Mina V. Esguerra's Blog, page 14

Interim Goddess of Love [chapter 4]

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A challenge/invitation for 2022 #RomanceClass

As I’m looking at my plans and schedule for 2022, I think it’ll be safer for me to say that I will not be doing a #RomanceClass soon. We have a lot going on in our lives! Doing a class with very strict deadlines (and they have to be so people can actually finish) is not the mood I want for the start of the year.

So I’m issuing a challenge. Or an invitation, if you prefer that term lol.

If you are a Filipino author writing a contemporary romance novella that can be part of romanceclass, please let me know about it. It has to:

– Be a contemporary romance novella that is mostly in English, at least 30,000 words. Including a small percentage of text in other Filipino languages is welcome, as long as the book is still mostly in English.
– Have Filipino main characters (does not have to be set in the Philippines)
– Have HEA/HFN ending
– Specifically address a gap or gaps in the RomanceClass catalog

What gaps am I particularly interested in addressing?

– Settings within the Philippines (I want contemporary romance in every region, featuring the realities of the place and ideally by people who love living there and can convey that love in their book)
– Queer pairings
– Older characters
– Jobs and cultural dynamics we have not seen often enough!
– Heat level 4?!

I don’t need the story to have all of the above just to tick off entries on a check list. Ideally you have a story, it’s a romance, it celebrates our being Filipino, and you haven’t seen RomanceClass do something like it.

What #RomanceClass as a community can do:

– Give you comments and editorial feedback so that the resulting book is a romance that celebrates our being Filipino and is a thing that our readers all over the world can enjoy.
– Introduce you to editors who are experienced in editing this niche of romance and have edited books that are well-received and loved.
– Introduce you to artists, designers, photographers, printers who can package your book in a way that conveys it’s a romance and celebrates being Filipino.
– Read you! We will actually buy and read the book and talk about it on social media.

You must be willing or ready to self-publish the book that comes out of this process, or if you end up working with a traditional corporate publisher, that you compensate those in RomanceClass who worked on the book prior to the deal.

As a community supporting authors who self-publish we’re aware of a self-published author’s limited budget. We also recognize that this is valuable, important work, and if you are already working with a publisher and still had us workshop your book, we must be compensated for this work.

I may offer to cover the costs of self-publishing, if enough of us feel that this is a book that needs to be out there for all of us immediately. (In case cost is what is stopping you from releasing this great book.)

Some required reading/viewing before you submit anything:

– As many romanceclass books as you can get, especially the ones even slightly similar to your story. Get them at romanceclassbooks.com. Read the reviews of those books too, so you see what readers loved about the books, and what they found lacking.
– The #RomanceClass textbook and introduction so you know if this is the writing community for you!

When you’re ready, email minavesguerra@gmail.com the following:

– Subject line: RomanceClass 2022
– Body of the email:
Introduce yourself (name, author name, social media, links to previous work)
Your book’s description, written as an Amazon book description (write it as if I’m seeing this on the Amazon Kindle store and I might buy it based on the book description)

Don’t send a copy of the manuscript. But manuscript must be finished.

Send questions to minavesguerra@gmail.com or as a comment here on this post. Thank you!

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Interim Goddess of Love [chapter 3]

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Interim Goddess of Love [chapter 2]

The post Interim Goddess of Love [chapter 2] first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.

Interim Goddess of Love [front matter + chapter 1]

The post Interim Goddess of Love [front matter + chapter 1] first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.

2021 in #RomanceClassCovers Shoots

Previously, on #RomanceClassCovers:

1: Collabs and acquiring photos from fashion/style content creators.

2: Organizing our first shoot with Migs and Katrice.

3: Crowdfunding and organizing subsequent shoots with Rachel, Jef, Fred, Vanya, Gab, Gio, AJ, Cora, Bibo, Celine.

4: More shoots, with Bibo, Graie, Biel, JP, Alex, Liane, Rap, Sam, Jeanne, Ranjil, Carla, Jef.

5: Learning how to do shoots in a national lockdown.

