#romanceclass @ #MIBF2019!

September 8, 2019 No Comments

Exciting news, folks! #romanceclass will once again be at the Manila International Book Fair this year! Can I get a WHOOP, WHOOP!?

#romanceclass will be sharing a booth with Visprint, and you’ll be able to find us at Booth #2-47, #2-57-58 at the 2nd floor of the SMX Convention Center, Pasay City. #MIBF2019 will be running from Wednesday, September 11 to Sunday, September 15—which mean you have plenty of time to come visit us! Ain’t that nice.

Check out the #romanceclass titles available on those dates:

Projects, The Writing Community

#romanceclass X #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy Virtual Panels

August 4, 2019 No Comments

Buwan Ng Mga Akdang Pinoy Virtual Panels by #romanceclass

Part of #romanceclass’ month-long celebration of Buwan ng mga Akdang Pinoy is a weekly virtual panel that discusses the various work the community has done so far. It happens every weekend of August (Friday-Sunday) starting Friday, August 9.

Check out the week’s schedule below (subject to change without prior notice):

August 16, Friday

7:00 PM — Author AMA with Angeli Dumatol

Angeli E. Dumatol is a physician by profession and when she’s not in the clinics, she can be found writing stories, reading books, or getting lost in a daydream. Her first #romanceclass novel is Heartstruck, which is also the first book in the #romanceclassFlicker collection.

Send in your questions for Angeli here.

9:00 PM — Author AMA with Dawn Lanuza

Dawn Lanuza writes contemporary romance, young adult fiction and prose poetry. She has two first loves – music and writing – and is lucky enough to surround herself with them. She is the author behind The Boyfriend Backtrack, The Hometown Hazard, What About Today, and the poetry collection, The Last Time I’ll Write About You. Her most recent releases are You Are Here (poetry), and Stay a Little Longer (romance novel), both published by Andrews McMeel Publishing.

Send in your questions for Dawn here.

August 17, Saturday

5:00 PM — Serving Face, or Why We Like Visual Pegs So Much

Why, indeed, do we love assigning faces to our characters? Why do we have 762743 photos of (insert actor/actress’ name here) saved in our phones/computers? And how does that help our writing process? This and more — send in your questions — on this panel.

Panelists: Ana Tejano, Bianca Mori, and Tara Frejas

Send in your questions for this panel here.

7:00 PM — So You Think You Can Vlog/Podcast?

Are you an aspiring book vlogger/podcaster? Get insights on how you can start and maintain your own book vlog or podcast in this panel!

Panelists: Ansela Corsino (Adulting for Authors), Kat Mayo (BookThingo)
Host: Carla de Guzman

Send in your questions for this panel here.

August 18, Sunday

5:00 PM — #RomanceClass Covers

#RomanceClass Covers offers more cover options for Filipino/Asian authors and their stories. We’ll talk about how this endeavor started, how it has affected the way #romanceclass covers are now conceptualized/designed, and maybe (just maybe) behind-the-scenes stories from the shoots!

Panelists: Carla de Guzman, Miles Tan, Mina V. Esguerra, Tania Arpa
Host: Chi Yu Rodriguez

Send in your questions for this panel here.

7:00 PM — Author AMA with Tara Frejas

Tara Frejas works as a Virtual Assistant by day, and writes romance by night. She published her first book in 2015 after joining Mina V. Esguerra’s Author at Once Workshop and has since written seven more books and contributed to three anthologies. Her books are often reflections of the things she loves, like basketball (Settle the Score & Hustle Play), musicals (Waiting in the Wings), and KPop (Scandalized / Play It By Ear).

Send in your questions for Tara here.

We all hope you can join us on Twitter for these discussions! (There might be some giveaways per panel, so if you’re lucky, you might win some pretty, shiny prizes!) See you on Friday! <3

PREVIOUS PANELS

WEEK ONE

August 9, Friday

7:00 PM — #romanceclassFlicker: Stories behind the #romanceclass YA imprint

Panelists: Agay Llanera, Angeli Dumatol, Danice Mae P. Sison, and Catherine Dellosa
Host: Ines Bautista-Yao

Send in your questions for this panel here.

August 10, Saturday

5:00 PM — Author AMA: Chi Yu Rodriguez

Chi Yu Rodriguez is the author of The Byebye Bouquet, Love and Other Questionable Life Choices, and No Two Ways. She is also the official photographer of #romanceclasscovers (@romanceclasscovers on Instagram). Send in your questions for Chi here.

August 11, Sunday

5:00 PM — Slay that Slump: #romanceclass authors and their writing habits + how they motivate themselves to Get Shit Done

This is an open panel hosted by Tara Frejas. All #romanceclass authors are welcome to jump in and answer questions presented during the discussion.

