Mina V. Esguerra's Blog, page 32
October 28, 2015
#StrangeLit ebook launch at Recession Coffee (October 24, 2015)
I’m still a little overwhelmed and unable to process most of my feelings about having actually gotten away with doing the #StrangeLit class, much more the launch, but here’s an attempt:
We put the #StrangeLit class together because people asked for it. I kept doing this online class thing but for the romance genre, because that is what I write. I didn’t feel comfortable mentoring anyone on fantasy and anything else…so I didn’t. #StrangeLit was the same class methodology but with resource persons who wrote and published fantasy, and I guess it worked! 41 authors out of about 90 active participants made it through to the very end.
These stories are now available as ebook anthologies on ebook app buqo. They’re grouped into 4 bundles, and buqo is probably the cheapest and easiest way to get all 41 stories right now. Get the buqo bundles here!
I hope that, if you’re reading this and support the idea of people writing new things, you give it a try with a purchase. Many of the authors here aren’t full-time authors; they took the class and worked on a dream while being someone else (someone practical) in real life. Finishing a story is one thing — having that story read, purchased, talked about…that’s another thing entirely, and it’s an experience that only readers can give. If you prefer reading paper, know that print is a business that costs money and trees, and the decision to spend money and trees will come only when there’s enough support early on. (Like now.) We’re working on it though!
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Thank you, Recession Coffee, for having us!
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Authors prepared giveaways for people who dropped by and bought the ebook bundles. The gifts were awesome and creative!
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Most of the program was devoted to authors introducing themselves and reading a little bit from their story. The crowd was huge, which can be overwhelming and heart-warming at the same time. So happy for everyone!
Paper Planes Back Home by Tara Frejas [Excerpt + Giveaway]
Welcome to my stop on the Paper Planes Back Home blog tour! I hope you check out Tara’s book, read the excerpt below, and join the giveaway!
About the book: When Gianna wakes up on a cloud, she is disoriented yet fascinated. She thinks she’s only dreaming until she gets a storm of paper planes—”They’re thoughts of people who remember,” a man on another cloud tells her—each pleading for her not to leave. The man tells her these planes are the key to get out of there, and while she thinks it’s hard to believe, she decides everything is worth trying if it meant finding her way back home.
Get it: Amazon Smashwords Barnes & Noble Kobo Apple iBooks
Add it: Goodreads
Excerpt:
“What is it?”
Skylar looks up from the message on the unfolded paper plane, his expression that of uncertainty mixed with relief. “It’s just . . . I don’t know who this is from. But it’s really nice of them.”
They are silent for a while until he nods toward the new batch of planes around the newcomer.
“Don’t you want to read them?”
“I do.”
“Don’t mind me,” he says with a shake of his head, reading the reluctance on her face. “I’ll be okay.”
She picks up a paper plane, looks at it thoughtfully. “Is it possible to share paper planes?”
A pause. When she looks back at him, she realizes he doesn’t quite know how to answer the question. “Shall we try?” she asks, handing him the plane in her hand.
“No. I can’t do that,” he says, waving his hand dismissively.
“I have plenty to spare.”
“I don’t think that’s how this works,” Skylar points out, his tone unsure. It’s reassuring again when he says, “It’s fine, really. Don’t worry about me.”
She sounds defeated when she finally concedes, turning her attention instead to the plane she has just unfolded. “My name is Gianna, by the way.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Gianna.” Skylar lets his words hang in the air for a while before he asks, “So . . . what happened to you?”
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, I’m sorry. She runs her index finger over the words. She can almost hear Aaron say them. “Car accident,” she tells Skylar. “A crash. That’s all I remember right now. You?”
Skylar nods, noting a gash just above her eyebrow he supposes she got from hitting the steering wheel. “Just another day on the field. Only I wasn’t so lucky.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He only shrugs in response and takes a look at his paper plane with a smile. It’s the small things that make a difference, son, he remembers Sam, the old man of about fifty, who had kept him company before he was able to fly back home, say. He was a lively fellow who always had stories and wise words to tell and perhaps, without him, Skylar would’ve already drifted off to sleep.