2021 was our second year of doing shoots in lockdown mode—and we’re getting used to it? Even with variations in equipment and setup of our models, it’s not so much trouble to get it all together. We do this all on Zoom, and our models often just need a phone with the Zoom app, a decent internet connection, and a plain background in an area of their space that gets enough light. We’re often done in less than two hours, and then get ready for Sunday lunch. (We do shoots Sunday mornings, most often.)

This year a friend (let’s call her J) has been very helpful in casting cover models, and introduced us to Kirsten, Dre, Mela, and Dae. Sometimes it feels like we don’t know who could be willing to model for a romance book and then someone comes along who totally understands what we’re trying to do and happens to know an entire list of people. A hero!

Kisten and Dre live in Australia and are married…so we got to do an actual couple shoot for my cover! They’re a fun pair and their dynamic is different from the characters we had them portray, but that’s not a problem at all and just makes for a fun shoot. In previous Zoom shoots a family member or significant other would be helping the model behind the scenes, but Kirsten and Dre were both in front of the camera so we had to use the phone timer (and maybe a remote? I forgot if that worked) to take their shots. One of those little adjustments.

Dae and Mela are going to be on a cover together but they were not in the same location when we did the shoot! We still had the Zoom meeting all together at the same time though, so they could “meet” and “act” and see how the other was doing their thing. Excited to see how this cover will turn out! (Mela is available to model again and she has awesome outfits. Note to self and others!)

A couple of shoots we did involved readers of our books as models. It’s a great experience too when this happens! We do say that we hope readers see themselves as our main characters, and another thing to literally do it and make a reader a cover model. Ailla has been on our invite list for a shoot for a while and I’m glad we were able to do it! Her setup was outdoors, with a green background, and family helping her out.

Gis has been an Instagram and Twitter friend for years, has been reading my books for maybe a bit longer, and I don’t even know why it took this long for me to invite her. No wait, I know—it’s because I’m not like J who has a quick eye for this and connected things in her head much faster! I’m a writer not a casting agent lol even if I have to try to be a lot of things when I publish. Anyway, not only is Gis someone who has read my books (so she understood what the book would likely be about and I didn’t have to explain all too much) but she also has a complete studio setup in her home. Her husband Allen took the shots using his DSLR, which was hooked up to the laptop and we were seeing it on Zoom. Everything was gorgeous.

So what did we learn from this year of doing Zoom shoots? It confirmed to me that a Zoom shoot is a shoot. It was and had been a substitute for “the real thing,” but the kind of photos and energy and options we now have because of it are absolutely the real thing. Having this option available is great even as we figure out how to return to studios, because it allows us to work with people who prefer being in their own space, or those who just live too far away.

It sounds like our experience was smooth and easy and now every publisher should do it. At first I was advocating for it, but now I realize that as with anything new, and maybe especially for something like this, you need to work with people you trust. Or people need to be able to trust you to want to say yes to something like this. There’s a lot of work that goes into that and it extends beyond the one or two hours that doing the shoot will take.

I think we did great work this year! Everyone has been so great and talented and amazing.

The post 2021 in #RomanceClassCovers Shoots first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.

This book that is the opposite of fail

This tells me a story.

I like looking at my sales data, but at the same time I try not to judge my books—or myself—harshly by it. A few years ago I decided to set a minimum earnings goal for each of my books, and even then, that I would not consider a book a failure or success based on how fast they met that goal.

Because when I get down to it, each book has a different purpose, and it doesn’t surprise me if they achieve things differently. On their own time.

Fairy Tale Fail was my first self-published book, first book of mine on Amazon, and thankfully I did not go through with any panicked/regretful thoughts of deleting it and starting over. That means I have data on it from its very beginning, until today.

This post is not a story about sales or money. Fairy Tale Fail met its minimum a long time ago. There is already a permanently-free version on Wattpad, a tradpub print version that got wide distribution in the Philippines, it’s in libraries in cities I’ve never even visited, a filmmaker friend has “dibs” on an adaptation. It met various measures of success years ago.