Send in your questions for this panel here.

7:00 PM — Author AMA: Angel C. Aquino

Angel C. Aquino is a freelance writer, editor, and content creator based in Manila. Her short story, “The Bucket List” was published in the Summit Books anthology, Coming of Age. Love At First Run is her first #romanceclass novel. Send in your questions for Angel here.

Projects, The Writing Community

Bingo, anyone?

July 26, 2019 No Comments

In 2015, author Edgar Calabia Samar (Janus Silang, Walong Diwata ng Pagkahulog) started an social media campaign called #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy as part of the country’s celebration of Buwan ng Wika (National Language Month). The campaign encouraged more Filipino readers to share to the world the Filipino-authored works they have enjoyed or are currently enjoying. It resulted in an influx of tweets, bookstagrams, and other posts in social media platforms featuring a lot of titles, some of them yet to be discovered by the masses.

For this year, #romanceclass is joining the campaign with a #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy Bingo, which gives everyone who wishes to join a little guide to the kinds of work they should be checking out. The prize? Why, a newfound appreciation for Filipino-authored/produced work you might not have encountered before, of course!

Check out our bingo board below:

This #BuwanNgMgaAkdangPinoy bingo includes not just books but comics, songs, stage productions (musicals/plays), films, and television shows.

Theatre

Tara’s 2019 Mid-Year Theatre Round-Up

July 13, 2019 No Comments

Most of the people who know me know I’m a sucker for a good theatre production. Thing is, I kind of suck at writing reviews lately, that most of my thoughts about the shows I’ve seen this year were only confined to Instagram posts. And since we’ve reached the halfway mark of 2019 (ALREADY?!?), I’ve decided to do a mid-year theatre round-up! <3

Here are the musicals and plays I’ve seen this year:

Personal, The Writing Community

My brand is hope

July 7, 2019 No Comments

Yesterday, I attended a personal branding workshop with fellow #romanceclass authors called You On Your Own Terms, facilitated by Maloy Luakian.

Instagram will load in the frontend.

I initially thought it was going to be heavily focused on the technical aspects of how we should market ourselves as authors so that we could reach out to a bigger audience with our books, but I was…pleasantly surprised at the direction we took. More than it being a lecture where only the facilitator was speaking 95% of a time, the workshop allowed us moments of introspection and learning more about our peers through sharing what we thought were our strengths and failures. A bunch of us joked around that we felt like we were on a recollection or retreat, and they weren’t completely wrong. I have been spending a lot of time with some of these women—online and offline—and some of their stories I’d only heard for the first time yesterday! It was an amazing experience, and certainly something I do not regret attending, even if it made me feel more vulnerable than usual.

What is my brand?

Coming into the workshop, I thought that my brand would be romance author working towards women empowerment. Not that that isn’t true because it is one of my goals as I continue writing and publishing romance, but I realized through a quick author bio writing exercise that my brand is hope.

Here’s what I wrote:

Tara has never really fallen in love, so while she’s waiting for that to happen, she works hard for the money and pours her heart out on pages, hoping that anyone who reads them would believe in everyday triumphs and happy endings, regardless of whether or not it happens for them.

When Maloy pointed out the word hope to me, I was surprised, but I also went back and thought of all the books I’ve written and published so far…and I found that she was right. Hope has been sort of a running theme in my works and my characters’ lives. Hope to continue living. Hope to be loved by the person they love. Hope to be successful in their chosen field. Hope to get over a failed relationship and move on with life.

It’s *clap* been there *clap* all this time *clap* and I didn’t *clap* even catch it!

So…yeah. Wow. Hope. Who knew? Sure, I’ll still be writing about theatre people, KPop idols, and badass women finding soft bois to love, but I guess it brings me comfort to know that the things I’ve written so far carry hope as an overarching theme, because god knows how much of it we need these days.

What’s next?

Actual footage of my one working brain cell last night after the workshop (and post-workshop Netflixing):

Why? Because there is a lot of work to be done!

First of all, content. Yeap. Obviously, I haven’t had the best track record in updating this blog regularly and letting people know what I’m working on. I mostly do that through Twitter and Instagram, but apparently, that’s not enough! ACK! So…now I’m trying to recalibrate my brain so I could come up with a (reasonable) content calendar of sorts, just so this little space here doesn’t appear dead when I’m in the middle of writing a book.

Secondly, Maloy gave us a couple of offline marketing ideas I’d really like to consider and work on. That’d require extra (and maybe literal) legwork, so we’ll see what happens in the next couple of months. It would be interesting where I could take that advice come December, or early 2020, when I plan to release my next book.

So yeah! Expect more posts (book-related or otherwise) in the coming months, both here and on my social media accounts. Wish me luck! <3

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