jay e. tria – Tara Tries To Write

#AprilFeelsDay2023 was a blast!

May 10, 2023 No Comments

So #AprilFeelsDay2023 was two Saturdays ago, and it was a fun time, as always, seeing old faces, meeting new friends, celebrating the release of new books, and squealing in kilig hearing scenes from our books being read back to us. This is the SEVENTH #AprilFeelsDay we’ve had (the first one was in 2017! Imagine that!) and the first in-person one since 2020, so it felt like the first time all over again (yes, even if we got to do an in-person #FeelsFest event in October last year).

Here are some highlights from #AprilFeelsDay2023:

Personal, The Writing Community, Writing

Five years in the making…

April 21, 2023 No Comments

Five years ago, I tweeted this:

Jeon Jihyun x Daniel Henney
Friends to lovers

Unlikely childhood friends bond over a scrappy puppy they find in a dumpster. The budding relationship that blooms as they raise the stray together gets cut short when his family migrates overseas. 1/2 pic.twitter.com/PEj7ORYHCS
— Tara 🐰 (@tarafrejas) October 18, 2018

I don’t remember anymore how exactly I came up with the plunny, although it’s possible that it’s mostly because I had Daniel Henney in mind as the love interest. He loves dogs, and so do I…and I’d never really written a story yet where the characters had pets, so I wanted to give it a try.

I’ve kept the idea for the story in my growing list of plunnies to explore, but only got around to writing it until sometime in late 2021, when I decided to put together an anthology of short stories that eventually became What If We Fall In Love? I shelved this story and instead included my NomCom submission, Your Heart, To Go, to complete the lineup. I thought it would take a while before I got to revisit the manuscript, but an opportunity to finish it came when submissions for Pawfect For You (then simply called Tropetastic 3) came along.

Cover Reveal, The Writing Community, Writing

New anthology alert: Pawfect For You!

April 16, 2023 No Comments

Friends and lovers, listen up! #RomanceClass is back with another charity anthology, and this year, we are helping cats and dogs in need!

On National Pet Day (April 11), we did a cover reveal+ pre-order link drop for Pawfect For You: Tropetastic Kindness Bundle 3. It’s a collection of six all-new nakakakilig stories where the main characters are pet owners/pet lovers falling in love. Check out the wonderful cover below, illustrated by Liza S. dela Cruz.

We met Liza last year when she worked with #romanceclass authors Carla de Guzman and Celestine Trinidad for their KILIG anthology entries, and it was so lovely getting to work with her for this cover. Don’t you think it’s pretty? ^_^

Included in the anthology are stories by Danice Mae P. Sison, Ines Bautista-Yao, Tara Frejas (that’s me!), Celestine Trinidad, Angel C. Aquino, and Jay E. Tria. You may pre-order a copy of the book at US$7 (or the price you want) at kilig.pub/pawfect4u. Just like our previous charity anthologies, Pawfect For You is available for a limited time only (until June 29, 2023), so please make sure you grab this opportunity to get the book while it lasts.

Pawfect For You will be released on April 29, 2023. ALL PROCEEDS will go to Pawssion Project, a non-government organization dedicated to the rescue, rehabilitation, and rehoming of cats and dogs in distress.

Yes, please I’d like my own copy of Pawfect For You!

Book Launch, The Writing Community

Another Tres Launches book launch is happening tonight!

October 15, 2022 No Comments

I had a lot of fun hosting last week’s back-to-back-to-back book launch featuring books by #romanceclass authors Angel C. Aquino, Ines Bautista-Yao, and Mina V. Esguerra, and tonight I’m doing it again!~

This week, we are launching three other #romanceclass books by authors Carla de Guzman, Jay E. Tria, and Kaith C. Cimafranca:

The stream is tonight (Saturday, October 15) at 8PM PHT, and if you want to tune in and watch, you can stream the video below or watch it straight on YouTube. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channel!

Personal, The Writing Community, Videos

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

April 26, 2022 No Comments

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: