Hello and welcome to the first installment of this mini blog project I’m doing–this is #RomanceClass ❤ OPM, where I ask Filipino authors and readers to send in songs they find relevant to the books they wrote or read and I curate them into playlists. The only rule: ALL the songs should be OPM.

Brief background for those of you who just stumbled upon this post:

What is #romanceclass?

#RomanceClass is a thriving community of Filipino authors who write romance in English and publish them (traditionally and independently). It began in 2013, when author Mina V. Esguerra facilitated a writing class wherein the objective was to complete a romance novel in a span of three months. Fast forward to 2016, the community and its body of work has grown immensely, exploring new avenues in order to weave new stories and market them. We have participated in bookish events, had writing workshops, talked about how to write more and market our work better, sold books, held live readings, and recently organized our very first standalone event in April. Just recently, a new batch of authors have typed “The End” to new #romanceclass books which may (hopefully!) come out before the end of the year.

What is OPM?

OPM stands for Original Pilipino Music or Original Philippine Music. It was originally used to only refer to pop songs, but has since included all genres like rock, jazz, hip-hop, and so on. OPM is usually written in Filipino/Tagalog or English, but may, in some cases, also have touches of other foreign languages or local dialects.

Click on the Read More button to get to the first playlist I curated for this project, along with some notes from the authors and readers of the featured books. Links to read more about the featured books as well as buy them are included in the post. Have fun!