Tara Tries To Write

Tara’s Thoughts On: Glitch

November 5, 2022 No Comments

Ah, how do I even begin this review?

Sci-fi isn’t really my cup of tea, I admit. I rarely watch sci-fi films or dramas, and even though I subscribe to the belief that we are not alone in the universe, I’m not easily lured into watching alien-related stuff. I did pick up Glitch, however, because I liked both lead actresses Jeon Yeobeen and Nana’s works I’ve recently watched (Vincenzo and Into the Ring, respectively), and I was curious about how they’d play off of each other’s energies.

But while they delivered chemistry in spades (you should have made it gay, Netflix, just saying!), the storytelling was a clunky mess.

KDrama, Review

Tara’s Thoughts On: Tomorrow

November 3, 2022 No Comments

Okay, listen: I am instantly drawn to anything that presents stories of life and death, especially ones that create worlds and hypotheses about the afterlife. Tomorrow fits the bill, and I quickly put it on my Netflix watch list even if it took me months to actually be in the right headspace to consume it.

The short review: I loved it.

Books, Review

Tara’s Thoughts On: Flip the Script by Lyla Lee

October 26, 2022 No Comments

I really wanted to like this.

Honestly, anything KDrama and KPop would be a huge draw for me, and Flip The Script looked like a promising queer romance between two young KDrama actresses who were supposed to be rivals in a TV show. What’s not to get excited about?

Cover Reveal, Personal, The Writing Community

[ Cover Reveal ] What If We Fall In Love?

October 24, 2022 No Comments

I love cover reveals. I do. Especially when I know the author doing it and I trust them to “deliver the goods,” so to speak. And also when I’m the one doing the reveal.

In the #romanceclass community, we have a project called #romanceclasscovers where we (or actually, our resident photographer, Chi Yu Rodriguez) takes photos of Filipino models (sometimes they’re actors, sometimes they’re friends of friends!) and we put these photos on the covers of our books. It doesn’t sound quite revolutionary when you think about it, but it’s a statement. It says, loudly, that we want to see Filipinos on the covers of our books. We want to see not just faces, but faces with real emotion. Poses that entice and tickle the imagination. The whole she-bang.

It’s a representation thing. It’s an aesthetic thing. It’s a choice.

My choice for my upcoming book, What If We Fall In Love?, is a playful, happy photo of Gab Pangilinan and Gio Gahol taken way back in 2017, when we still did regular studio shoots for #romanceclass covers. It’s been hidden away for so long, I’ve just being waiting and waiting and waiting to see where I could use it, and the opportunity presented itself after deciding on releasing a romance anthology.

And here it is—the cover of What If We Fall In Love?:

Books, Review, The Writing Community

Tara’s Thoughts On: Kaith C. Cimafranca’s TAKE TWO

October 19, 2022 No Comments

Reading Kaith C. Cimafranca’s Take Two reminded me of those cozy Star Cinema rom-coms in the 90s where stakes weren’t as high, but you still root for the main characters really hard. In Take Two, now-Canadian resident VJ meets her TOTGA (she will deny this if you call him that, btw) at a party 19 years after she left the Philippines to start anew. Marco instantly feels how aloof VJ is, but he doesn’t seem to mind, and we understand this little dynamic of theirs as the story brings us back and forth from their college years to the present.