Prex J.D.V. Ybasco's Blog, page 41

AMAZON LILY*

by Jahzeel Dionne V. Ybasco

Good things kept happening to me last month. My family and I had our second family reunion, I successfully finished the marathon, my family also celebrated Fathers’ Day. I was also able to get the highest number of classes in our company for three straight times. But what served as the icing on the cake last month is how I was able to release my book, “To Be Continued”** in Amazon and Kindle. It is an amazing feeling, being able to do what I have always loved, writing. It is even a better feeling that I have been able to publish my work.

“TO BE CONTINUED” copyrighted

When I was a kid it was just a petty dream. I was then playing with characters in my head, adding personalities here and there, coming up with different plots. I had several notebooks full of childish stories, most of them similar to animes I saw. There were times when I ran out of character names so I “borrowed” some from those animations. Side characters from popular ones became my favorites and I even made them a number of fanfictions. Then, three years, when addiction to animation temporarily stopped, I began having crazy ideas that it was about time for me to make my own story.

The process was difficult but interesting. Old ideas got trampled by new ones. I started creating and recycling names. Opportunities to write were difficult to come by. Then I realized that making use of my time when I did not have classes was the best way to face this challenge. Unlike before when I had to check papers after an examination period, which by the way I tend to miss every now and then, I could just maximize my time reading novels, editing my work, imagining new things, and putting them on print.

Seeing my work in Amazon and Kindle is like witnessing the culmination of all my efforts. I still get upset from time to time that my statistics doesn’t move any higher but I still have a long way to go. Allen, one of my students, told me that I shouldn’t lose focus on my real target. My target is to write and not just to get any royalty. Oh boy! How he woke me up! He is right. Publishing my first novel should serve as the gate for me to publish more. I am ecstatic that I have one book up there but I know I’ll be happier in the future once I have completed the series and maybe produce a fantasy novel.

*title inspired by one island in One Piece

**You can see my work here:

http://www.amazon.com/Prex-J.D.-V-Ybasco/e/B010NXS61I/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1435929755&sr=1-1

Odd One Out

A take on Neil Gaiman’s novel Odd and the Frost Giants

by Jahzeel Dionne Ybasco

There is no use wondering if we could go back to our childhood: it has long been proven we cannot. At least, there are some stories that take us back to the times when we can believe in anything when life was not that difficult yet and children thought it possible to fly. Neil Gaiman takes us back to the times when it was just fine to make fun of gods, legends and imagine why the world is the way it is with his short novel, Odd and the Frost Giants.

It is a well-written fanfiction, a fresh take on Norse Mythology. I didn’t even realize that I was about to read (and finish) until I got through the third chapter and even then, I refused to believe it. It could have just been the author’s device to make me read it more. I could have been the innocent in all of these but including “Frost Giants” in the title of the novel was not a giveaway. Not until the Eagle dived into the pool of water and created the Rainbow Bridge did I believe that it seriously was a different take on Norse Mythology.

One factor why I like this novel is the simple naming sense. It reminds me of How to Train Your Dragon where the main character is named Hiccup and his father is named Stoic because, well, he is stoic. The protagonist of Odd and the Frost Giants is named Odd– how easy is that. He earns his name for smiling despite moments when a smile on a person’s face is the last thing people expect to see (e.g. his father’s death, the time he loses his foot). The prominent gods included in it are named after typical animals, Bear, Eagle, and Fox. Even Odd’s uncle who is equivalent to Cinderella’s evil stepmother is named Fat Elfred because he is fat and not because he is obstinate.

That a bear, eagle, and a fox can talk is already an appeal by itself. People need to read fables more. To even realize that the animals are Thor, Odin and Loki is even a better treat. The bear summarizes almost everything about Thor, his strength, his command, and even the blind way he follows his feelings more than his cunning. Odin’s pride is symbolized by the Eagle as he doesn’t like to mingle with the other land animals. What better way to symbolize Loki than a cunning fox?

What probably serves as the icing of the cake for me is Odd’s simple logic which outwits the Frost Giant. It reminds me of the innocence of children. They are very simple, their lives less complicated. Talking to kids makes me remember how easy it was to look at airplanes and imagine people could ride birds. It is interesting to read a novel that reflects what people used to imagine when they were kids. I can only assume that Neil Gaiman used Odd, a crippled character who has an unnerving smile, so most readers, particularly those who did not actually have a colorful or sparkling childhood, can relate to him.