English, Please

Sometime ago, my good friend Reev Robledo (author of Gitarista, winner of the 2014 FilReaderCon Fiction in English category) intimated that I should go indie, start self-publishing because he thought there’s a big market out there I am not able to tap because I’m sticking to Filipino romance. Not that he was asking me to give it up but more like add to my portfolio by writing in English.

I said I was not averse to it but I was so lazy, I don’t think I can do it. See, to be successful in this industry, presence is key. And if I’m lazy, I will not be able to address the needs of the two… shall we say, realms – Tagalog romance for My Special Valentine, and English fiction for Amazon (or some other online distributor). I promised I would do it in time, when I’m ready.

And then, early this year, another friend, Anne Plaza, introduced me to the Facebook community of the Romance Writers of the Philippines. There, I met incredible, dynamic authors who I will no longer name here one by one (lest I forget one of you), but the thing is, I took the inclusion in this new group (I’m new to them, not that the group was new) as a sign to actually get serious with going indie. Again, it’s not to say that I will give up my Tagalog romance endeavors, but I do wish to write other genre, specifically mystery thrillers. And stories that are less conforming to the romance formula.

But since I’m a romance writer, I will start with that. Love stories. I came up with three plots which I started to develop. One is about a 41-year old single woman who suddenly found herself no longer wanting to be alone. That’s going 8k words already. I’m thinking this could end at about 32-35k words.

Another story is about this girl who fell for a military guy who, until death, never told her he loved her. Sound familiar? It should. I shared this as a short scene for Clara Romance‘s beta version last February 2015. I feel it needs a proper story so that’s definitely going to be one of my initial offerings online.

Then I have a story about a chef, who’s also a culinary teacher, his student, who has a crush on him, and the student’s stepmom, on whom chef has a crush. Oh, and chef is about 6 years younger than stepmom-crush. *wink*

While all that was happening, there came the offer to join two online classes which was being organized by Bronze Age Media in Mina V. Esguerra fashion although she wasn’t mentoring. Merely facilitating. One was #StrangeLit, a class on urban fantasy/paranormal story-writing, the other was #HeistClub, on crime literature-writing. I joined both, but got to finish only one – guess which?

I think I really am at home with orchestrating crime and rescue missions….

And so, family, friends, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly introduce CLASSIFIED, my first English-language story, soon to be published (bundled with some of the 17 other authors who finished #HeistClub) on Buqo. Yeeeyy!

We were told this story should be ‘Case Number One’ – a story that could be the prequel to another book, or a series of books under crime fiction. From me, do expect four to six books to come after this, the first of which I am tackling for #NaNoWriMo this November.

BLOG CHANGES

I do not intend to make a new blog site for my indie-released books so I am in the process of fixing this one to accommodate both my Tagalog romance titles as well as the new ones. Please bear with me for now if there are tabs that are incomplete.