filipino authors – Tara Tries To Write

Tara na’t kiligin sa Kilig Cafe 2026!

February 11, 2026 No Comments

Filipino romance enthusiasts, rejoice and take a look at what #RomanceClass has in store for you this month of love!

On Sunday, February 22, #RomanceClass together with other Filipino romance authors from different writing communities and publishing backgrounds will come together in a mini romance convention called Kilig Cafe. Does the name sound familiar? Yes, if you’ve followed #RomanceClass for a while now, you’ll remember that Kilig Cafe was what we called our online hangout during the pandemic. We did everything from book launches to talk show-like streams to readalongs!

Now we’re bringing Kilig Cafe to the real world—and we’d like you all to come!

This event is for you if you:

Love to read romance books. It doesn’t matter if you like Tagalog romance, serialized fiction on Wattpad, or romance written in English, we’ve got all of this for you at Kilig Cafe! #RomanceClass is launching four new books (My Usual and You by Mina V. Esguerra, Comeback to Me by Carla de Guzman, Step One by Angeli E. Dumatol, and Win Meah Over by Ana Tejano), while the authors from Whimsical Books are bringing Tagalog romance to the table. Leng de Chavez and the authors of Guilty Reads will be bringing some titles that were originally published on Wattpad, and the BRU Multiverse authors are showcasing the work they’ve produced over the past few years. You’re definitely going to be spoiled for choice!
Want to meet our local romance authors. The event will run from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm, so there’s plenty of time for you to go around and meet all of the authors we’ve invited to participate in this event. I’m pretty sure I’m going to be busy on that day, but I’ll do my very best to say hi to all of them too. It’s not every day we get to have all of them in one venue in a day!
Want to meet readers with similar tastes. We’ve invited a couple of bookish communities to attend the event as well, and this is a great opportunity to get to know some of them, especially if you’re looking for a book club to join. These readers have very varied tastes in books, and I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to find a kindred spirit or two in the crowd.
Like getting free stuff. Our exhibitors are preparing lots of freebies for the attendees, and here are some of the ways for you to be able to get them:
1. Arrive at the venue early. The first 150 attendees get freebies upon registering!
2. Join the games. Don’t be shy, it’ll be fun!
3. Participate in the activities at an exhibitor’s table.
Like attending bookish events. If you’re the type to go to the big bookish events like Philippine Book Festival, Manila International Book Festival, or even Fully Booked events, I urge you to give this one a try, especially if it’s your first #RomanceClass event. I think you’ll find it a very refreshing experience.

So ano, game? Ready ka na bang kiligin?

Hope to see you there!

Kilig Cafe is happening on Sunday, February 22 at Ayala Malls the 30th in Pasig City. Admission is FREE.

This event is brought to you by #RomanceClass and Komiket.

Events, The Writing Community

That Market! Market! moment (My self-publishing talk at Komiket BGC)

January 25, 2026 No Comments

Last weekend, I gave a short talk about self-publishing at Komiket BGC as a representative of #RomanceClass. Yes, I had my Market! Market! moment. I’ve made it!

Anyway, thought I’d share the three quick self-publishing tips I mentioned during this talk. But first, an important note:

A lot of people still seem confused about the term self-publishing. I’ve seen people on the internet say “I’m a self-published author” and in the next sentence, say, “So-and-so is my publisher.” This is incorrect. When you SELF publish a book, that means YOU are The Boss of things. YOU are the publish. YOU have the power to make all the decisions regarding the publishing of your book.

Of course this doesn’t necessarily mean you have to do EVERYTHING from editing to book cover design to marketing. You can hire people (or a company) to do that for you. These are services, and if you hire people or a company to do these things, they are simply providing a service. They are NOT your publisher.

Remember: You never have to pay a publisher to get your book published. An actual publisher pays you so they could acquire the rights to publish your book.

Now that that’s (hopefully) clear, here are my three tips!

Book Tours, My Work, The Writing Community

3 Takeaways from the Waiting in the Wings book tour

November 11, 2025 No Comments

So… this is two months late, but I can’t not write about my amazing experience with Talk Bookish To Me, AKA the community of readers and content creators who organized the book tour for Waiting in the Wings.

Yup, I had another book tour this year! (Check out my BookLoverTitas collaboration for Connect the Hearts~)

I just figured that since I’m planning to release another book next year, I should reintroduce my backlist to new readers. So I reached out to Talk Bookish To Me for a collaboration, and they did a week-long feature for my theatre babies Erin, Ramon, and Pio on the first week of September.

I remember having a Zoom meeting with some of the TBTM members and their admin, Emman, asking me: “What are your expectations from us?”

I was a little stumped. What did I expect nga ba? Honestly, the only thing I wanted out of this book tour is new readers who would be interested in my books, so I just told them to do whatever they wanted and to surprise me. 🙂

And surprise me, they did. For seven days, Avy, Obi, Shian, Ceej, Jesh, CL, Nyz, Mark, and Veron featured my book in various creative ways. I was so kilig! One of them even made me cry. *points to the post below*

So yeah—here are my three takeaways from the Waiting in the Wings book tour with Talk Bookish To Me!

My Work, Personal, The Writing Community

10 Takeaways from my decade in publishing

August 22, 2025 No Comments

When I turned thirty (shit, I’m dating myself here, but what the heck), I wrote down a list of things I wanted to accomplish at thirty-three. One of them—and I declared this publicly on a Facebook post LOL—was to publish a book. Just ONE book. At that point, I’d had already worked at three companies and even tried my luck at making and selling clay accessories at bazaars. And although I still dabbled in writing KPop and Kdrama-inspired fanfic, I was so, so far away from my dream of becoming a screenwriter or a published author.

So, medyo nag-settle ako. Sabi ko sa sarili ko, kahit isang libro lang, maisulat at ma-publish ko, okay na ako. I’ll have some copies printed to give out as gifts, and one of them can stay with me as a souvenir. As a reminder that I was able to accomplish that dream kahit paano.

I love telling this story when someone asks me about my self-publishing origins. I was heading home from work, walking through ShangRi-La EDSA to the MRT station, and saw a kiosk of Summit books and magazines. Without really thinking about it, I snapped a photo of the books on display and posted it on my Instagram. Shortly after, one of my high school classmates, Jeni, commented on my post saying one of the books on the photo was written by her cousin.

Her cousin is Mina V. Esguerra.

Long story short, that one photo led me to knowing who Mina was, enrolling in her publishing class almost a year later, and joining #RomanceClass after that. Ten years later, here I am, trying to finish a new manuscript and getting ready to release a special illustrated cover edition of another book for (hopefully) Manila International Book Fair. It’s been an interesting and rewarding journey for me so far. I’ve learned so, so much, and I want to share some of the things that have kept me going.

Cover Reveal, My Work

Cover Reveal: Waiting in the Wings (special illustrated cover edition)

August 8, 2025 No Comments

It’s here! It’s here! It’s heeeeeeere!

It’s cover reveal day, folks—and YES, I know. I’ve done this before. For this very book, in fact. The beauty of being a self-published author, folks: You can do whatever you want with your book, just because. And because I met an artist whose work I really liked and I just really wanted an illustrated cover for Waiting in the Wings, I did exactly that.

I wanted to capture a moment in the book that’s been sorta-kinda immortalized through a couple of live readings but couldn’t really capture in my 2024 photo cover. Figured illustration was the best way to do it, and I’m so, so happy because @rwiizo definitely delivered the feels~!

And so here it is, the special illustrated cover edition of Waiting in the Wings!

1 2 3 … 20 Next »