He stands up and walks toward the plane he’s building, only half-finished and crude-looking at best. There’s the base, the nose, and the tail, but nothing to support wings just yet. Glancing back at Gianna, he calls out. “Hey, do you want me to show you how to build your ride?”
About the Author: Tara Frejas is a cloud-walker who needs caffeine to fuel her travels. By day, she works in project management and events, and she writes down her daydreams at night. She began publishing fiction for public consumption in 2004, posting her pieces on various online channels like fan forums and Blogspot, eventually exploring other avenues like Livejournal, Soomp!, Tumblr, and most recently, Wattpad.
Aside from her obvious love affair with words and persistent muses, Tara is very passionate about being caffeinated, musical theatre, certain genres of music, dancing, dogs, good food, and romancing Norae, her ukelele. She owns a 6-month-old male bunny named Max who sometimes tries to nibble on her writing notes.
Paper Planes Back Home is her first novel.
Get in touch: Website Goodreads Twitter Facebook
Giveaway!
October 20, 2015
Fallen Again [Excerpt]
An excerpt from Fallen Again (previously published as Never Just Friends)
Jacob Berkeley, famous for his critically-acclaimed television show Rage Eternal, last year’s Hottest Male Ever, this year’s 30 Sexiest on TV Under 30, was not hers.
Jake Berkeley, on the other hand, was a guy she met in college. Eater of her sister’s cookies. Playmate of her nephew and niece. The person she sat beside for three out of the last four Christmas dinners. Semi-annual “All-Clear Happy Hour” drinking buddy. Potential future Amazing Race partner. And, if that didn’t pan out, her zombie apocalypse buddy.
But he wasn’t her best friend, no. That would be crazy. Calling him that would let them fall into that awful cliché, and list them among the dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of platonic male-female “best friends” out there who were really just waiting for the other to wake up and smell the love already.
No they were not that. She was not that.
Lindsay paused and shook her hair out of the ponytail, catching her reflection on the window of an idling cab. It was July, and she rarely saw him in July, come to think of it. Since they both moved away from Fremont in California, they didn’t see each other in the summer, when her hair was a bit more blond than brown, even when she did nothing new to it. She got the short end of this stick because she got to see him all year round. Got to see him buzzed and sweaty in photos of him working out to get in shape for his show. Got to see him be hot and handsome in the different time periods that his show’s seasons had been set in. (She didn’t watch the show, though, but the promotional photos were used as billboards, and she usually had to walk by one when it was that time of the year.) Got to see him and his perfect black hair, perfectly sculpted stubble, perfect blue eyes taunting her from magazine covers.
She remembered that the dress she was wearing was a sexy crimson halter if she shrugged out of her brown knit sweater. So she did that. She caught her reflection yet again on a car window, and almost smacked the self-satisfied look on her face with her hand.
What for? Why are you doing this?
You have Victor. Maybe.
And he is not your Jake.
They (she and Jake) might not even be as friendly now as she thought they were. The last time she saw him was April, over a year ago, and it wasn’t the best time for either of them. He skipped that year’s August happy hour, and missed Christmas, and she didn’t hear from him the following April.
Or any other time in between.
Sometimes she wondered if she should be more worried about him, but the news didn’t report anything serious enough to get her attention. She’d find out along with everyone else if anything happened to the fifth sexiest guy on TV “under 30” yes? So she assumed the distance was deliberate on his part.
And then this, having her walk five blocks to see him, on an assistant’s errand. A contract for him to sign. She’d find out that he was in New York this way? Because he probably flew in this morning. He liked doing that, flying into places early. Being up early. Doing things at dawn. She wouldn’t have met him, in fact, if on that day her sister Cordelia didn’t take the first flight out, and Lindsay woke up at five a.m. to help her with something.
And saw him jogging past the house she shared with her sister, her sister’s husband, and their two kids.
