Rin Chupeco's Blog, page 5

The Girl from the Well Bookmarks, Book Badges, and even more Changes!

A few days ago, I posted about my creepy local post office, complete with photos. What I didn’t mention is what the package contained. And here it is!

 

My publisher has been kind enough to send me all these delicious little bookmarks, which also means I finally have the beginnings of a swag pile. Some of these will be going to quite a few blogs my publicist has been working with to help promote The Girl from the Well, and for a host of other events planned for the fall (more on both of these soon!)

(“Look, Zio,” I said, waving one of the bookmarks over my spawn’s crib. “Mommy’s got new swag!”)

baby obviously thinks mothers shouldn’t go about saying things like ‘swag’ 

And look at these pretty book badges! Feel free to take these if you’d like:

  

One sad note amidst all the excitement: one of my agents, Nicole, has decided to leave the Rees Agency to pursue other things. I am obviously sad to see her go, because she and my other agent, Rebecca, were the first advocates of my book way back when, and it will always feel odd to continue this journey to publication without her. All the best wishes to you, Nicole, and looking forward to new experiences!

Roughly two weeks till my book hits the stands! Whoop!

 

My Local Post Office is Unintentionally Creepy

I don’t always get the opportunity to visit the post office in my area, mostly because I get most of my shipping via international and local couriers. Because the post office is also situated in an area of town that does not have direct access to public transportation (which is usually the only recourse I have on most weekdays, being that my husband has work and I am allegedly a terror behind the wheel), I’ve technically never been there before, save for occasionally passing by the place en route to other locations more pertinent to how I live my life.

Last week though, I received a small summons stating that I had a package waiting for me, and if I would kindly go over there and pay the required P50 customs processing fee lest they don’t wait for the 30 day waiting period to lapse and cannibalize whatever it was someone thought important enough to send me. (People here can tell you of horror stories involving customs and local shipping, most of which involves exorbitant custom fees and much ripping and stealing of packages by people within the system.)

It looks more like an abandoned building than a post office when I arrived. Granted, I’d passed this place numerous times and never gave a thought to the dilapidated exterior and general run-down look of the place. Now though, despite the smattering of employees meandering behind the chipped tile counters, it could easily pass as haunted – and i do love my haunted places.

They open at 8 am, which was when I’d arrived, but I’d had to wait a good half hour more, because the employees here, like in many other places in the Philippines, operate on Filipino time, which means “at least an hour later than the time that was agreed upon”. He squints at me, then hands me a yellow ratty package without asking for any ID whatsoever. Gotta love the Philippines.

 I’m thinking I should be exploring the metro I live in a little more often than I have. Who knows what other creepy-looking place I might find?

What’s your Superpower? Celebrating Illusive’s debut!

This week, we’re celebrating the debut of Emily Lloyd Jones’ YA novel, Illusive, pitched as X-Men meets Ocean’s Eleven !  Who can resist that? And to start, we’re talking about superpowers to which Emily asks us -

What kind of superpower would you like to have, and why?

There is a reason why people called me Wolv-Erin back in high school:

And no, it’s not because I was hairy or had huge thighs or was short and grouchy (okay, maybe because I was short and grouchy), but mostly because I was the resident geek, Wolverine is my favorite mutant of all time (edging out Namor only by this much), and because I had always thought having a healing factor was the coolest superpower ever. How can you not want the semi-immortality that comes with the ability? As a kid, I was always running into tables and getting knocked around from sports that I was fond of, like taekwondo and running and badminton and biking (I might also have been the only person ever to get scratched knees from bowling, of all things), and it would always took so long for any bruises to heal.  The promise of any and all injuries magically disappearing within seconds was an appealing one to me.

If you could have any superpower, what would you choose?

When the MK virus swept across the planet, a vaccine was created to stop the epidemic, but it came with some unexpected side effects. A small percentage of the population developed superhero-like powers. Seventeen-year-old Ciere Giba has the handy ability to change her appearance at will. She’s what’s known as an illusionist…She’s also a thief.

After a robbery goes awry, Ciere must team up with a group of fellow super-powered criminals on another job that most would consider too reckless. The formula for the vaccine that gave them their abilities was supposedly destroyed years ago. But what if it wasn’t?
The lines between good and bad, us and them, and freedom and entrapment are blurred as Ciere and the rest of her crew become embroiled in a deadly race against he government that could cost them their lives.

Places to Purchase:
Signed Copes at Gallery Bookshop | Barnes & Noble | BAM | IndieBound | Audible



Emily Lloyd-Jones grew up on a vineyard in rural Oregon, where she played in evergreen forests and learned to fear sheep. After graduating from Western Oregon University with an English degree, she enrolled in the publishing program at Rosemont College just outside of Philadelphia. She currently resides in Northern California, working in a bookstore by day and writing by night.

