to eat lunch in the middle of it. (I kept apologizing to Jaykie; waiting sucks.)
BPPV was the diagnosis, and I was told to move instead of avoiding the vertigo-inducing positions. “You’ll notice that the dizziness disappears.” She recommended three hearing exams: pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and brainstem auditory evoked response.
All three exams had to be taken in the main building. Shiny! I had to wait in line in the cashier to get a receipt for the exams, but at least (and I kept reminding myself this to suppress vertigo rage) I didn’t have to pay.
The audiometry exams were simple. A technician puts an earphone over your head, and everytime you hear a sound, no matter how soft, you raise your hand. Then the technician reads words to you, and you have to repeat the words back to her. Took twenty minutes, and I was able to get the result right away. (Left ear had mild senso – something. I didn’t bother to figure out the graphs.)
I couldn’t take the BAER the same day, so I had to go back early the next day. Torrential rains, and I had to go back so I could have my nervous system checked. Argh. Here I was made to lie down, and a technician attached electrodes (electrodes! like in Fringe!) on my head and inserted earpieces in my ears. I was made to listen to clicks and whirrs for an hour. I was told to relax, but come on. Anyway, I did my best. I certainly couldn’t sleep.
(I got the results from fax today. More graphs, but everything looked fine.)
Jaykie downloaded a PDF reader on his PSP so I could read my ebooks. Now I want a PSP. LOL.
We had tequila on Friday. Though it gave me incredibly painful stomach cramps at two in the morning, it cured my vertigo! Or so I think.
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We went to the OGM on Saturday. Had fun. Played Incan Gold (where sometimes you win if you decide to run away – I don’t like the values this game teach LOL!), Senators (I won!), Dixit (lovely French game where you are handed cards with surreal imagery – I. LOVED. IT. I would buy that fucking card game! Though I don’t get the name.), and Werewolf, which unfortunately we had to end before we could finish the game because it was getting late.
Realization: What I need in the OGM is a constant game partner who can play some lousy boardgame with me while Jaykie is in RPG. Heh. Anyone? Yes?
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This morning is foot spa day! My soles were scrubbed raw, and now my feet and my toenails are happy.
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I need time to re-write a story for an editor who is kind enough to want it for publication. AGH GIVE ME TIME WHY IS IT SO HARD TO WRITE NOWADAYS.
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Dear Universe,
I want to go home on my birthday. Please don’t let me spend my birthday with the first floor flooded.
Thanks.
Love,
My story, “Incidental Light“, is in the second issue of Basement Stories. The issue also features fiction by Lavie Tidhar and Megan Arkenberg.
So, the weekend. I stubbed my toe. The last time I did something so stupid was in grade school, when I stubbed my toe while jumping rope. I broke it and it swelled like a tomato and I had to hop around the house for a week because I was too proud for crutches. This time Jake and I were walking around Greenhills after a glorious lunch at Gloria Maris with his family and a Starbucks stopover with his mother on Friday, and the fellas in front of us stopped and Jake stopped but I didn’t stop soon enough, so my toe hit the back of his shoe and my toenail cracked and almost got ripped off the nail bed. The pain was excruciating, but my first thought was, “My pedicure’s ruined!” I only noticed the blood when we got to the car.
Thank you to Jaykie for this care package. My bleeding toe was very grateful:
(Greenhills, I shall conquer you some other day.)
The logical thing to do was to stay home and rest the toe, but I wasn’t logical, so out I went with Jaykie to meet up with my high school friends. We had dinner at Abe (great food and the service staff was really helpful) and dessert at Golden Spoon and strangely enough, nobody took pictures. Why is that? Were we really that hungry? Or have we reached that age where camwhoring was frowned upon?
Saturday and Sunday were spent in Bulacan. Toe got better and I read some and watched some and I ate my mother’s cooking. No writing done, since I thought I deserved a break after all that pain. Ah, melodrama. But having a toenail almost ripped off your feet is really fucking painful, so there.
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I finished the one and only season of Fear Itself. It’s a horror anthology series and I want more of it. (It got canceled, unfortunately.) Now I want to check out Masters of Horror. My favorite episodes: The Sacrifice, Family Man, In Sickness and In Health, Skin and Bones, Community, and The Spirit Box.
Other TV-related blabbering:
1) I’m glad Glee got its groove back with that season opener. It got boring and dull after the break in Season 1, but now I’m excited to watch again.
2) The How I Met season opener is blah, but I’ll keep watching.
3) Mad Men! More Mad Men! Yeah, I’m watching Season 4, even though I haven’t seen Seasons 2 and 3 and I haven’t even finished Season 1. Eep.
4) Wait, wait, I haven’t seen Big Bang Theory‘s season opener, but I will soon. Also: Modern Family!
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Hey, have you seen Roman Polanski’s Ghost Writer? Tight political thriller. Stunning last scene. (I’ve always thought of Kim Catrall as Samantha, so her British accent here just sounds wrong to me. Other than the fact that it actually sounds wrong – she drops the accent every now and then.)
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It’s a year after Ondoy, and Rocket Kapre’s charity anthology is available for free till October 8. I have a poem there. :)
Straight from my inbox:
Ms. Victoria,
Thanks for sending “Incidental Light” to Basement Stories. I really enjoyed reading your story, in particular, the relationship between the main character and the little brother. I also have to add in here that I loved your poem, “Maps,” in the latest issue of The Pedestal Magazine. Anyway, I’d like to publish “Incidental Light” in the second issue.
[redacted]
Best regards,
Carol Kirkman
Basement StoriesThe website: www.basementstories.org
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/basementstories
The blog: http://basementstories.wordpress.com
I said:
Thank you very much for your kind words. (And must I say that this is the first time an editor said something nice about my submitted story AND a piece I’ve published elsewhere? This made my day.)
It did!
“Incidental Light” originally appeared in the Philippines Free Press. Watch this space. :)
Eliza Victoria 