I tend to talk about this book the least by now because thematically I’ve moved on to other things, and its very linear, by-the-numbers 3-act structure, slow-burn romance isn’t necessarily what I write anymore. But seeing how this book performs out there in the world reminds me that:

1. a book that was important to me then will be important to someone today

2. “a new generation of readers” is not just about age but about readiness, and every year more people of all ages are ready to read Filipinos, telling stories our way

3. it’s good to revisit and update a book and give readers a reason to discover it again (new cover, new epilogue, new scene)

4. new books bring activity to the older ones

When people ask me for publishing advice it’s almost always about how to sell more, and I understand that. So here’s an answer: who are the people who read books like yours? Who might need to read it but isn’t yet? Find them, sell to them, or give them access to the story because you may want to earn their trust first before they decide to buy.

Sometimes I tell an author this and their reply is, “OK then—tell me who my audience is and who I should be selling to. Tell me who needs this book.” And I might not often answer because this is not something that should come from me (an outsider to the author’s process), although I also understand that some people want to be told they’re doing something right (or wrong). So here’s another quick answer, in case it applies: if you wrote the book for you, then you’re the target reader, aren’t you? What kinds of books do you buy and read? What would make you read a book like yours? Where should it be, how would you even find out? If you do not buy books like yours, what do you need to change in how you read or how you publish?

When I asked myself this, I ended up changing my entire reading lifestyle. I couldn’t be asking people to read indie and support Filipino authors, if my platform and time and budget did not reflect the same. It’s a process, but becoming the reader who helps create an environment where your own work can thrive leads you to all the places and people who support that thing you do. Being in touch with all of this makes it easier for us to write things that matter to us and the audience we chose. Because we are that audience too.

The story of book data for me isn’t just about money, but also about the value of time and attention. If you have access to any kind of data about your book, what story did it just tell you?

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Your Place Next Year (cover and buy links)

So pleased to share the cover and buy links for YOUR PLACE NEXT YEAR! Out November 26!

Book description:

Alia Monterojo may be the country director of one of the largest consulting firms in Manila, but she absolutely doesn’t want to be at this important breakfast meeting right now. In another time she would have been in La Union, spending her only free week a year at the beach, with a certain someone who doesn’t even know her full name. She’s missed the trip for several years now, for good reason, but she still wishes things were different, that she was with him instead. 

This year, she gets her chance, when he shows up at the breakfast meeting as an invited guest—because he’s the CEO of the small company they might acquire.

Content notes: As of 2021, this is set in a somewhat near (and safer) future, and the covid lockdown/various quarantines in the Philippines happened as is, are mentioned, and have an effect on the plot and characters. 

Buy links: Amazon | Gumroad | Google Play | Scribd | Apple Books | Kobo | Barnes & Noble | Overdrive | Smashwords

This lovely, sexy cover was designed by Tania Arpa, featuring (lovely, sexy) cover model Giselle Muñoz. Photos were taken by Allen Pangan, in a shoot directed by Chi Yu Rodriguez for #RomanceClassCovers. This was a shoot that was still directly remotely (via Zoom) during lockdown, but probably closest to a studio shoot that we’ve done at this time. It’s amazing how people have adapted creatively and even when things “go back” (whatever that means) I love that we’ll have options to work with people and have more people contributing to the creation of things, even if they’re physically somewhere else.

#RomanceClassCovers pic.twitter.com/8P0ES5SM55

— Mina V. Esguerra (@minavesguerra) October 3, 2021

Thank you, friends! More books soon. From, and for, everyone. Hugs!

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#FeelsFest2021 on October 23!

Yes there is a #RomanceClass online event this month! It’ll be on October 23, 4 PM PHT on our Twitch channel, kilig.pub/twitch. We’ll have:

NEW BOOKS/STORIES/ANTHOLOGIES/EDITIONS/COVER REVEALS by Mina V. Esguerra (me!), Celestine Trinidad, Bianca Mori, Carla de Guzman, Clare Elisabeth Marquez, Ana Tejano, Chris Mariano, Suzette de Borja, Brigitte Bautista, and Chi Yu Rodriguez!