 

Interpreting Dreams with Mary Crockett and Madelyn Rosenburg’s Dream Boy!

We’re celebrating the wonderful Mary Crockett and Madelyn Rosenberg’s debut, Dream Boy, this week! Because strange dreams are an integral aspect of Dream Boy, we’re going to do things differently in this post to promote their book debut! Mary has kindly asked me write a post where I recount any one odd dream I have had, so she could use her magic powers to interpret it for me!

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I don’t think it’s much in my nature to be disturbed by dreams. As a lifelong connoisseur of all things haunted and strange, I’ve dabbled in lots of stories about the terribly undead that sometimes I scoff at the idea of being truly scared. I love horror movies. I love every instance of ghost stories that come my way. I love being scared out of my wits by scary shows and films, and I pride myself on my ability to compartmentalize the time I spend watching these from the time I spend being alone in the house. I can watch a marathon session of all four The Grudge movies (the Japanese versions, because I’m a purist that way) and still not be bothered by the fact that I’m alone in the house. I think I’m not one to easily be scared.

Naturally, when you’re a kid your I’m-not-afraid meter isn’t as well-managed or as well-developed as the one you have when you’re an adult. Granted, I was a big fan of creepy stories and ghost tales for as long as I could remember reading, so there’s a thin layer of security asbestos lining in place that makes me less susceptible than the average child. But there has always been that one haunting dream that I still remember in very stark detail today, despite having had it when I was maybe around eight years old.

I remember being in a very old house – not old in a shambling, ready-to-fall-apart-at-any-instant way, but in a very, very old way, in every sense that it means. I grew up in the Philippines, and old houses here used to be constructed of old varnished wood and heavy rattan, with crocheted linen draperies, mosquito nets on four poster beds, and somewhat opaque curtains. It gives off a very 1600s Spanish architecture vibe, which is probably not surprising because during the 1600s the Philippines had been occupied by the Spaniards. It was the kind of house that was built for creaking.

This was odd, because the house I grew up in was a very modern house of its time, and I don’t remember ever having been in a house like that one in my dream before that.

I remember being led around by the hand, but try as I might I don’t remember exactly who was leading me around, only that it was someone that I at least trusted – not my mother; I am very sure of that. But I was raised in my youth by nannies (which are cheaper to afford in Manila than in the US or Europe) and the hand that clung to mine felt like it could belong one of the three or four that I remember.

They lead me around the house and stop at certain rooms, occasionally pointing out certain things to me that sound like they might be of importance.

“This is the veranda, dear, and here is the dining table.”

“This is the bodega, don’t go in there by yourself because it’s dirty.”

“This is the bathroom, and here is your toothbrush.”

It sounds rather harmless, until I was led upstairs and into the main bedrooms.

The hand then led me toward a small table, where there was a large picture on top of it. Even now when I try to recalll the face that was on that picture, my mind tends to shy away from going through the details. All I can recall with some clarity is that the girl in it looks very similar in pose and in technique to a Mona Lisa painting – except the colors were in sepia. This is also a little surprising, because I dont think I had ever even seen the Mona Lisa when I was that age, much less knew what it was.

Also, the girl in the painting had no eyes. They were just dark shadow sockets.

The hand says, “This is the Lady, dear. When you hear the chanting, DO NOT LOOK AT HER.”

After that, the hand brought me to a bedroom and prepared me for bedtime. I remember being settled into the blankets with a worried feeling that something was wrong, but when the hand told me to close my eyes I did so obediently.

And then that was when I heard the chantings.

At this point I wake up screaming my lungs off, sending pretty much everyone staying in the house rushing to my room wanting to know what was wrong.

I can still describe those chants. It sounds like people at Catholic Mass, murmuring in response to parts of the mass such as the Responsorial Psalms, though what those chants were saying were never distinct enough for me to know the words. Indistinct as they were, it nonetheless sounded like they were just repeating one phrase over and over, though I don’t know that that is.

I don’t feel any sense of dread when I look at the Mona Lisa, though. It feels instinctively that it’s not the same despite the similarities. Still, it holds as the most bizarre dream that I had ever had in my life, and I’d never been able to understand what it all meant, even a couple of decades later.

But hey – maybe one of these days I’ll even write a book about it.

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And remember: DREAM BOY HAS BEEN RELEASED INTO THE WILD. Grab a copy now!

 

The Cutest Reason I’ve Been on Hiatus

12 hours of labor and one unexpected C-section later, and this is what I have to show for it:

Meet little Ezio (if you realize where the name comes from, understand that the hubby and I are avid gamers). So far, his superpowers include pacifier projectiles, pooing in his diapers exactly ten seconds after having them changed, and looking really, really cute for photos.

My nonexistent posting will now transition back into irregular posting by the end of this month, mostly because I am actually starting to get used to having virtually no sleep at night. I would probably make an awesome vampire.

