Carljoe Javier's Blog, page 2

2012 in Review: Writing

So I think after this year, I can sort of take a rest. Not a long one mind you, but maybe I’ve earned the right to not demand so much of myself. I know that sounds close to the verge of resting on one’s laurels, but I don’t imagine that’s what I would be doing. After having released at least one book a year since 2009, I do think that maybe I can take a year off and just focus on revisions and other things.

Okay, no, that’s bullshit.

As I mentioned in the first year’s assessment post, I have fi...

2012 in Review: Music

Last night I was at the rocking birthday part of Ina Santiago and we were head banging and dancing (well, she and a lot of other people were, I was kind of jiggling in my seat) at Craft’s Glam Rock night which featured cover band Trinidad. And while taking in the Bon Jovi and David Lee Roth it made sense to start thinking about how I have been working and getting back into music this year.

I talk about how music saved my life in high school (I mention it in the paper which I gave, more on this...

Working Through 2012

With the apocalypse seemingly averted, and our lives going on as usual and as expected, I’ve found the impulse to take stock of things. I am in an in-between age where I am past my physical prime, but also find that I am not yet so old as to have a right to nostalgia and to looking back and grumbling about one’s youth.

So I guess a project, in the form of a series of blog entries, will be to consider where I am and how I’m doing after 30-some years of walking the earth. I plan to do this over...

Top Song Picks for 2012

I tried to listed to a lot of new albums this year. But in truth there was just too much music for me to get a good grasp on everything. Thus take this list not as all the best music, but as some of the stuff that I really liked over the year. Some artists might not be on the list, but came out with pretty good albums (Beth Orton comes to mind) because I did not have enough time to really listen to the album and choose a favorite. In any case, here’s ten songs that I loved this year, and I th...

The Next Big Thing: A Chain Letter for Writers

I got tagged by the wonderful Eliza Victoria to be a part of this project. It’s a series of questions, and I get to tag some other people. As they post their answers on the 26th, I will put links to them. Anyways, here’s me talking about my upcoming novel.

1. What is the working title of your next book?

Salvage. Which I know is a really lame title. Still trying to think of a good title.

2.Where did the idea come from for the book?

A number of things, first off the idea that I wanted to write an a...

Hey there, been awhile

hello blog and readers,

It’s been awhile. I know. Full disclosure, I had to work on the novel. And so I had to take a break from the blog. But now, I am going to try and get back on this. The last four months of the year were insane, with me writing the paper for Oxford, taking the UK trip, then rushing to finish the novel, and now holidays and stuff. But expect a few posts in the coming days.

First off, I will be part of a writer chain letter thing. I’ve written the responses, and that’ll go u...

1st Global Conference: The Graphic Novel Fundraising Efforts

Yes we’re asking for money. Now that that’s on the table let’s move on. We’re raising funds and we promise that it will be for something worthwhile and we are hoping that you, dear reader, will give us money, and beyond that, you will tell someone else about the whole thing and that person will give give us money and so forth.

What is “this whole thing” which I am asking money for? Ah, that’s where I can be verbose and gush like a fan. We, those raising funds, have written papers and will be p...

Why the Bat Must Be Broken and Gotham Must be Destroyed

(this was co-conceptualized with Bo Jimenez, and the plan is that this is the opening volley of a series of essays and pieces on The Dark Night Rises.)

A common reading of The Dark Knight has been as a right-wing text, a text justifying Bush-era paranoia and extremist control, and as a reinforcement of the status quo social order of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. Even in trailers for The Dark Knight Rises we were given a hint that this new film would at least, in some way...

The Other Instrument

I began playing the bass in high school. I was fifteen. It was for a girl. This will probably show up in a future YA novel I think I’ve got in me. I didn’t know many people at school yet and I got put into a group for a presentation. The other people in the group knew how to play guitar or percussions or whatever. And the girl, she could sing. (And man have I been a sucker for girls who sing since.) I didn’t know how to play, and up to that point the only instruments I had been acquainted wit...

The Pants Problem

In the mid-Noughties I had a pair of corduroy pants that I wore to almost every event or gig. I didn’t have many clothes then. Buying clothes had yet to become a regular thing, as for almost a decade the only clothes I had had come from Balikbayan boxes or the tiangge or the recently in vogue ukay-ukay. It was at the ukay-ukay, in fact, probably three years before the event, that I acquired the corduroys. Thing was that I got the corduroys sometime after freshman year, when I was still thin a...