He ran by twice, probably circling the neighborhood, and then that was it.
Lindsay woke up early every day to check if he would pass by again. For two days there was no Hot Guy sighting, and then on the third day…
But no. She should be angry. Annoyed. Incensed. She should have put her foot down right there on the carpet and made Marnie do the welcoming herself.
It didn’t matter if he was successful Jacob Berkeley now who got to act on TV, be on magazine covers, and take all-expense paid trips to be an environment poster boy. She was important too, damn it. Not in ways that he’d know unless he read the copyright page of policy papers (and who did really), but damn it.
Fallen Again: Amazon Barnes & Noble Kobo iTunes All Romance
October 19, 2015
Read our romance books free at Plaza Cafe Makati!
A selection of indie romance (or first published as indie) books are now available to read free at Plaza Cafe at Corinthian Plaza, Paseo de Roxas, Makati City. It’s in front of Greenbelt and has great food. It’s like a library — read while you eat your sandwich, put it back when you’re done, go back or contact us if you want more. romanceclassbooks.com
October 14, 2015
Launch of new Spark Books on October 25
I look at this and my eyes are heart-shaped. I can’t prove it, but you can imagine.
Thank you, Anvil Publishing. So very happy for my author friends.
See you there!
October 12, 2015
Pocket Jamie in Manila: An Outlander discussion
We’re still at it! In August, we began an experiment to do book discussions that focused entirely on romance. Adult romance. Steamy stuff. Adults only. I know that a lot of us are reading this, but we’re discussing them among our friends, maybe small groups of two or three. We started with Tessa Bailey, and I was pleased to see that it attracted not just the superfans of Tessa, but also readers who just wanted to interact with other readers.
In October, our topic was Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander, the first book and the first season of the TV series. A few weeks before we had our afternoon meeting at Poetry and Prose Patisserie in Shangri-la Mall, we had an online discussion on Facebook, and we tried to cover as much of the book’s events as we could.
On the day itself, again, we had a mixed group. From the reader had made it all the way to the 8th book, to someone who had no idea what Outlander was about but found Sam Heughan attractive.
I gave away Pocket Jamies, a copy of Tessa Dare’s When A Scot Ties the Knot, and Spark Books that were sports-themed (including The Harder We Fall). Because the December discussion will be sports!
We also got a preview of the Outlander adult coloring book! Here I “fix” the Black Jack Randall page.
Thank you to those who joined in online and at the meetup! See you in December!
October 10, 2015
Live Like Fiction Giveaway [Learning to Fall]
I didn’t plan a blog tour for Learning to Fall. (Sorry about that, if you were looking forward to it!) It’s just that I’ve been helping out a LOT of authors secure blog tours and I know that the next two months are going to be so busy for Pinoy bloggers as well as people who run blog tours locally, and didn’t want to add to their stress.
But how about I offer something that’s absolutely optional but fun?
If you’ve read Learning to Fall then you know that a huge part of the book is a monthly blog challenge called Live Like Fiction. It’s got 12 months worth of bookish challenges, and the point is to dare someone who loves books to go out and do some of these things in real life. To give themselves a taste of what it’s like to be a main character of a novel, but in what would have been a boring day or month.
I’m offering a giveaway (prize is a $20 Amazon gift card, open internationally). You can join by doing any of the Live Like Fiction challenges and blogging about it. You can do any of the challenges listed at the end of the Learning to Fall author’s note, even if it’s the wrong month, but it must be from that list OK? You can’t create a totally new challenge on your own. You can do more than one, and submit that new blog post on another day, to get more raffle entries.
We’ll draw a winner on December 16 and that person will be able to get new books for Christmas yay! 
On your blog post, please add the cover and link to where you bought Learning to Fall. You may also want to explain a little bit what Live Like Fiction is about and why you’re doing this. And then share your blog post here. If you like, tag me on Twitter (@minavesguerra) so I can share the post with everyone else too.
Good luck and I’m looking forward to your stories!!!
