Samantha Sotto Yambao's Blog, page 8

My Precioussssssss….

Warning: This blog will be barely coherent. I'm too excited to string, um – what's that word again? Oh, yes. – words together. See? I told you. It all started the other day when someone left  this package at my door…

 

For a minute I  thought that  I might have been online shopping in my sleep again. I held my breath…

Man, was I relieved that they weren't another pair of size ten, five inch zebra stilettos. Still, I wanted to be certain so I took a closer look…

No zebra stripes in sight! It looked like the hardcover edition of my book -but there was only one way to know for sure.

I opened it.

And turned another page…

It was the real thing.

Before Ever After had found its way home.

Friday Field Trip: Book Club with Daniel Craig, Betty White, and Mark Zuckerberg

Hi, campers! I was invited to attend my very first book club discussion of Before Ever After and you're my special guests. Don't worry about bringing along snacks. Dinner will be served

 

First stop: The Old Swiss Inn Restaurant

This looks like a pretty good place to discuss a novel about a road trip through Europe, don't you think?

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On the menu: Dishes from the book!  (Um…okay, at this point I will have to confess my EPIC BLOGGER FAIL. I forgot to take photos of the food! The chef even prepared BAKED EGGS AND CHEESE based on what I wrote in the book. Bad Sam. )

 

But, hey, I did remember to take photos of the empty dishes. (And yup, those are fondue kettles – which briefly contained melted Swiss dark chocolate and sea salt.)

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What book club meeting would be complete without  a fantasy casting session for the book? (Since the book isn't out yet, I'm not going to spoil the fun by telling you which personalities were cast for which part. I'll just throw them all together so you can see the fun options the book club came up with.)

Let's make room on the bus for…

Daniel Craig

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Bear Grylls

Hugh Jackman

Gerard Butler

Betty White

Steve Nash

Kristin Kreuk

Jennifer Garner

Mark Zuckerberg

Paul Bettany

Robbie Coltrane

And last, but certainly not the least….

Neil Patrick Harris

I hope you had fun, campers! See you next week!

 

Return to Sender

Two years ago, I received this package in the mail. I've never opened it. Today, I decided to dig it out from the back of my closet and share it with you. Sort of.  You see, I still can't open it. I'm not supposed to.

Inside this envelope are three hundred sixty four pages of an ink-jet printed dream. This was the original draft of Before Ever After that I sent to myself right before I began querying agents.

A number of changes have happened since the time I mailed it. For starters, the book has a different title. Its beginning and ending have also been revised. Words have been added and words have been taken out. Some of these revisions were easy to make, while others required more effort. The biggest of these changes, however, aren't between the novel's covers – and I'm not talking about deleted scenes. More than any chapter of the book, I have changed the most. I'm two years and a lifetime older.

We usually can get a sense of a person's age by how they look. But wrinkles and white hair are not the only ways you can tell how old a person is. A more accurate way would be to discover how they hope. That's how I knew that I was no longer the same person who mailed herself the draft of her book. That girl packed more than a manuscript into that envelope. She also slipped in a carefully folded young hope, the fluffy kind that weighed no more than a birthday wish or a dandelion dream.

Life outside the envelope has been rather different. There's a lot more sun and it doesn't smell like mothballs. But along with fresh air, there is also rejection, disappointment and doubt. The hope in the envelope has been spared this. It remains oblivious and unblemished. I am not. I bear their bruises.

I hope differently from the person I was two years ago, but my hopes are exactly the same as the day I clicked the "send" button and sent my first query letter on its way. I continue to hope that Max and Shelley will find a happy corner of a small bookshelf to spend the rest of their lives. But I can no longer blow this hope into the wind like I used to. It feels heavier now. It sits in my gut and twists whenever a Google Alert about Before Ever After pops up in my inbox. And that's okay – because there is an envelope

nestled on top of a short stack of wishful thinking jeans

tucked in the back of a closet

that has kept a young old hope safe.

*  *  *  *  *

FLEETING MOMENT OF ODD INTROSPECTION – OVER.

CUE FUNNY PANDA PHOTO.