 

The Girl from the Well Goodreads Giveaway!

This is a very quick Post Involving Self-Promotion entry before I get around to the Really Big Post in a few days. I’m writing this now instead of later, where I would probably be more comfortable life-wise, but that’s only because there’s a time limit for this particular news.

Goodreads is giving away several advance copies of The Girl from the Well, and if you’re so inclined to read, you might want to join the giveaway!

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/enter_choose_address/87801-the-girl-from-the-well

The book in question: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18509623-the-girl-from-the-well

It ends on August 1, 2014, so do go and join!

That Odd Post about Babies and Change

It should be worth mentioning at this point, before anything else, that I am grossly pregnant, and am expected to discharge my load, so to speak, by the end of this month.

This is not usually something I like announcing, because very few things in my life I have a habit of announcing, unless it’s book-related. I am fairly sure that people have been pregnant before, is currently pregnant now, and will be pregnant in the sometime future, so the experience would be more personally rewarding and subjective by nature, rather than a revelation that demands that You All Must Stop Whatever You Are Doing And Listen Only to Me.

And I use the term ‘rewarding’, loosely. I am not the type of person to look at birth as some wondrous miracle of an unseen god, mostly because the process, to put it in a slightly more PC way, is a fairly easy thing to do, when you think about it. I’m not the kind of person who would look at any potential child as the world’s most special and unique snowflake, because siring them is not so much important as learning how to raise them right, and that would come much later. Any baby sonograms / photos of cribs and toys went largely missing from all my social accounts, mostly because I dislike them as a would-be mother just as much as a friend or acquaintance trying to mask their disinterest underneath a veil of politeness when other would-be moms show same.

If anyone told me I would be capable of having and raising a baby five years ago, I would have been incredulous – the same reaction I would have made had anyone told me I would be able to write a book. At that time in my life, I hadn’t thought myself capable of either.

I am, however, a person who likes being comfortable, and pregnancy is not the condition to encourage this. I had no morning sickness, but I did get the urge to wander out of the house in the dead of night looking for pickled Japanese radish, fettuccine carbonara, and other things you aren’t supposed to find at 1 am in the morning. But the worst part was when all the kicking started. I have woken up numerous times to the sensation of my lovable son gleefully kicking me in the nads from the inside, which is never known to be fun. I could already see his burgeoning potential as a muay thai fighter, given his dedication at practicing 18 out of 24 hours a day.

There is something to be said about taking care of a spawn in a belly that has by now ballooned up to the size of a watermelon, or perhaps a missile. It’s a nurturing process, and if anything else it has taught me to be patient, something that I have sometimes lacked throughout the years.

In between that and writing another book for a new series, my third novel to date (more information about my sophomore book to come!) blog posts – which are already somewhat sporadic here – may be even more lacking in the coming weeks. This year is marking the start of a series of very profound changes in my life – a baby, a debut, and a growing sense of confidence that I am, in fact, able to do all these for a living – and making that transition from knowing you can’t to knowing you can, has always been a very strange, blessed thing one should enjoy for as long as it lasts.

The Writing Process Blog Hop Tour

The lovely Maria E. Andreau has just recently tagged me for the My Writing Process Blog Tour, where I’ll be answering four questions about my writing process. Maria also has this very awesome, feel-worthy book out called the Secret Side of Empty, so be sure to check it out, too!

 

1. What am I working on?

I usually find it hard to explain exactly WHAT I’ve been working on until it’s actually been completed, though I am working on two at the moment. The first is what I can only say is a supernatural noir set in the Philippines (but would have far-reaching consequences in other areas of the world) that is a very Hayao Miyazaki / teen Philip Marlowe sort of hybrid.  (I understand Philip Marlowe and Studio Ghibli mash-ups don’t sound like they go very well together, *cue images of Sam Spade pursuing a fleeing Totoro* but I have a good feeling about this one.)

The second is a YA fantasy with an ensemble cast that’s been taking me awhile to revise, mostly because the ideas I am constantly adding and removing from this seems to come from some never-ending muse, and I wind up never being completely satisfied. But it has firebirds and ice queens and ogres in it! And comedy! THE GIRL FROM THE WELL had its own snarky moments with Tark, but I wanted to try my hand at something a little funnier. And whimsical-tragic (yes, I’m making genres up now).

2.  How does my work differ from others of its genre?

I don’t like writing about things that other people have already written about. I’d shy away from writing a ‘creature’ novel, for example, if I’m only going to follow a generic formula already common in the YA genre (mostly the “girl falls into a love triangle with < INSERT CREATURE HERE > and while battling forces of evil trope.”) if I can’t bring some other unique concept to the table (and by ‘unique concept’, I don’t mean using a trope creature that hasn’t been used before, like a minotaur or Cthulhu, as creature type doesn’t matter if it’s still using the same plot.) I love bringing together genre types that have no business being brought together in the first place, or at least putting a completely unexpected spin on a genre – and the weirder it is, the better I like it! Like My Little Ponies meets Transformers:

(image from here)

Or Adventure Time meets Romeo and Juliet meets Sin City!

