Katrina Ramos Atienza's Blog, page 8
May 19, 2013
FEATURE: Unbusting the Budget (Northern Living, January 2013)
Tips, tricks and advice to keep within budget, save up and enjoy life. From the January 2013 issue of Northern Living; also appeared in Southern Living of the same month. Read scan here.
April 24, 2013
Fiction news
Folks, I'm getting back into the fiction groove with a couple of projects:
Project #1 is going to be a retelling of a popular, classic novel (my favorite actually hint hint) in a modern Y.A. setting. It's completed and in the editing phase now, so I'm going to have some cool and concrete news to share with you pretty soon!
Project #2 is a Y.A. paranormal novel called Spark and I'm so excited to be collaborating on it with the awesome Mina V. Esguerra . It's going to be the awesomest!
Catch you la
Project #1 is going to be a retelling of a popular, classic novel (my favorite actually hint hint) in a modern Y.A. setting. It's completed and in the editing phase now, so I'm going to have some cool and concrete news to share with you pretty soon!
Project #2 is a Y.A. paranormal novel called Spark and I'm so excited to be collaborating on it with the awesome Mina V. Esguerra . It's going to be the awesomest!
Catch you la
April 11, 2013
I finished a story!
A whole bloody book (well at 39,000 words a novella really). It's the one I was working on in this post.
See, I got chapter 8 down, left it for six months, forced myself to do the next chapter -- which is a sort of nuts and bolts chapter, where a lot of action with future consequence has to be laid down and you have to be precise about it so the details don't get bogged down later on, so it's really no fun to write. After that I was spent and left it alone for a year.
Early March I picked the story up again. I don't know what exactly inspired me to do so. I just watched Return to Cranford the night before and something about that show - the light mood, the feelgood resolution, the simplicity of the conflict - seemed to unlock something within me. I wanted to do something light and happy and romantic; and I just happened to have this unfinished story lying around that fit all three. I wrote the next four chapters in a frenzy; the output's only slowed this week because I was trying to resolve it properly. So, yeah, thank you, Return to Cranford, couldn't have done it without you.
I'm letting it marinate now, walk away a bit so next week I can do a read with fresh eyes and make a nice edit, and then I'll send it to some friends for their opinion. But man, it feels so so so good to just put "the end" on something, doesn't it?!
See, I got chapter 8 down, left it for six months, forced myself to do the next chapter -- which is a sort of nuts and bolts chapter, where a lot of action with future consequence has to be laid down and you have to be precise about it so the details don't get bogged down later on, so it's really no fun to write. After that I was spent and left it alone for a year.
Early March I picked the story up again. I don't know what exactly inspired me to do so. I just watched Return to Cranford the night before and something about that show - the light mood, the feelgood resolution, the simplicity of the conflict - seemed to unlock something within me. I wanted to do something light and happy and romantic; and I just happened to have this unfinished story lying around that fit all three. I wrote the next four chapters in a frenzy; the output's only slowed this week because I was trying to resolve it properly. So, yeah, thank you, Return to Cranford, couldn't have done it without you.
I'm letting it marinate now, walk away a bit so next week I can do a read with fresh eyes and make a nice edit, and then I'll send it to some friends for their opinion. But man, it feels so so so good to just put "the end" on something, doesn't it?!
February 4, 2013
CONTRIBUTING: EYP.ph
I'm a contributing writer to various channels on (Moms & Kids, Livewell, Fashion, etc.) EYP.ph and here are some of my recent articles:
Six ways to alleviate morning sickness (Livewell)Outrageous kiddie party themes (Moms)12 rainy day baby fashion picks (Moms)12 best play schools in the city (Moms)Where to list your resume online (TechSavvy)
Stay tuned to EYP.ph for more articles, tips and quick takes!
Six ways to alleviate morning sickness (Livewell)Outrageous kiddie party themes (Moms)12 rainy day baby fashion picks (Moms)12 best play schools in the city (Moms)Where to list your resume online (TechSavvy)
Stay tuned to EYP.ph for more articles, tips and quick takes!
October 15, 2012
Going boom
It's been crazy lately on the writing and reading front. I feel like I'm developing work-related ADHD! So far I have...
1. Completed editing a backpacker's guide to traveling in Visayas. I'm so excited for this! The contributors to the guide are really, really good - they're either from or frequently visit the places we featured. I also worked with some talented photographers whose pictures are going to make this book so beautiful. I can't wait when it's done to show it off to you all!
