Jay E. Tria's Blog, page 6

Ready To Meet Your Summer Crush?

Are you ready for summer are you ready for summer? Let the boys and girls of Trainman, East Genesis Project, Arabella and East Dragon Records jump start the long, long, hot days and nights with their stories set in music festival Summer Crush. One-click now for your all access pass. Do it from today until April 30 and receive a special gift from Six de los Reyes, Tara Frejas, and myself! It’s bound to be a weekend to remember, we swear it <3 **** When life, love, and rock and roll come together on the sandy beaches of La Union for music festival Summer Crush, expect nothing less than the crashing of lips, bodies, and waves against the shore, against each other, and against your soul. Allow these three tales of love to take you away for an unforgettable weekend. Ana’s life as a corporate warrior, graduate student, and girlfriend to indie rock band boy Miki starts to spin out of control, and she wonders if it is love that has to give. (You Only Need Reminding, Jay E. Tria) Newly reinstated EG Project roadie Filipina Legaspi flies with her band back to the Philippines for Summer Crush, unaware of the […]

Things to Do on a Weekend in Singapore

We were there for Chris Martin. Because Coldplay Manila tickets were slippery unicorns, and because my sister would not have any of my defeatist shrugging, and because we had a good friend in Singapore who was more than willing to play host. So okay, we had the weekend. We knew it wasn’t enough. We knew we wanted some tita time to rest before the concert. What to do? Where to go? Crab and merlion and supertrees. Touchdown 8 pm via Singapore Airlines then luggage drop-off at our AirBnB apartment at Sophia Road via Dhoby Ghaut MRT. After the reunion hugs and a taste of the 1SGD ice cream (FINALLY FINALLY), our friend Norie asked me what I wanted to eat. I said crabs, preferably chili. I was not a fan of crabs, really. It’s the intense cracking and shell-prying ceremonies that I do not enjoy, but I wasn’t able to eat this during my first visit in SG. So I had to have it this time. We were supposed to go to Jumbo Seafood in Clarke Quay, but it was past 10 pm and they were fully booked.  So off to Long Beach we went, a few minutes’ walk away from Mountbatten MRT station. […]

All Our Love, Promdi Heart

  I don’t come from a sexy province. That was my biggest challenge coming into this anthology of love stories set in our hometown Philippine provinces. So okay, I took that and joined it with one of the least sexy holidays to complete my setting, added one Trainman, and out came One Certain Day. By the time I typed The End, it turned out I like this origin story

April 1, 2017

I’d said ‘it’s okay, let it go, it’s not meant to be’ to this night too many times for my sister’s liking. But my sister, half in love with the band and Mr. Martin as she is, wouldn’t have any of it, so she persevered. So we found a way. From the first strains of A Head Full of Dreams, she would have had every right to holler ‘I told you so, I told you so, how dare you’ at my face. Followed by ‘how could you have thought we could miss this.’ But the music was weaving a spell. The lights, the heat that slithered and settled in the air, the beams of neon pulsating to the beat. The night was magic, from the first tick of the minute hand to 8 p.m. At one point, Chris took a moment to thank everyone who was there, including the people who flew in and endured the stress and the hassle and the traffic, both land and air. ‘And our mother,’ my sister and I muttered with a laugh. It’s always hard to explain urges like this, the need to feel music this way. But in those two hours there was no […]

Bad Dreams

Some time ago, my friend and fellow author Anne Plaza asked me if I could find my #StrangeLit feels again for a short story to contribute. This came out and now it’s up on the Philippine Genre Stories website, hurray! Note: not a romance though, k?

Miki and Ana’s Twenty Questions

In Songs to Get Over You, Ana suggests that she and Miki get to know each other better by playing Twenty Questions. Now I don’t know the actual questions you’d find if you get this game, but as Ana said, the rules are pretty simple: 1. You answer all the questions, and 2. The questions don’t have to end at 20. So here I’m sharing with you Miki and Ana’s version of the game. I’ve put down my own answers (feel free to ignore them, haha), and I thought it would be fun if you answer them too. Tag me? Okay, GO! What is the first album ever bought? (Either a Backstreet Boys one or one by the Moffatts. Yeah I was a cool kid) Who is your favorite movie villain? (Loki. Because I loved Tom Hiddleston back then) What is the worst book you have ever read? (Not because it was terrible, but because I felt like I needed to be in my happiest state to be able to enjoy that book. And at the time I wasn’t. Autofiction by Hitomi Kanehara) Who was your first kiss? (If only I can say Devon Sawa without lying…) Who is your favorite Star Wars […]

March 17, 2017

I’ve always been afraid to forget. I thought of that constantly, when the wounds were fresh and new, and I could still hear your voice, our last conversation, because it’s only been a day after all. Two days, then three, four. A week, a month. A year. I didn’t want to forget, and I’ve kept that thought and thought it often with the passage of time. At first the hours were slow, excruciatingly so. Other days, time would flow in sharp bursts, when grief would give way to moments of joy and relief and triumph. And grief would return, and I would welcome it, because it came with memories of you. It was a blanket, warm and soft, heavy and mine. Sometimes I wonder if it was all real. Your love and the swiftness of our friendship. Sometimes even the pictures are not enough receipts. This day, I forgot. The calendar, your mother’s sorrow, the birthday greetings reminded me. There came guilt. It settled in and it was familiar. There came memories of you, and pictures, and receipts. And I remembered. I remembered everything. Cheers to your birthday, hon.

Happy First Book Birthday Miki! Free Stuff on Him!

Celebrating the first book birthday of Songs to Get Over You with a discount and giveaways! The book is only $0.99 on Amazon for a limited time. Free stuff below. Click and join? Yes? YAY! a Rafflecopter giveaway

Cover Reveal: Waiting in the Wings by Tara Frejas

New book alert! Tara Frejas has a new book out and yay check out that gorgeous cover. Synopsis below too to get you more hyped up for this release. *** Genre: Romance / NA / Contemporary Release Date: February 21, 2017 Book Cover Design by: Miles Tan Synopsis: At twenty-three, theatre actress Erin Javier has yet to fall in love or kiss a boy offstage and away from the klieg lights. She’s the perfect leading lady—whose heart men would fight for, win, and protect—unfortunately, only until the curtains fell and the lights went down. In real life, Erin’s a certified NBSB whose heart’s been hoping for a song to dance to for quite some time. But when two (two!) men enter from stage left and right, Erin is confused. Who deserves to take center stage in her heart—Mr. Theatre Royalty whose attention and displays of affection make her pulse race, or a good friend whose steady support has helped steer her to success and allowed her to fulfill her dream? Add Waiting in the Wings on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

2016 – The Bookish Year That Was

It feels good to do this again, because it tells me that 2015 was not a fluke or a very vivid daydream, but was something that really happened and led to more things in 2016, writing and publishing-wise. In 2016, I: Published two books, Songs to Get Over You (February 2016) and Songs to Make You Stay (October 2016) Wrote two books, Songs to Make You Stay and SYCBT Put my books up on Createspace for paperbacks to be available internationally. Well, all except the Shinta book. I shall get to that.   Wrote a children’s short story for Bayong ng Kuting called The Kitten She Didn’t Love, loosely based on the love-hate relationship between my sister and our indomitable male feline, Bing. This may be a trope. Wrote a story spiral for Ines Bautista-Yao’s blog, starring Miki, because some days my feelings belong to him. Attended a YA writing class organized by Bronze Age Media and facilitated by Ines, because I liked hanging out with the people and because my YA wheels needed oiling.   Participated in Manila International Book Fair on the first year that #romanceclass had a booth. It felt surreal. Until now I know my understanding of its significance […]