 

LINK LOVE: Sending out a HUGE THANK YOU to TANYA REIMER and the GOLDEN EAGLE for sharing their recent awards with me. Hope you guys can stop by their wonderful blogs and say hi

 

Friday Field Trip: What NOT to See in Europe

Hi, campers!  I hope you brought your passports because we'll be taking a ride through Europe on this trip. I'm sure that you've come across lists of all the great things you need to see and do while you're there, so I thought it would be fun if our itinerary covered the top five things you WON'T see. Confused? Great! It will make the adventure more fun Buckle up!

 

Père Lachaise Cemetery , Paris, France

credit: Bopet Gillego

What you'll see: hauntingly beautiful tombs of the who's who in Paris – James Morrison included.

What you won't: the survivors of France's Bloody Week who lived like animals among the graves by day and scavenged through the city by night.

 

"Schlaf im Stroh"

("Sleep in Straw" – Swiss farmhouse accommodation experience), Switzerland

credit: Cecilia Beltran

What you'll see: straw. Lots of it. And the majestic Alps if you look out the barn window.

What you won't: Switzerland's top export in the middle ages – mercenaries. The country's richer neighbors needed soldiers to fight their wars, Swiss farmers needed to put food on the table. (The colorful uniform of the Vatican's Swiss Guard is designed after the patchwork uniforms their predecessors made from the spoils of war.)

 

Ljubljanica, Slovenia

credit: Cecilia Beltran

What you'll see: a fairytale castle, charming cobbled streets, rows of red tiled roofs and a small romantic river that runs through the Old Town district.

What you won't: the surprisingly vast trove of ancient artifacts – from Stone Age to Renaissance – that can be found in certain parts of the river, making it a treasure hunter's dream.

 

Torcello Island, Venice, Italy

credit: Wikipedia

What you'll see: exquisite Byzantine mosaic of The Last Judgment in the Santa Maria Assunta Basilica

What you won't: the barbarian hordes that sent the Romans fleeing to the Venetian lagoon. Torcello was their first sanctuary. At its peak, twenty thousand people lived on the island. Today, less than twenty people call it home.

 

Herculaneum Excavation Site, Naples, Italy

credit: Wikipedia

What you'll see: uncannily intact Roman town, complete with villas, terraces, and boathouses

What you won't: the devastating 79AD eruption of Mt. Vesuvius that entombed the town – and preserved it.

 

I hope you enjoyed this week's tour, campers! For those who haven't seen the virtual tour of Before Ever After, I suggest you keep your seat belts fastened as we take this slight detour…

See you next week!

Boy, I Hope This Writing Gig Works Out…

Hi, guys! I hope everyone had a great weekend. Remember this photo? I couldn't tell you much about it then, but now the secret is out!

It was for a photo shoot and article in Good Housekeeping (Philippine edition, July). All I can say is, man, this writing gig better work out because modeling is soooooo not for me. I will NEVER snicker at another episode of America's Next Top Model ever again.

I have to dash out now because I'm being interviewed over at C.M. VILLANI'S uber cool blog today for her shiny new INSIDE THE AUTHOR'S STUDIO feature. Hope to see you guys there!

 

 

Fairytales: What Disney Doesn't Want You to Know

WARNING: LITTLE KIDS, FOR THE LOVE OF PINK PONIES, DO NOT READ THIS POST.

Searching for "Happily Ever After?"  I suggest you go down the fairytale aisle at the bookstore…and keep walking. Take this little quiz I made about the original versions of our beloved fairytales and find out why…

 

1. How is the evil Queen punished in the story of Snow White?

a. She does the dwarves' laundry for three months

b. She falls into a chasm and is crushed by a boulder

c. Snow White makes her dance in red hot iron shoes until she falls down dead

2. What happens to Little Red Riding Hood at the end of the story?

a. A woodsman rescues her

b. She skips home happily

c. The wolf eats her alive

 

3. How is Sleeping Beauty awakened?

a. The alarm clock rings

b. The Prince kisses her

c. The King has his way with her and fathers two children while she is asleep. One child sucks her finger and pulls out the piece of cursed flax that kept her asleep.