Learning to Fall is on Amazon Barnes & Noble Apple iTunes Kobo All Romance
October 8, 2015
The Duke Takes A Bride by Suzette de Borja [Excerpt]
Happy to share the cover of the new book of Suzette de Borja! Suzette writes royalty-themed contemporary romances. Read on to see an excerpt from The Duke Takes A Bride…
Imogen gasped.
Displayed on the large expanse of white wall were several portraits, some so tall it almost reached the soaring ceiling of the penthouse. She walked barefoot to gape at them closely. She recognized the grand style of Reynolds, the hauteur of the subjects of Van Dyck, and the pastoral style of Gainsborough.
“Oh my God,” she cried out in disbelief, turning to Julian. “This is incredible!”
He smiled, duly pleased by her reaction.
“You had them shipped all the way to Los Angeles?” She recognized some of the paintings. One in particular because it was of a young boy with blond hair astride a pony. She remembered telling Julian it was easy to imagine he looked like the portrait when he was a boy, and he had told her it was the 3rd Duke of Blackmoore.
“In a manner of speaking.”
She shot him a puzzled look, but he refused to elaborate and instead strode to stand shoulder to shoulder with her. She wrenched her eyes away from him and instead studied the six-foot portrait.
“This is a Reynolds, right?” She cited one of the most prominent British portraitists of the 18th century. His nod was affirmative. “His use of colors are so bold and yet they look,” she searched for the right word, “clean.” She cringed at how gauche she must sound to someone like Julian. Her graphic design course was no match for his minor degree in Art History. She flashed him a sheepish smile, but it died when her eyes locked with his. Gone was the perpetually amused, languid expression lurking in those green depths. In them was a watchful intensity that made Imogen’s breath stall, afraid to break the tableau.
“It’s all in the technique,” he spoke, his voice low and liquid, and Imogen felt its effect like a living thing, heating her blood as it coursed through her body, plumping her breasts and making her moist between her legs. “Reynolds used brushstrokes that were long, firm, and broad.”
“I− I see,” she stammered.
His eyes had gone darker. “He didn’t like mixing paints, so he layered the colors while they were still fresh,” an infinitesimal pause, “and wet…”
His voice rasped on all her nerve endings. They could only stare at each other, transfixed. Imogen felt her skin simmering with little curls of desire. There was no street sound to slice through the pregnant atmosphere way above the pedestrian life below.
It was the spaghetti strap that broke the impasse. She must have made a small movement because it fell down her shoulder. Julian’s darkened gaze flicked to it, then moved lower. She resisted the urge to throw her arms across her chest to hide her peaked nipples. And then because she couldn’t bear the torment any longer, she shattered the charged silence.
“Are you as delicious as they say, Your Grace?” Shit. Did she actually say that out loud?
Julian’s bark of laughter made her cheeks flame. She wanted to jump off the penthouse’s glass viewing deck from sheer embarrassment. She could still salvage the situation by attributing her outrageous question to the effects of alcohol. She was about to open her big mouth again when he grasped her cold hands and tugged her closer.
“Why don’t you have a taste and find out?”
Get The Duke Takes A Bride! Amazon Apple iTunes Barnes & Noble Kobo
More about author Suzette de Borja: Amazon author page Twitter Facebook
October 5, 2015
Learning to Fall
So let me tell you about the time I fell in love with the guy I was writing.
I always do, by the way. Always kind of fall in love with my book’s Love Interest, because I have to. I don’t think I can do this well if I dislike him even a little bit. But since all my guys are different, the effect on me is different as well. Sometimes I insta-love a love interest (like Lucas or Gabriel), or fall for him after years of friendship (like Tonio/Anton who’s been a character in so many books that he feels like a friend already), or know I love him but with all walls up (Diego). Then, there was this guy.
I wasn’t sure I was going to give Grayson his own book. I throw in secondary characters like him into my books all the time, but that doesn’t mean they’ll get promoted to love interest anytime soon. He was originally just the best friend/co-captain of Nicholas from Falling Hard/The Harder We Fall, but the inspiration for him arrived at the same time. He wasn’t a character I intended to ignore, is what I’m saying.