2. I did my first ever restaurant review last week. I channeled Ruth Reichl (kept on thinking back to her wonderful reviews in Garlic and Sapphires to write it!). Man, food writing is hard. There are only so many ways you can say "sweet" or "sour" or "tart" or "crisp;" it's a challenge to convey the experience without becoming too flowery. Anyway the review might come out in the November / December issue of Southern Living and I'll be sure to post a scan when I get it!
3. I realize I'm kind of a Big Bang shopper. Like, I deprive myself for months without buying anything, and then one day it's BOOM! BUY BUY BUY like crazy. I recently went on a clothing spree and coupled that with a book-buying binge. On Kindle I got The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft and The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Today, left alone at work, I wandered to the bookstore for lunch and came away with The Marriage Plot and Never Mind. Now I have this perverse pressure to read them all, so I have to remind myself to relax. Better to take it slow than to rush through these and end up a month from now, bereft of great reading material.
4. I'm also sort-of hate reading 50 Shades via Jennifer Armintrout's reviews, which are hilarious and remind me why I couldn't finish this book at all.
5. As you'll notice, all this activity has placed my percolatin' story on the backburner. For now. I'll be back to finish you, engaging story in my head. Oh yes I will.
Right. Off for a jog. This ADHD-addled ladeh needs to sweat.
1. Completed editing a backpacker's guide to traveling in Visayas. I'm so excited for this! The contributors to the guide are really, really good - they're either from or frequently visit the places we featured. I also worked with some talented photographers whose pictures are going to make this book so beautiful. I can't wait when it's done to show it off to you all!
2. I did my first ever restaurant review last week. I channeled Ruth Reichl (kept on thinking back to her wonderful reviews in Garlic and Sapphires to write it!). Man, food writing is hard. There are only so many ways you can say "sweet" or "sour" or "tart" or "crisp;" it's a challenge to convey the experience without becoming too flowery. Anyway the review might come out in the November / December issue of Southern Living and I'll be sure to post a scan when I get it!
3. I realize I'm kind of a Big Bang shopper. Like, I deprive myself for months without buying anything, and then one day it's BOOM! BUY BUY BUY like crazy. I recently went on a clothing spree and coupled that with a book-buying binge. On Kindle I got The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft and The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Today, left alone at work, I wandered to the bookstore for lunch and came away with The Marriage Plot and Never Mind. Now I have this perverse pressure to read them all, so I have to remind myself to relax. Better to take it slow than to rush through these and end up a month from now, bereft of great reading material.
4. I'm also sort-of hate reading 50 Shades via Jennifer Armintrout's reviews, which are hilarious and remind me why I couldn't finish this book at all.
5. As you'll notice, all this activity has placed my percolatin' story on the backburner. For now. I'll be back to finish you, engaging story in my head. Oh yes I will.
Right. Off for a jog. This ADHD-addled ladeh needs to sweat.
September 17, 2012
Percolatin'
There's this story that's been buzzing around my head this whole weekend. It's not a chick lit story and there's no romance (yet...things may yet change), but I'm highly excited about this idea. Now if only I can get my attention in order and quit toggling between seven websites and freaking Tumblr and get this thing on paper before it flies away...
July 20, 2012
Filipino Friday: Introductions
I wanted to join in Filipino ReaderCon's Filipino Friday meme. 1) Because I'm a Pinoy author 2) Because Filipino books deserve a wider readership and 3) the topics are just so much fun! The first Filipino Friday is all about:
July 20 - Introductions. As with every
start of a weekly meme, we need to know a bit about you! Talk about your
top 3-5 (or more!) favorite books of all time, the genres you read and
would never read, the books that surprised you this year. You can also
talk about how you became a reader and why you love it so much! And
finally, if you were in the ReaderCon last year, talk about your
experience too! If you weren’t there, but you’re planning to go this
year, then what do you expect for the upcoming ReaderCon?
So, let's see:
I'm Katrina Ramos Atienza, 30, mom of two, husband to one, writer, editor, reader, corporate communications practitioner, fashion-obsessed blogger, and also fairly obsessed about: books, movies, football, the German National Football Team, futsal, yoga, 90s pop culture, good food, travel and not so secretly with Tom Hiddleston . (Did I just type that out? ANYWAY!) I write all sorts of stuff, from technical manuals to press releases, but I'm most proud of my creative short fiction and chick lit novels.