(image from here)

3.  Why do I write what I do?

Writing has always been about invention for me – it’s the closest thing at least, if you have no aptitude for actually building physical things. That means I’m not exactly Dexter from Dexter’s lab, who can build virtually anything from the ground up, but I am Dee Dee – the one who wanders around the lab heedless of consequences, poking at giant beakers and bright shiny things going, “But what does THIS button do?”

Experimental plots generally blow up in my face more often than not – but the thrill of the experiment is a satisfying part of the process, even if it ends in failure, or if I’m forced to abandon something that didn’t turn out as well as I’d hoped it would be. I’ve never been good at being contented with what’s inside the box, because I am forever concocting ways to get me outside of it, to look at something from a perspective that few people rarely see from, and use that as a stepping stone for a budding plot or protagonist. I don’t want to write books that you can compare other books to – or one where, at the very least, you’ll be forced to retract that opinion upon reading it.

4.  How does your writing process work?

My secret is to not have any writing process to begin with. Sometimes I’ll plot, and sometimes I’ll just pants and wing it, and sometimes I’ll use a combination of both (plantser?). I’ll put together diagrams on the wall to help outline my story, but in other times I’ll just write on the fly. I don’t have a default time of day when it comes to writing, because I’ve been known to waffle for three days without doing anything, before coming back on the fourth and churning out 10,000 words in one sitting. Sometimes I’ll listen to music when I write, and sometimes I hate any kind of distraction. Some days I eat lunch or dinner while glued to my keyboard and other times I don’t want to. If I run out of things to write, I shrug and do something else for awhile, then get back to it in a day – or more, if needed. I have spent hours on my bed just staring at the ceiling, and I consider that time well spent. For some odd reason, I almost always manage to meet my deadlines, and I suspect the main reason is because I don’t worry too much about them to begin with.

I don’t really advocate some writers when they say you need to type in a certain number of words everyday, because I find it harder to revise an uninspired piece of writing than an inspired one that took three days of festering in my head. My process doesn’t necessarily work for other people though, so it’s really a question of understanding your own habits, and how to best make the most out of them.

 

Annd that’s it! Look out for next week’s entries by two of my awesome fellow 2014 debuts: Vivi Barnes, author of OLIVIA TWISTED already out this year and published by Entangled Teen, and Robin Constantine, whose debut THE PROMISE OF AMAZING is already out and – you guessed it – amazing! Few blurbs from them:

Vivi Barnes was raised on a farm in East Texas where her theater-loving mom and cowboy dad gave her a unique perspective on life. Now living in the magic and sunshine of Orlando, Florida, she divides her time writing, working, goofing off with her husband and three kids, and avoiding dirty dishes.

Robin Constantine is a born and bred Jersey girl who moved down South so she could wear flip-flops year round. She spends her days dreaming up stories where love conquers all, well, eventually but not without a lot of peril, angst and the occasional kissing scene.

 

THE GIRL FROM THE WELL at PLA 2014 – and an Excerpt!

If any of you people happen to be in Indianapolis any time from March 11 through 15, 2014, you might want to drop by the Public Library Association Conference where my publisher, Sourcebooks, will be present!

Not only will there be book signings and all (and a lunch with John Green! asfsfsdfasdfg), Sourcebooks (Booth #1548) will also be hosting a giveaway for my book, THE GIRL FROM THE WELL on March 13, at 3:30 pm!

Jamie Foxx approves.

And if that’s not enough, the first three chapters of THE GIRL FROM THE WELL is now available through the official Sourcebooks website!

Go to the official PLA 2014 website for more details about the conference!

 

Even more ARCs, and about book #2

Due to a desperate need for more sleep, just a few short updates:

1.THE GIRL FROM THE WELL is now also available on NetGalley! You can now go and request your ARCs here!

2. The always amazing Rebecca Petruck has found a few more TGftW ARCs available at the American Booksellers’ Association WI9 this month!

 

3. Book #2 is doing pretty well, despite my sleepiness and pregnanciness and lameness. I am estimating I’ve got about 5k to go before I’m officially done with my first draft, and that should be done by early next week. And yes, it’s kindof a sequel, though I’m looking at this more as a companion piece to compliment THE GIRL FROM THE WELL, than anything else. The agents and editors have liked the first chapter I’d hammered out last year, so here’s hoping they like the rest of it.

4. Because there isn’t enough ‘real’ news in this entry, here is a gif of some of my favorite things in the world.