Then the book for him came together, but it wasn’t without difficulty. I set myself up for a challenge with that book, because of everything that I wanted in there. I read rugby coaching manuals, learned about PI firms, specific sports injuries, wrote a bunch of reviews for fake books…it was crazy. I even took a break in the middle of writing this, because things came up, and I let them.
And then I began writing a scene where Steph (the main character) begins to fall for Grayson, and while I usually plan ahead what I intend to write in the scene, the words I typed were unexpected. I figured out why I loved this guy, and it stuck. I loved him. Until I wrote the last word, and for weeks after.
I love Grayson na #amwriting
— Mina V. Esguerra (@minavesguerra) April 16, 2015
I suspect my editor will notice how much I love Grayson right now @alyal_20
— Mina V. Esguerra (@minavesguerra) April 16, 2015
Learning to Fall is the third book in my Addison Hill series with Flirt Publishing, and it’s out tomorrow. Or a few hours from now. Get it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B015XD5JFY
About the book:
“Go out with a stereotypical romance novel hero WHO ISN’T YOUR TYPE.”Avid reader and art student Steph is participating in a monthly blog challenge to Live Like Fiction, and this was the task for October. When Grayson, former co-captain of her university rugby team, walks into her class, she knows it’s meant to be – she has to go out with this guy. Even if she’s never been attracted to big, hunky, athletic types. With Grayson’s “player” reputation off the field, Steph thinks he’ll be good for one date that’ll be worth blogging about, and that’s it.
But you know how it goes: Soon, it becomes more than just one date – and Steph and Grayson are caught up in “living like fiction.” How long can they keep playing their roles before reality steps in?
October 1, 2015
Dream Fulfilled, time to make another one
You know when you have dreams for your writing and your books? It’s usually a bookstore spot, a book signing, a movie deal. For me, it’s something like this:
That clip above is Ashley Clements and Daniel V. Gordh (of Lizzie Bennet Diaries) reading a scene from John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars. I didn’t realize until I saw this clip that I want this. I want it. I want it for my books, and maybe I’ve wanted it all along.
I got a chance recently to make this happen.
I was supposed to run a workshop that would conclude on September 30. When I run workshops I try to do something different, like bring in people who may inspire the authors in some way, and for this one I thought — let’s do this. Theater actors. Surprise the workshop participants by having their work read aloud, and then we can instantly tell what works and what doesn’t. Theater actors will also have unique insight on what sounds good as a performance, and may help writers with that info.
My friends from college are still active in theater, so I asked Katski Flores for help. She’s an actor, a director, and the CREATOR of John Lloyd/Bea (not her official title but look it up — it’s totally TRUE I TELL YOU). I asked her if she could recommend actors who could read aloud books like mine. She gave me a very short list: Rachel Coates and Gio Gahol.
Rachel and Gio said yes to this. Oh my god.
Then the workshop got rescheduled (to February of next year) but now I had two awesome actors and no workshop to have them appear in. So I went to the #romanceclass Facebook group and said something like: “Hey, if I wanted to meet on September 30, will you actually do it even if it’s a work day and it’s in the evening? I have something special planned.” A bunch of people said yes. Yay!
Katski recommended a rehearsal, so I tried to set that up with Gio and Rachel a few times. We couldn’t make it happen, because Gio is working full-time in theater and at one point was actually touring in Korea. Rachel is in college so the rehearsals had to be during her free time and not so far from where she studies. And I have a wacky sked of my own, because I take my daughter to school every day and do anything publishing or writing related on weekends. The only time we had free was the day of the “something special” itself, a few hours before we asked people to come.
The plan was to have them read excerpts from romance novels aloud. Like a table reading, so no need to act and choreograph scenes. I sent them the clip of Ashley and Daniel as a peg. They were game and knew they could do this.
They read excerpts from Tempting Victoria, In Over Her Head, Cover (Story) Girl, and Finding X.
