Mina V. Esguerra's Blog, page 29
March 30, 2016
#AprilFeelsDay: Celebrating romance on April 17
So we’re doing this! The #romanceclass community of readers and authors has done meetups before, and also sold books at fairs, and organized live performances of the books, but now we’re putting it all together and inviting everyone to join.
We hope you can come to #AprilFeelsDay on April 17, Sunday, from 1 pm to 6 pm. There’s an entrance fee of P200 that gets you snacks and a free book (while supplies last!). Here’s what’s in store for that afternoon:
Tarot card reading
Romance book fair
Poetry reading (featuring Pierra Calansanz-Labrador’s The Heartbreak Diaries)
Romance writing and publishing Q&A (20 winners will receive free printing of their book! 1 copy + Manila shipping courtesy of JMD Copy and Print Shop)
Live reading of romance books featuring performers Rachel Coates, Gio Gahol, Jef Flores, Salve Villarosa, and Herv Alvarez
Book launches and signings
See what we’ve been doing on Instagram to count down to April Feels Day.
Register here: bit.ly/aprilfeelsday (But you’ll have to be at the venue to claim your book!)
See you!
March 6, 2016
#romanceclass episode 8: FINDING X, read by Rachel Coates and Gio Gahol
This scene from Finding X by Miles Tan was in the original #romanceclass live reading — and we couldn’t resist doing it again. So at the Filipino Readercon, we had Gio and Rachel perform it, and we recorded it live, and now it’s episode 8 of the podcast.
While the audio version is awesome because it includes the audience reactions, what unfortunately isn’t captured here are all of Gio’s little attempts to maybe take his shirt off. (He doesn’t.)
February 29, 2016
The Future Chosen on Radish: Chapter 6 snippet
Chapter 6 unlocks next week on the Radish app! Read a preview here.
Zamara had called.
He had his phone with him, sure, but stopped regularly looking at it when the stream of work-related messages came in. None of them needed his immediate attention, and he had to learn how to update the damn medical charts first. Besides, he was only part of a team at his actual job, and those people wrote new laws every day.
Emil didn’t contact him. He wasn’t going to, they agreed, unless it was to warn Andres. Andres himself called Lala a few times already for help finding his way around the island hospital, because it would have arisen suspicion if he asked anyone else on staff.
His call history said Zamara had rung him three hours earlier. While he was serving Lourdes dinner.
Andres called her back. “Hey,” he said.
February 21, 2016
The Future Chosen on Radish: Chapter 5 snippet
Chapter 5 of The Future Chosen unlocks next week! Here’s a snippet. Read it on the Radish app.
If there was someone Andres considered a mentor, it would be his Lolo J.
J for Jose, not that it meant anything because there were many, many Joses in Isla, in history. Lolo J was his paternal grandfather’s brother, so their connection was not a direct one. Andres’s earliest memories of Lolo J involved a dark library, a yellow lamp, and Lolo J reading to him. Not stories for kids, of course not, Lolo J’s library was huge but he didn’t have anything for kids.
Lolo J read legal articles. Case documents. Court decisions.
February 16, 2016
The Future Chosen on Radish: Chapter 4 snippet
My new book The Future Chosen is available right now as a Radish Exclusive. Download the Radish app to read chapters early, before the full book is published later this year. Read a chapter free weekly, or purchase in-app coins to unlock chapters. Currently iOS only, soon on Android and web.
Here’s how Chapter 4 “Difficult but not impossible” starts. It unlocks next week!
Making his way to Callemara would be difficult, but not impossible.
The inaccessibility of the island hospital was its main selling point, its reason for being. It wasn’t a facility for emergency care; people went there to recover in private, reveal their vulnerabilities and the little humiliations of physical sickness to no one who wasn’t bound to secrecy, and return to their respective power centers in Isla totally restored.
His checklist of difficult but not impossible things to do:
One, secure seven to ten days of time for himself. That alone would have prevented him from acting on this, because one day alone, much less seven, miraculous at ten, was a dream. A joke. An urban legend passed around 513, like the one about the administration agreeing to hold a prom. It was the stupidest thing and no one believed it. It was also the stupidest thing that everyone secretly hoped was true.
Dear God. A prom. They were being groomed to run the nation and all they wanted was a dance.
And yet he needed his days. Where to find them? He had work for the Senator, obligations to the Policy Center, a security detail, and nightly dinners with family that were actually strategy sessions in five courses.
It was Emil who came up with the solution.
“My house,” he said.
#romanceclass episode 7: THE BOYFRIEND BACKTRACK excerpt performed by Rachel Coates and Gio Gahol
The podcast will sound a little different this week, and that’s because this episode was recorded live. Gio and Rachel performed excerpts from romance novels at the Filipino Readercon, and this was one of their scenes. The Boyfriend Backtrack by Dawn Lanuza was a hit among us present at the rehearsal, and I knew it would present a fun challenge for the actors. They of course nailed it, in rehearsal, and live.
Join the giveaway!
February 8, 2016
Video: My favorite OTP from a book series
I’ve been answering questions on video! Discussing books and writing and publishing.
February 4, 2016
#romanceclass podcast episode 6: JUST FOR THE RECORD excerpt read by Gio Gahol and Rachel Coates
I loved this.
I know what it sounds like — every update is me saying “I loved this” in different ways. That is true, but also, I should say that I took the raw recording of the Just for the Record episode and listened to it a lot. Usually at night, before going to bed, armed with earplugs and everything.
The scene is bittersweet, even out of context. What gets me is Rachel playing this whimsical and sweet, and Gio’s narration is exactly why I’m listening to this like it’s a lullaby. When they recorded this, and they said their final lines, it began to sink in just how sad the scene was, and how sad they made it seem. It was awesome, but then I said it probably shouldn’t be performed live. It’s the kind of thing you want to hear alone, with comfort food, or a blanket.
Go listen, and then join the giveaway!
February 2, 2016
#HeistClub: Crime stories by Filipino authors, out now
#HeistClub is the online crime writing class we organized, to give Filipino authors who wanted to write crime fiction a chance to (safely) explore the dark side. We told the authors to write a “Case number 1” — and imagine themselves at the very beginning of what could be a procedural series. The stories are out now on buqo as ebook bundles. If crime is your preferred literary genre, I hope you read it! And encourage an author or two if you like what they’ve created.
This class was organized by Bronze Age Media and sponsored by buqo and Enderun’s The Study. Thanks also to Jennifer Hillier, F.H. Batacan, R.J. Taduran, Kevin Uy, Juliet Grames, Andrea Pasion-Flores, and everyone who joined the “club.”
January 24, 2016
#romanceclass podcast extra: Interview with Mina V. Esguerra, author of NEVER JUST FRIENDS/FALLEN AGAIN
That’s right, the latest #romanceclass podcast extra is an interview with me. Here I talk about what it was like to listen to the episode, and what I like about this podcast experiment in general.
At the time that we recorded this, we hadn’t decided yet, but now we have — we’re doing another round of podcast episodes! Watch out for them soon, and thanks for listening to the podcast right now.
