Personal, The Writing Community, Videos

#KiligCafe Chats: Book & Coffee Talk with Brij, Chi, and Jay

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Last Saturday, Brij, Chi, Jay, and I did a livestream together on the #romanceclass channel. If you’ve been following our activities since the pandemic started, you’d know that we started doing livestreams like this to be able to still get together as a community despite being in community quarantine. We did that for two years, and it was just a refreshing, chaotic experience to be in the room with three other people during this stream!

Our theme for the night was brewing coffee is pretty much like brewing book ideas, and we had a lot of fun chatting about our experiences doing research for the books we wrote, how we handle manuscripts when the ideas are “underextracted” or “overextracted,” and of course, making and tasting coffee!

Watch the stream below:

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The Writing Community, Videos

When food and kilig go hand-in-hand

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*points up* I was one of the guests for #RomanceClass Podcast S5’s 1st episode featuring food and kilig! We had a lot of fun talking about the food we incorporated in our NomCom: Tropetastic Kindness Bundle 2 stories, and also managed to make ourselves (and the audience) hungry in the process, LOL.

If you have been reading a lot of #RomanceClass books, you’ll have noticed how much we love including food in our books. From the popular champorado in Summer Crush and Second Wave Summer to the scandalous biko in Alta: A High Society Romance Anthology, to the scrumptious mangoes in Mango Summer and the many, delicious meals the Aguas family had in If the Dress Fits, food is an inevitable part of our stories. I personally think it makes the characters and places more relatable, more vivid. It also adds an extra layer of interest for me, because I tend to want to try the dishes mentioned in the books (especially if I haven’t had them in a long time, or ever).

What’s a dish you’ve wanted to try or have tried because you’ve read about it in a book?

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Personal, The Writing Community

Just add one year…

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Let me start this post by saying: It’s my birthday on Monday, just in case you need a reason to have cake. I’ve finally reached the (physical) age where I have to watch my sugar intake, so I can’t really have any right now. It would be nice if you could think of me when you have cake, though. So, yeah. ^_^;

Celebrations have been weird since 2020. I’m not the type to hold or attend parties a lot, but I do miss celebrating milestones with friends and family without having to worry if someone could get sick because we’re all in one room together, talking and laughing and singing. Last year, I celebrated my birthday with a livestream where me and some #romanceclass friends played pictionary and had party food. It was a whole lot of chaos and fun.

This year, I didn’t have the motivation to plan anything. >_<;; It’s a little sad, but true. I am very grateful I’m still here, though, but maybe I’ll just add one year to my age on that day and proceed as usual. (I’m sure I’ll have something special for lunch with my family, but apart from that it’ll be just like any other day.)

I am, however, giving something away, because I’d like to spread a little cheer and kilig. And hope.

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The Writing Community, Writing

It’s trucking tropetastic!

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When Taal Volcano erupted in January of 2020, Ansela Corsino and Mina V. Esguerra called on us #romanceclass authors to contribute to a book bundle for charity. The result was a 19-book collection we called the #RomanceClass Taal Relief Bundle, from which we earned over $2,000 in sales. We donated all proceeds to RockEd Philippines, a volunteer group which helped bring food, clothing, and other supplies to the Taal victims.

Because the project was a success, we decided to do it again. A bunch of #romanceclass authors met up through Zoom and discussed putting together an anthology of new stories. We decided on a setting (a residential condominium named St. Tropez) and assigned tropes to authors via roulette, and The Tropetastic Kindness Bundle was born. Proceeds from that bundle were donated to three charities: Project Propel, Gantala Press, and RockEd Philippines.

This year, the Tropetastic Kindness Bundle is back with new short stories and a new milieu! Presenting NOMCOM: a fictional food park and the main setting of the 14 delicious short stories in this collection!

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