Several weeks back, a friend of mine, author and editor Liana Smith Bautista (@liasbautista on Twitter), posted a question on Facebook for her female forty-something contacts:
What’s the one thing you wish you’d known when you were in your 30s?
It was for an article she was going to write for the Female Network, an online lifestyle and women’s magazine. I didn’t think twice about contributing my two cents. But I thought long and hard for which particular thing I can share. Something that wasn’t very dramatic, but enough to have possibly reshaped the path I had taken in life had I followed that particular road.
The article came out last February 9th and my contribution was featured along with 5 other women’s replies. Yay!
So here’s what I said:
“I wish I’d known I could have looked forward to more employment options as a performing artist than an office girl. I had a door open to me that could have led me to being a professional actress or singer but I turned down the opportunity because I believed the wiser decision was to work behind the desk. If I’d chosen the artist’s way, I could be performing in Disneyland right now and having such a great time. My life doesn’t suck, though, but you know what I mean.”
I was a thirty-year old newbie marketing and PR person for PETA at the time. That’s PETA, the Philippine theater company; not PeTA, the animal rights group. I auditioned for one of the plays we were producing for the season. The play was an original Filipino musical first staged in the Netherlands, IIRC, and it was debuting on the Philippine stage the first year our marketing and PR team became a solid unit.
I made it through, and was chosen to play The Little Match Girl, alternating with another theater actress. It was an exciting time because it was the stage! And I’d be singing and acting! And it was a professional theater company and not just a school/student production and there was a possibility of going on tour… But also I’d be doing theater simultaneously with office work…Could I make it work?
Doubted it. Or maybe I didn’t want it enough? But well, like I mentioned in my reply, I’d grown up thinking the way to go is to be an office girl. So I ditched the opportunity in favor of a desk, a work computer, clients, and long hours burning the proverbial midnight oil.
Oy vey.
Years later, I auditioned again for another musicale but as an older person, I’d probably developed bigger insecurities and I guess it showed in my voice, in my movement. I didn’t make it through that time. And that was the end of it. And while there’d been events when I still got to perform on stage, that first opportunity still remained my one big TOTGA: The One That Got Away.
A scene from the one-act play “Moog” (Tower/Stronghold) by J. Dennis Teodosio and directed by Nor Domingo, staged at the PETA Theater Center for the Summer Lab in 2007
That’s water under the bridge now, and like I said in my reply, what I currently have in my life isn’t what I’d call fvcked up. I’m okay. My life is okay. My life is great! Because maybe if I had chosen to be an actress, there might have been people I’d never have met. And these people in my life right now make me happy.
And being happy makes up for everything else.
Danice Mae P. Sison realized she wanted to be Harriet the Spy when she was very young. Since then, she has been digging out from real life experiences, pop culture obsessions, and her growing TBR pile of young adult and romance books for inspiration. She works in pay television as a channel manager, and has previously contributed as an author on the anthology Start Here. Flipping the Script is her first book.
Genre:
“Just so we’re on the same page. There’s no boyfriend, is there?” he asked when she returned. As much as he wanted to seem disinterested, even he could tell he was focusing too intently on the calluses on his fingertips. He raised his eyes, blinked away the memories, and grinned.
“Figures. You looked pretty intense just now.”
“I’m not complaining. I am asking who’s sexy.” Dark eyebrows up and wiggling. Ripe lips curved in a smirk, bearing my final warning.
Four stories/arcs make up a circle, where the lines are blurred between victim and perpetrator, between innocent bystander and involved participant, and between right and wrong.
Blackout.
The anticipation was palpable. A few seconds more and the music exploded. The lights went on, and a voice pierced through everyone’s consciousness. From that moment, everyone’s focus was centered on the singer, whose voice soared above the music; every word he uttered went straight to the heart. He was taller than normal, lean, wearing a simple white T-shirt, black ripped denims and boots. His eyes were deep-set and expressive, and his mouth was wide, his lips full, but his mop of longish unruly dark brown hair concealed half of his face. Ordinarily, offstage, he was considered almost handsome, but when he was onstage and making his music, he was beautiful.
Trigger warning: this is about a child rape case and the effects on the person when she grew up. There are scenes that pertain to the act itself and this is definitely not for the faint hearted.
Note: This has a high heat level written in the POV of a male erotic writer.
questioned my motives for the questions.
Trigger Warning: This has some themes of child abuse—physical, emotional and psychological—as well as crimes of passion, police brutality, and suicide.
Before she could ask Liam what he meant, she saw something emerge from the closet, something she would not have ever imagined existing in her entire life. This “something” was huge and dark and had lots of teeth. And this something had suddenly taken hold of her and was dragging her into the closet. It was happening so fast, she couldn’t react. She didn’t even have time to scream. She felt the most exquisite pain and then there was blackness as the closet door closed.
Yeyet Soriano is a multi-genre author who writes speculative fiction, crime fiction and contemporary romance.Based in Manila, Philippines, her day job is that of an Asia-Pacific regional senior IT manager for a multinational corporation. She is married to a man who has never read of any of her works (he only reads to fall asleep), and they have three wonderful kids—a teen-aged daughter who just entered college and who is pursuing her passion for street dance, a sweet daughter in fourth grade who is a budding poet and writer in her own right, and a son in first grade who hasn’t taken up reading for fun yet, but is unbelievably smart and charming.