Personal

Work & Play: Beach, books, and broken hearts

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Got dragged (no, not literally) all the way up to San Juan, La Union last Tuesday to participate in SIFCare’s Earth Day activities which mostly entailed getting people to help clean up major waterways such as rivers and beaches. La Union is known for being the surfing capital of the Philippines, but do you also know that a lot of pawikans (sea turtles) come to their shores to lay eggs?

Yeap. Every year, hundreds of pawikan eggs are laid in the shores of San Juan La Union, and SIFCare’s CURMA (Coastal Underwater Resource Management Actions) program makes sure that these eggs are sufficiently protected until they hatch and the baby pawikans find their way back to the sea. 

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Writing

Hello, I am a blog tour #n00b.

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Quick update to say that the #buqoYA blog tour is kicking off in three days, and I’m very excited to say that Tara Tries to Write will be part of it! Admittedly, I have no prior experience with regards to blog tours, but I’m determined to make my tour stop good anyway; I owe it to the authors whose stories I have already read and will still be reading.

As I’ve mentioned in my previous posts, it’s a very exciting time for a new generation of writers because a lot of avenues are being opened for us to put our work out there and get our stories to an audience. #buqoYA is one such avenue, and I can’t wait to see where it takes us–both authors and readers alike.

Here’s hoping for more opportunities like this for Filipino authors in the near future!

Read more about the #buqoYA bundles here, and (I believe it’s not to late to) sign up for the blog tours here.

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Projects, Work

Hashtagging for a cause

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If you have been following me on Twitter, chances are, you’d see me tweeting and re-tweeting things with the #SparkNA hashtag. I know I probably kind of spam my t-list with it but whatever, I love that hashtag so much I already have a separate column for it on my Tweetdeck. Har-de-har.

The hashtag is an amazing thing, actually. As someone who frequents social media sites on the regular (Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, most especially) for work and personal use, it has proven to be a handy tool for research, basically. You can find a topic of interest quickly and see what people are saying about it, and you can also get in touch with groups of people who share the same interest.

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Personal, Writing

Oh wow, writers everywhere!

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I had the pleasure of spending my Saturday afternoon with a room full of Filipino authors last April 11th at the National Bookstore Super Branch in Cubao. It was our first #F2F, or Face to Face class for#SparkNA with Mina and a few representatives from Anvil Publishing’s Spark Books. My friends and I came a bit late, so naturally, we ended up being more anxious than we were supposed to. I think that by the time I stepped into the room, I had to take a deep breath because “Oh my god there are so many of them, I feel like throwing up a little.”

No, but seriously, a handful of the participants already know each other from Mina’s previous classes, but we (my friends and I) were all n00bs, so you understand the initial apprehension. I didn’t realize how quickly we’d warm up to the entire group, even if I only got to speak to about 20% of the class.

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