Jay E. Tria's Blog, page 2

Hello Ever After: Favorite Alarm (The One Where Kris and Ringo Helped Me Process)

It started with anger and a seemingly inevitable dive into hopelessness. We’re all wading into bleak waters these days, and sparks of joy can be hard to come by and take so much to grasp. Tara Frejas has a more coherent origin story for the Hello Ever After series. For me I learned it from her and Mina V. Esguerra, and then Mina shared her draft of the script. It was Ben and Naya from What Kind of Day, and it spoke of anger and love and pushing back. It wasn’t difficult to start from there. I was at work then, because even when the world stopped our work did not. I guess like Ben, I was an essential. I opened a blank document and just alt+tabbed my way into finishing the script before lunch break. I wrote Ringo and Kris (from You Out of Nowhere) in quarantine because of things I needed to process. How it’s scary, stepping out of the house when everyone else was staying in. How I had to, because I was a cog in a wheel and the wheel needed to turn. Ringo was a corporate finance boy who actually liked his job but I knew despite […]

First Sunrise by the Beach

Written for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Kris and Ringo are characters from You Out of Nowhere, a book from Romanceclass Flair. Prompt (that I asked for):  Kris and Ringo at the beach, may or may not be during Summer Crush ***   “Kris, wake up.” “No. Kris, don’t wake up” “We’re catching the sunrise. You promised” “Doesn’t sound like me.” “It’s the first sunrise I get to see where I’m not headed for the office.” One cheek peeling off the pillow. Lashes unsticking. A bleary eye opening, staring at him through a mess of soft curls. “That’s too sad and precious,” her voice rasped. It was sexy, her forcibly woken voice. Her voice was always sexy. But to Ringo this one was special, because it meant she was awake enough to fulfill a sunrise promise with him. He was crouched in front of their hostel bed so he could level her face. He had been stroking her back the way one would touch a sleeping tiger. Gentle, fleeting touches, fingertips trailing a dance on her nightshirt. Enough to be persistent but not annoying. He wanted a date at dawn, not a kick aimed at his eager face. Kris […]

Something Meeting by Six de los Reyes

Written for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Sort of. Jill is a character from the Playlist series, starting with Songs of Our Breakup. Rhys is a character from Six de los Reyes‘ book Just For the Record and also appears in anthology Summer Crush. Prompt: No one asked for this but follows this first meeting and we suppose this is now canon.   *** They handed over the payment at the same time. To which the lady behind the fresh juice bar looked at them odd as they each tried to one-up each other and pay for the other’s fruit shake. But Ate Fruit Shake was having none of the shenanigans and left them both to deal with whatever this was, momentarily moving on to the next customer and letting them decide instead whose money she should take.  Rhys’s eyes flashed for a second of eye contact.  In response Jill clicked her tongue. “You’re ruining the moment.” “You,” Rhys muttered under breath, “are ruining the moment.” “I’m just trying to pay for our drinks.” Not pancakes tonight because it didn’t have to be pancakes. Instead they met at some street food fair and it was a little bit of […]

and then they were roommates by Six de los Reyes

Written by Six de los Reyes for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Jett is a character from Feels Like Summer. Rhys is a character from Just For the Record. They both may or may not appear in other de los Reyes band/summer romance books near you. ***   Jett was testing her patience. But that wasn’t new. Anyway, Rhys has had her whole life perfecting the art of not giving a flying fuck and that included ignoring any and all distractions to maintain her mien of No Fucks Given. At the moment, Jett was very much challenging Rhys’s cool but that was the thing about having roommates. More often than not, they were purpose-built to utterly demolish one’s concentration. “Stop looking at me.” Focus? Laser sharp. Rhys kept the tip of her pencil on the page. Mostly, she accomplished scribbles. Scribbles counted as lyrics too, didn’t they?  “I like looking at you….work,” Jett teased. “I like watching you work. You get this knot on your forehead that makes you look like a pissed off gremlin.” Even without looking up, Rhys just knew Jett was smirking at her. It was given away by tone in her voice, that sweet, sticky quality […]

we have plenty of time by Six de los Reyes

Written by Six de los Reyes for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Phylle and Dax are characters from Field Guide : Love and Other Natural Disasters (Talking Nerdy Book 2) and may or may not appear in other de los Reyes lab nerd books near you. Prompt: 365247 by DAY6   ***   “How is it still raining?” Phylle asked, shifting over to lie on her stomach. “It was raining when we went to sleep and now we’ve woken up it’s still raining.” Dax rolled over to Phylle’s side of the bed, throwing an arm around her waist and pulling her closer until her back was flush against his chest and he fit his knees behind her knees. Boom. Spooning. “Go back to sleep. You can sleep another eight hours if you want to.” “It’s 4:30 in the morning.” Phylle wiggled in his embrace and tried to swim away. “I’m wide awake.” He nuzzled the back of her shoulder. “Then go back to sleep.” “I’m too awake.” Phylle squirmed in his arms but he held onto her tight and tangled his legs around hers. “You’re prickly,” she whined. “Your face is prickly.” And Phylle was ticklish. It was a very […]