My top 3 books of all time? I'll define this as favorite books to curl up with and re-read, so I won't include those great books that really got under my skin and made me rethink the world, but I wouldn't necessarily want to re-read for comfort (in that case: Fahrenheit 451; 1984; The Bell Jar.):
1. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen - I always, always re-read this and it never fails to make me feel better when I'm down.
2. The House of Mirth - Even though this book is so sad I feel like it's a great companion to Pride & Prejudice. Lily Bart could easily be Lizzie Bennet, if Lizzie was born in a different time and had a self-destructive streak.
3. Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides - Another favorite re-read - funny, sad, epic, tragic, beautiful, touching and everything a great book should be.
I will read any genre and I don't think there's a genre I *won't* read just because it's grouped in that same topic. That said, my favorite genres are fantasy, science fiction and chick lit, because they're the stuff that takes me to another world and helps me detach from day to day stress!
I started the reading habit early. My mom said when I was a year old she instructed the yaya to read to me at 6 every night, and I haven't stopped since then. I have vague memories of being frustrated because I was unable to read by myself, so when I finally could I read everything I could get my hands on. My earliest reading memories include the Childcraft encyclopedias and Ladybird fairy tales. Later on it was the Sweet Valley Twins, then VC Andrews' Flowers in the Attic series (!), then old Hollywood autobiographies (Shelley Winters was a favorite). In college I was introduced to classics and "masterpieces of English literature" (actual course description), which I alternated with Stephen King horror classics.I read to escape, to learn, to broaden my knowledge, to see and feel from the "other" - people, places, things that are not like me or my friends and family or my world - and I love it so.
I wasn't at last year's ReaderCon, but it sure looks like fun!
April 17, 2012
Books that make you cringe
The Awl has this fun feature on books that make you cringe to remember - "first book crushes" that now, to take the metaphor further, make you turn away and pretend to check your shoes when you come across them on the street.
There's quite a bit of On the Road and Ayn Rand in there. Stephen King too, but I wouldn't lump him in with the "cringe" stuff...for every bloated super-long horror-in-a-small-town story (e.g. The Tommyknockers, Needful Things), he has something powerful and affecting in a primal way. (My faves include The Shining, Carrie and of course the masterful brilliant fabulous great Misery).
But there *are* some books that I cringe to remember now...chief among them is V.C. Andrews epic of incest, the Dollanganger series. I read them all, MULTIPLE times: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind,If There Be Thorns and the prequel, Garden of Shadows. (I kind of wised up and didn't read Seeds of Yesterday anymore.) I loved them so much and got my little sister hooked on these too. These books were melodramatic and had minor "sex scenes" that my preteen self could handle comfortably (never mind if they were between a brother and sister, shudder!!) as well as plot points that made perfect sense to a budding writer: the perfect blonde and blue-eyed family with the doll-like features, aptly named the Dollangangers (poetic!), the sexy swan bed in the gloomy manor that gets everyone all hot and bothered for some reason (metaphor!), a recurring inter-generational penchant for seclusion and child abuse (continuing plot devices!), stunted dwarf twins killed by donuts laced with arsenic (tragedy!) - it just seemed so interesting to me. Now my sister and I talk about it and we're like, "How the hell were these ever marketed to kids." They're seriously, epically twisted. And written in a highly wrought soap opera manner, which kind of trumps the twisted subject matter in the scale of repulsiveness.
Another book I cringe to remember is The Alchemist. I read this the month I graduated college, and the central theme - how everything works out for a reason and how, if you really want something, the Universe conspires for you to get it, really appealed to my confused, "welcome to the real world" 20-year-old heart. It was so wise! It was such a simple way to view life and its obstacles! And then a couple of years later I learned that Paulo Coelho is actually a pretty heavy and open drug user and suddenly all those wise and mystical and penetrating observations all seem like the profound musings one makes when one has smoked too many joints, and yeah, the bloom is off THAT rose.
Which books do YOU cringe to remember?
There's quite a bit of On the Road and Ayn Rand in there. Stephen King too, but I wouldn't lump him in with the "cringe" stuff...for every bloated super-long horror-in-a-small-town story (e.g. The Tommyknockers, Needful Things), he has something powerful and affecting in a primal way. (My faves include The Shining, Carrie and of course the masterful brilliant fabulous great Misery).
