Tara Tries To Write

Peripherals, Personal, Projects, Writing

Love Songs: Waiting in the Wings

June 23, 2017 No Comments

I love love songs. I mean, I love songs in general, but I’m a sucker for passionate well-written love songs, and I believe we have plenty of that in OPM (Original Pilipino Music). Including some of my favorites in Waiting in the Wings was such a fun thing to do, but also a little daunting, only because I couldn’t really quote the lyrics in the book. Often, I wondered if describing the songs was enough to get their messages across, and when I felt that wasn’t enough, I put together a Waiting in the Wings Spotify playlist.

Today, I’m sharing the lyrics to the four OPM songs mentioned in the book, together with English translations so that international readers may also understand what they mean. Please bear in mind though that I’m not a translation expert, but I tried my best to capture the feeling of the songs. Take a look/listen:

Peripherals, Personal, Projects, Writing

Gio & Gab For #SummerCrush!

June 1, 2017 No Comments

And so, the final promotional ~thing for our summer music festival anthology, Summer Crush ended last Sunday! It came in the form of three video recordings, excerpts from each of the three short stories–Jay E. Tria’s You Only Need Reminding, Almost There by yours truly, and Six de los Reyes’ Ocean Eyes–read by two people we love, Gio Gahol and Gab Pangilinan.

Instagram will load in the frontend.

Personal, Projects, The Writing Community

Book Cover Crazy: My 1st #RomanceClassCovers Experience

May 23, 2017 No Comments

#romanceclasscovers shoot day — **THAT’S A WRAP!** #romanceclasscovers 3.0 featured Fred Lo and Vanya Castor. Photo by Chi Yu Rodriguez. Styling by Alex V. Lapa. Overall coordination by Mina V. Esguerra. Additional, *panggulo* feels by Ana Tejano, Jay E. Tria, Tania Arpa, and yours truly.

“Aga-aga daming feelings!” -Lo, 2017

^ Now THAT is a pretty accurate description of what went down at the citruSnap studio last May 14, to be honest. There we were, six giddy authors (one of whom is also the photographer, the other, a book cover designer), two gorgeous models, and one badass stylist, trying our best to stay on our toes and be ~productive on a hot, Sunday morning. While this wasn’t the first time I got involved in a photo shoot, this was the first time I sponsored one for a personal project.

I wasn’t prepared. *insert sweating emoji here* Yes, even when I’ve saved a bunch of reference photos on my Pinterest board and sent it over to Mina to compile. Even when I had already outlined 2/3 of the book for which some of the photos will be shot. Even when I’ve rehearsed in my head what kind of direction I’d be giving Fred and Vanya so I can achieve the look I wanted. Nope. I wasn’t.

Events, Videos

Here, have my feelings. All of them.

May 20, 2017 No Comments

Okay, I know… I know. It’s been three weeks since the #romanceclass April Feels Day–I should have gotten over it by now, moved on and such… but guess what? It’s not happening. Nuh-uh.

All because the live readings for Waiting in the Wings happened.

So here I am, writing this post to try and process my feelings one by one. There will be more ~processing posts, by the way, because more things happened after April 30 and I just…

Why yes, I’ve been finding the need to do this for three weeks now.

Before I wordvomit around this space, you need to know these three things:

Waiting in the Wings is my most personal work yet,
A huge chunk of Ramon’s personality was inspired by Gio Gahol, and;
Pio Alvez in my headcanon looks and sounds like Fred Lo.

Events, Videos

#AprilFeelsDay2017: A Video Recap

May 16, 2017 No Comments

Two weeks have passed since the #romanceclass April Feels Day, but I think it’s pretty safe to say no one’s moved on just yet. So here’s a quick video recap of the event (para wasak uli ‘di ba?), courtesy of author Chi Yu Rodriguez. ^_^ Enjoy!