 

4. What happens to Goldilocks when she meets the three bears?

a. The bears make popcorn and invite her to watch a Doctor Who marathon with them

b. She jumps out of the window and breaks her neck

c. The bears rip her apart and eat her

 

5. What happens to Cinderella's stepsisters?

a.  They are invited to the wedding and are seated next to the restroom

b.  They  get a job at Payless Shoes

c. After trying to squeeze their feet into Cinderella's slipper by cutting off chunks of their feet, two pigeons tell on them and peck their eyes out

*  *  *  *  *

Answers:

Um…I've actually decided to leave this part out. I still want to believe in happy endings, don't you?

 

 

 

I've Moved!

You can find me at samanthasotto.com. See you there! :-)

Before Ever After Book Trailer: Behind The Scenes

Now that you've all seen the book trailer for Before Ever After, I thought it would be fun to show you what went on behind the scenes of the video shoot.

The concept of the video came from the novel's story-within-a-story theme. Jake de Guzman, the trailer's producer and director came up with the idea of recreating the book's cover and using it as the device to tell the story. To do this, the team needed to create mock-ups of the elements in the cover.

First up, the book:

We hired an artist to duplicate the design of the book. To give it depth, the  fake cover was printed on textured wallpaper. Do you want to see what the paper looked like before we printed the design on it? You're staring at it. I took a photo of the leftover paper and Vincent Sotto (my younger brother whose burst appendix set me on the path to writing Before Ever After) incorporated it into the website's design. Waste not, want not.  (As for the glue gun – we never did learn how to use it. We stuck the cover onto an old book using double sided tape instead. Sorry, Martha Stewart.)

Next, we needed flowers:

Um, yeah…I may have gone a bit overboard in the flower department. I put the extra ones to good use  in the living room.

 

One thing we didn't have any  leftovers of were the baked eggs.

My hubby made six servings – some disappeared before reaching the set…

 

When all the  props were ready, it was time to put everything together.

We shot the video in my backyard. That's Jake and Chris Costello (the director of photography) standing by our fake table. The tabletop was made by printing a HUGE sticker and sticking it onto a board. We set the board on top of my kitchen table and presto! Instant weathered tabletop.

Did you notice the shadows flitting over the book in the trailer?

This is how it was done:

Hi-tech, right?

Once we got the shadows right, it was time to shoot the trailer.

Setting the teacup down was the easy part.

Keeping the book open while we  filmed was not.

We cheated by having another hand hold down the page.

 

So now that you know about all the hard work that went into the trailer, tell me the truth…

Do you think my hand will ever win an Oscar?

 

 

 

It's a Bird! It's a Plane! It's a Book Trailer!

Hi, Guys!

I have two things I need to tell you.

First:

This will be my LAST POST - HERE. I will be moving to my NEW HOME and you're invited to the housewarming party! Do you have a pen so I can give you my new address? No? Not to worry. I've left a trail of bread crumbs (or maybe in this case, egg shells) to show you the way.

Second:

To find me, you will need to take a slight detour to ODE TO EGGS.

This is the LINK. You will find the VIDEO TEASER to the book there as well as the next link that will take you to the FULL BOOK TRAILER and my new home.

Have fun and see you there!!!

Sam

Welcome to My New Home!!!

Hi, guys!

Glad you found me here. Help yourself to a cupcake (or a serving of baked eggs and cheese )

There's lots to do here so feel free to explore and let me know what you think about my new humble abode.

Oh, and I did promise you a book trailer, didn't I? I hope you like it!

There are some very special people that I'd like to thank for all their wonderful work:

I'd like to thank my AWESOME MOM who was the mystery poster behind Ode to Eggs all these months. Thanks, Mom!

I'd also like to thank the great team who put this trailer together:

Jake de Guzman – Thank you for producing/directing the video!(You can contact him at jakedg@gmail.com)

Ditoy Aguila - Thank you so much for the amazing original musical score! (You can contact him at ditoyaguila@gmail.com)

Come back next week for a behind the scenes look at the making (read: outtakes!) of the trailer. See you then!