Now, for the excerpts. Of course I wanted them to read one of my books (duh! my dream after all), but I also knew that authors from #romanceclass were coming and I wanted this to be enjoyable for them too. I’m so proud of what they’ve accomplished and I know I owe them a lot. My career in publishing has taken off since they started writing and publishing and it’s no coincidence — their successes make me feel like I know what I’m talking about. They have to feel this too, somehow, because so much of what we do every day is support each other through doubt. (Writers, so dramatic! But true. We’re our worst critics.)
I’m not going to go into how I chose the excerpts — let’s keep that thought process a mystery for now — but at the very least I wanted Gio and Rachel to get equal “stage time” so I chose two male POV and two female POV excerpts. Gio would have to be narrator twice, and Rachel as well. I sent them the excerpts a few days before we met.
Gio and Rachel at rehearsal
And then, September 30. Gio asked if he had to wear a costume. I said, “No costume! Just a romance novel hero demeanor.” (What’s that?) And then when I met him he had it. He did.
Rachel and Gio met for the first time at our quickie rehearsal. I gave them printouts, they asked if they could write and highlight on them. I said sure. I gave a quick summary of the books each excerpt was from, before they rehearsed it. Gave some info about the characters they were playing. They asked questions, like, how geeky do I play this? What does she do? but apart from that, they just took the characters on.
The effect was instant and amazing. From the first page they began reading together.
I tried to play it cool while they were working in front of me, but they started with my story, and I was like, shut up. Oh my god. This is happening. I gave them a male POV scene, so Gio was narrating, and I wondered if I did the right thing because I gave them one of my US-setting books (Tempting Victoria), and Gio was essentially playing a guy from Texas. (“You don’t have to do the accent,” I told Rachel. She said something like, “Oh no now that you told me I have to do it.”) We decided on no accent anyway because this was our first time and we should play it safe. In any case, they were wonderful. It was how I wrote it, but not necessarily how I thought I would hear it. It was…better? I don’t know. It made me feel better about what I wrote.
On rehearsing the next three excerpts, the effect was the same. The characters, story, and tone for each excerpt was different, but they were on point the whole time.
Then we went up to the actual event space and they performed.
#romanceclass authors and our love team of the evening
Can I just say how gratifying it is to have over a dozen people agree to come to a thing on a Wednesday night in Ortigas? Because Manila traffic has been epic lately, and they don’t even really know what’s going to happen. I mean I told them that Rachel and Gio were coming to read stuff, but what does that even mean? It was my dream. Not necessarily theirs. I wanted to hug them all. And they were early.
We started off with introductions. Everyone in the room had written and published something, or was writing something. But we all were readers of romance too, and that I think was the key to this. It’s a community of readers and authors, and tonight would remind us that we need to be both and appreciate that side of ourselves.
The other thing was that this felt like a surprise party to me. There were three authors in the room (Anne Plaza, Chris Mariano, and Miles Tan) who didn’t know that their work would be performed right in front of them. Gio and Rachel knew this was a surprise so as the intros happened, and Anne, Miles (and eventually Chris who arrived late) said their names, we would trade excited little looks. At first they were nervous to be reading in front of the author, but I think eventually they knew that they were going to be giving a happy surprise to some.
Random: I love that Gio sat on the table. It just…works.
Anne has recapped the rest of the night on her blog. I can’t speak for the other authors but my dream was happily fulfilled, thank you very much. Except now I feel like this is worth doing, and we should be doing more of this. The excerpts were read so well that I feel we saw a book we had read in a whole new light, and now we want to read it again. And if we hadn’t read that book before, now we want to. It’s an exercise that I think enhances the reading experience instead of replaces it…even though I’d gladly let Gio or Rachel read an entire book to me if they’d do it. (And maybe we’ll make this happen too.)
Me and Gio.
Rachel and me.
So all in all, great evening. Now I have so many plans.
Authors, friends, people I adore. Spot the one who wrote your fave book!