READINGS of stories by Angeli E. Dumatol, Ana Tejano, Jay E. Tria, Bianca Mori, Celestine Trinidad, EK Gonzales, Chris Mariano, Brigitte Bautista and Chi Yu Rodriguez!

PERFORMED by Migs Almendras, Salve Villarosa, Jef Flores, Gio Gahol, Graie So, Presh Capistrano, Teetin Villanueva, and Rachel Coates!

A REMINDER that we’re doing a collab with Komiket and people should sign up at bit.ly/romancekomiks!

I’ve been doing a bit of work the past few months that I’m pleased to talk about, such as the release of Totally Engaged, the 2021 edition of Interim Goddess of Love, and a new short book Your Place Next Year. These projects were very nice to me, if that’s a thing I can even explain. Some books might feel like such an effort to put together and release, and I wonder if I’ve managed to adjust to the current time, or the projects adjusted to me. These stories and projects are, and continue to be, happy things that happen to my day or week or month, and while I call them “work” they don’t feel like that. Then before I know it, October (the time for FeelsFest) has come along and I almost forgot that I have new “work” to “promote.” (Even “promoting” doesn’t seem like the right word for it…because it’s not like there’s a plan or an ad budget haha.)

I’m happy that other authors in the community have new books and stories we can be excited about. I’m glad we have FeelsFest and all our online channels as spaces to celebrate. In terms of creating, we who write and release books online have managed to keep creating (if we want to), but I’m also thinking about our friends in theater and film, and other areas of this corner of our industry. Can we do more? And how?

Anyway—I hope you watch the broadcast on October 23 and be part of this! Let’s help each other create all these things.

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Romance Komiks: Yes? Now? Yes.

We’ve talked about this for years, and now we’ve taken steps to start. #RomanceClass as a community supports romance genre content pretty much across all media. I watch Filipino romcom movies, a bunch of us follow romance K-dramas, we groupwatch Hollywood romance movies, we buy/lend/borrow/follow romance comics in print and web formats. We support indie art markets like Komiket…and for years someone has said we should do romance comics and work with Komiket’s Filipino artists.

OK, we’re going to do that now! Sign up for the RomanceClass and Komiket collab at bit.ly/romancekomiks.

The form is just to get to know everyone and see where they’re at, and how they’d like to participate. I also explain very quickly what #RomanceClass is about, just so anyone joining is clear what we mean by Romance (we require HEA/HFN). We will likely do a workshop as we start, so any questions about the genre and format can be addressed then and we’d love if people send in their questions so we know what we’ll need to cover. Please sign up with an email that you check often!

Here’s the intro that I added to the form:

Thank you for being interested in creating romance comics! This is a collab project with #RomanceClass, a community of Filipino authors of romance in English. We’ve published more than 100 romance books, available worldwide, listed at romanceclassbooks.com.

Our published books have the following romance pairings: (mostly) m/f, (need more) m/m, f/f, f/non-binary.

We set guidelines for #RomanceClass books! They are:

Romance must be main plot (not subplot or B plot)
Characters must choose each other at the end (the “happy ending” as required in romance genre publishing)
Agency for Filipino characters (they must be free to make decisions that affect their lives, careers, relationships)
Consent in depictions of romantic relationships

Romance comics we produce together will use the same editorial process and guidelines.

In terms of sex content, we allow authors to write what their story needs, and select a heat level that applies. This is our current heat level scale:

Level 0 – No sex on or off the page (kissing included here)
Level 1 – Off-page sex mentioned in story
Level 2 – At least one “closed door” sex scene (“fade to black”)
Level 3 – At least one “open door” sex scene
Level 4 – Explicit erotic romance, with characters still choosing to be in a committed relationship with each other at the end of the story

If you have questions about the writing, the editorial guidelines, heat levels, or the #RomanceClass community in general, send them to MINA (mina@romanceclassbooks.com).

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