But there *are* some books that I cringe to remember now...chief among them is V.C. Andrews epic of incest, the Dollanganger series. I read them all, MULTIPLE times: Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind,If There Be Thorns and the prequel, Garden of Shadows. (I kind of wised up and didn't read Seeds of Yesterday anymore.) I loved them so much and got my little sister hooked on these too. These books were melodramatic and had minor "sex scenes" that my preteen self could handle comfortably (never mind if they were between a brother and sister, shudder!!) as well as plot points that made perfect sense to a budding writer: the perfect blonde and blue-eyed family with the doll-like features, aptly named the Dollangangers (poetic!), the sexy swan bed in the gloomy manor that gets everyone all hot and bothered for some reason (metaphor!), a recurring inter-generational penchant for seclusion and child abuse (continuing plot devices!), stunted dwarf twins killed by donuts laced with arsenic (tragedy!) - it just seemed so interesting to me. Now my sister and I talk about it and we're like, "How the hell were these ever marketed to kids." They're seriously, epically twisted. And written in a highly wrought soap opera manner, which kind of trumps the twisted subject matter in the scale of repulsiveness.
Another book I cringe to remember is The Alchemist. I read this the month I graduated college, and the central theme - how everything works out for a reason and how, if you really want something, the Universe conspires for you to get it, really appealed to my confused, "welcome to the real world" 20-year-old heart. It was so wise! It was such a simple way to view life and its obstacles! And then a couple of years later I learned that Paulo Coelho is actually a pretty heavy and open drug user and suddenly all those wise and mystical and penetrating observations all seem like the profound musings one makes when one has smoked too many joints, and yeah, the bloom is off THAT rose.
Which books do YOU cringe to remember?
March 8, 2012
Dressing up characters
I'm wildly interested in fashion and costume design - in fact, there are even some movies that I watch just for the costumes alone.
My books describe what my characters wear, but what most readers may not realize is that I actually imagine their outfits, down to the last detail! To me, their clothes and fashion choices reveal a lot about their personality...even some traits that might not be explicitly spelled out in the books. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are four costume design boards for the trio in the Pink Shoes trilogy (Pink Shoes, If The Shoe Fits and Shoes Off!) as well as Cynthia, heroine of The Hagette, with matching psychologizing! Hope you enjoy these!
My books describe what my characters wear, but what most readers may not realize is that I actually imagine their outfits, down to the last detail! To me, their clothes and fashion choices reveal a lot about their personality...even some traits that might not be explicitly spelled out in the books. To give you an idea of what I mean, here are four costume design boards for the trio in the Pink Shoes trilogy (Pink Shoes, If The Shoe Fits and Shoes Off!) as well as Cynthia, heroine of The Hagette, with matching psychologizing! Hope you enjoy these!
January 30, 2012
Cracking the plot
I've been working on a new chick lit novel for...oh, two years now. The writing process has been breezy and fun, since this new book is sort of an homage to my college experience.
Until I got to chapter 8.
Oh man I hate you chapter 8. I've been stuck on chapter 8 for a eighteen months now! And every time I open the draft to start working on chapter 8 (grrr) I end up editing the first seven chapters even more and not progressing at all.
The thing is that there are three or four important plot points that should be introduced starting in chapter 8. But I don't want to pile them on all together and give readers telenovela fatigue, (i.e. why is the protagonist suffering so much?!). But I don't want to take too much time introducing them too, because the plot's building up now and slowing it down will make it lose momentum. Plus, these plot points have got to be introduced properly, and getting them in the right order is driving me crazy.
Last night as I was preparing dishes, I had it. The magic order these plot points should unfold. I had it and now, the morning after, when I'm putting it down to paper, I don't anymore. Argh!
So I'm writing this all down publicly so you all know that yes, I'm working on a new book and knowing that you guys know will shame me from surfing mom blogs or whatever and start working on cracking chapter 8. Starting now!
Until I got to chapter 8.
Oh man I hate you chapter 8. I've been stuck on chapter 8 for a eighteen months now! And every time I open the draft to start working on chapter 8 (grrr) I end up editing the first seven chapters even more and not progressing at all.
The thing is that there are three or four important plot points that should be introduced starting in chapter 8. But I don't want to pile them on all together and give readers telenovela fatigue, (i.e. why is the protagonist suffering so much?!). But I don't want to take too much time introducing them too, because the plot's building up now and slowing it down will make it lose momentum. Plus, these plot points have got to be introduced properly, and getting them in the right order is driving me crazy.
Last night as I was preparing dishes, I had it. The magic order these plot points should unfold. I had it and now, the morning after, when I'm putting it down to paper, I don't anymore. Argh!
So I'm writing this all down publicly so you all know that yes, I'm working on a new book and knowing that you guys know will shame me from surfing mom blogs or whatever and start working on cracking chapter 8. Starting now!
