Books! Books! Books!

We're at the end of month 11 and I'm already doing some examining, asking myself if I had achieved what I had set out to do at the beginning of the year. On the writing front, the answer would be a resounding "Yes!" The enthusiasm primarily comes from that I've been wanting to write fiction forever but, as I've said many times before, when you're writing and editing magazine articles the whole day, the last thing you really want to do at night is to look at more words.

December is going to be a specially happy month.

Above is the cover of Philippine Speculative Fiction 3. My short story "Pedro Diyego's Homecoming" is included in this anthology. I love "Pedro Diyego" mainly because the writing of it was such a pleasure. I've heard some writers say that certain stories seem to just write themselves, and this was the case here. The first sentence popped into my head, I typed it out on my laptop, and a day later the story was finished. I had to tweak the ending after having Patricia read it, but the writing involved almost zero stress. The editors and publishers, Nikki and Dean Alfar, are launching the anthology in Manila on December. You're all invited! Click here for the launch details.


Very Short Stories for Harried Readers is an anthology of flash fiction (meaning stories with a word count of 750 words or less) edited by Vince Groyon and published by Milflores. In his last e-mail, Groyon said that they are "hoping" to have the book out in Philippine bookstores by December. My contribution is called "Making a Garden." If she reads it, I think that former English lit professor Patricia would tell me the same as she did of "Pedro Diyego": "It lends itself well to a diasporic reading." Ack! Being an immigrant has given me angst!

Milflores is at the same time launching a collection of flash fiction written in Filipino and called Mga Kuwentong Paspasan.

Help Filipino books make it past the regular 1,000 first-printing copies, please. In my La Pomme blog, I encourage people to buy handmade. Here I want to say: Read Filipino! Go buy our books.