Clean Up on Aisle D by Six de los Reyes

Written by Six de los Reyes for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Jett and Adrian are characters from Feels Like Summer and may or may not appear in other de los Reyes band/summer romance books near you. Prompt: Comic con and fun banter / laughs every time they see anything star wars *** Jett was laughing even before Adrian got the joke, but one look at the general direction she’d been looking at and he was steering her away from the display of lightsabers down the hall of the convention center. It mocked him, almost. Neon blue against red all lit up throughout all iterations across the franchise. But it was the green one that was the worst. Just the absolute worst. At least in public.  In private, well, Adrian was one to choose his battles. “Aisle D,” Jett snorted, tugging him back toward the middle of the main walkway, squeezing through the crowd and getting him slapped in the face with the papier-mâché wings of a Deathscyte passing by. “Lightsabers on aisle D,” she giggled, curling into him to check on his nose. “They cannot not be doing this on purpose.” “You’re the only one who thinks that,” he […]

30th

Written for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Jill and Shinta are characters from the Playlist series, starting with Songs of Our Breakup and also in Songs to Make You Stay. Prompt:  Shinta plans Jill’s 30th birthday party   *** Shinta Mori took birthdays seriously. Specially the landmark ones, like the 30th, which was turn-of-the-decade important. Since he’d made Manila his home base, he had been hearing it referred to as the advent of the tito-slash-tita stage of life, where one would get excited about purchasing rice cookers and tea. Fascinating, really. When he turned 30 he already had an interest in household machines and errands, having moved out to his own place early on. And tea, while it was not sake or beer, was always nice. Anyway, this wasn’t about him. This was another person traversing into an exciting new decade, and this person was important. This person also nursed a firm dislike of birthday parties. Tricky. His palm fell on Jill’s thigh, squeezing. “Do you want to go to Sapporo?” One eyebrow rose. “Randomly?” “Not right now.” “Yeah, cos I’m supposed to be up there in 5 minutes.” Her mouth curved to his favorite smirk. She tilted her […]

JxR: First Meeting

Written for #RCReadathon2020 Prompt and Pairing, Please! Challenge. Sort of. Jill is a character from the Playlist series, starting with Songs of Our Breakup. Rhys is a character from Six de los Reyes‘ book Just For the Record and also appears in anthology Summer Crush.  *** This was nice. Silence. Calm. Being surrounded by band boys most hours of her waking life guaranteed noise, chaos, and fun too, sure. Music and hijinks abound. Son and Nino ganging up on Kim while Miki mediated. In the midst of that, productivity and songs happened somehow. It worked out. Music could be quiet too. From the corner of her eye she saw Rhys nudge her fork, spearing a piece of pancake. Jill mirrored the motion, taking a cut of bacon on her next bite. She didn’t know what led to this exactly, a midnight pancake run with Rhys, DJ unicorn extraordinaire. Miki had said working with Rhys had been the strangest yet most efficient experience, a volley of files attached to emails. Abrupt, to-the-point emails. That worked out too, the Summer Crush theme song turned out nice. Was this about work? Jill shrugged, munching on another bit of bacon with some egg. This […]

The King: Eternal Hangover

It’s been 50 days since the finale of The King: Eternal Monarch and I am still here going back and forth the portal to the Kingdom of Corea. Usually 2 weeks of K-drama hangover is enough (or even too much) but this is TKEM, the drama that loved me back and helped me through pandemic anxiety. In this essay (lol) I try to process why I still live here. [Obviously spoilers everywhere. This is your first and only warning. Ok go]   Reconciling with Lee Minho. I came here because of Kim Goeun whom I loved since Goblin. When casting news came out about her reuniting with writer Kim Eunsook (Goblin, The Heirs, DOTS) with LMH as her main man I went ‘eh’, the kind of eh made by a person who has seen and enjoyed LMH’s previous things (Boys Over Flowers, The Heirs) and never quite getting what made him click. Well in this drama I got it, okay. I don’t know if it’s the character, the post-serving-the-country aura (they all get it, we know this), his chemistry with KGE (I’m not going to even but here is one bts clip of many enjoy!!!) or all of the above. […]

He Bangs! She Bangs! New Book : Songs To Your Beat

I didn’t know what to do with Nino until we decided it’s time to move on. If you’ve known him since Songs Of Our Breakup, you’d know Nino didn’t have a good run with his last relationship. Not really spoiler alert: he messed up. He did try to win a heart back and tried a do-over, a prelude to which we see in the super short narrative of him flying to Singapore on a mission in the aptly titled That Thing Called Closure. From there I waited, I tried, I asked him how indeed can he succeed in this do-over. And it just wasn’t rolling, because it can’t. Some things are un-fixable, and maybe the fixing has to be an inward thing and that is the lesson for today, Nino-wise. So in his book Songs To Your Beat (unofficial/really official/some kind of canon alternative title Songs You Bang To), Nino tries again. Not to revive a dead relationship, a love he lost, but to forge on, scarred heart and lessons learned and all of that. Find love and love himself again. A single tear may trickle down when I think about this, because it wasn’t easy, and this dude, Nino, […]