Personal, Videos

When coffee is life

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I think I was in junior year in high school when I started drinking coffee—the instant, powdered ones (Nescafe + Coffeemate + brown sugar…you know it), not the fancy, overpriced ones (yet). That was the year when I juggled academics, rehearsing for a dance competition, and writing a play for the drama club, and 24 hours didn’t seem like they were enough.

Coffee has been part of my daily life since then that something feels off with my universe if I spend an entire day without it. There’s been a time I wasn’t allowed to touch coffee for a month because of GERD, but that’s another story. Fast forward to x years later, and this coffee lover is trying to learn the basics.

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The Writing Community, Videos

When food and kilig go hand-in-hand

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*points up* I was one of the guests for #RomanceClass Podcast S5’s 1st episode featuring food and kilig! We had a lot of fun talking about the food we incorporated in our NomCom: Tropetastic Kindness Bundle 2 stories, and also managed to make ourselves (and the audience) hungry in the process, LOL.

If you have been reading a lot of #RomanceClass books, you’ll have noticed how much we love including food in our books. From the popular champorado in Summer Crush and Second Wave Summer to the scandalous biko in Alta: A High Society Romance Anthology, to the scrumptious mangoes in Mango Summer and the many, delicious meals the Aguas family had in If the Dress Fits, food is an inevitable part of our stories. I personally think it makes the characters and places more relatable, more vivid. It also adds an extra layer of interest for me, because I tend to want to try the dishes mentioned in the books (especially if I haven’t had them in a long time, or ever).

What’s a dish you’ve wanted to try or have tried because you’ve read about it in a book?

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Events, The Writing Community

How Do You Prepare For A Feelsplosion?

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#romanceclass FeelsFest 2017

Take it from me: You don’t. Or rather, you can’t.

It’s been more than a week since #romanceclass Feels Fest 2017, and I think it’s safe to say those who were able to attend the event are still reeling from everything that’s happened that rainy afternoon at Commune. I know I was/still am. My body couldn’t handle all the feels it felt like it needed to shut down for the entire week that followed so that I could recover. (I seriously slept A LOT.)

Anyway… my Feels Fest 2017 experience didn’t begin on the day of the event, but rather, weeks prior to it. As part of the organizing committee, I helped put together some fun stuff you’ve probably seen on #romanceclass’ Instagram and Facebook accounts. Yeap, if you felt like we flooded your feed with everything #romanceclass, that’s because we wanted to. We had a 30 Days of #romanceclass social media campaign where authors and readers shared their favorite things about the books, the characters, and the community as a whole. I’m a bit embarrassed to say I wasn’t able to complete all 30 days (and I don’t wanna make excuses but the week prior to the event was a doozy), but I know there were those who did and it was always heartwarming to see the responses. Nakakakilig po, thank you.

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Projects, The Writing Community, Videos

Relive Summer Crush With Gio and Gab!

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Back in April, Jay, Six, and I released this summer music festival anthology called Summer Crush, something we had a lot of fun putting together. (Exhausting too, but all worth it.) As a special gift to those who bought the book, we also produced live reading videos featuring excerpts from each of our stories, and we got Gio Gahol and Gab Pangilinan to help us out! We made those videos available to our readers last month, and now you can have access to them too!

Relive your Summer Crush feelings over and over again with these short videos, and don’t forget to share the love! We can never get enough of our live readers, anyway, right?

You Only Need Reminding by Jay E. Tria

Almost There by Tara Frejas

Ocean Eyes by Six de los Reyes

Summer Crush is available on Amazon and print-on-demand.

We’d love to hear what you think about our very first collaboration project! Please leave a rating/review of Summer Crush on Amazon and Goodreads when you can–it will be greatly appreciated!

Special thanks once again to Gio Gahol and Gab Pangilinan, who made time for us for this mini project. May this not be the last! <3 We love you!

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Events, Videos

Here, have my feelings. All of them.

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Okay, I know… I know. It’s been three weeks since the #romanceclass April Feels Day–I should have gotten over it by now, moved on and such… but guess what? It’s not happening. Nuh-uh.

All because the live readings for Waiting in the Wings happened.

So here I am, writing this post to try and process my feelings one by one. There will be more ~processing posts, by the way, because more things happened after April 30 and I just…

Why yes, I’ve been finding the need to do this for three weeks now.

Before I wordvomit around this space, you need to know these three things:

  1. Waiting in the Wings is my most personal work yet,
  2. A huge chunk of Ramon’s personality was inspired by Gio Gahol, and;
  3. Pio Alvez in my headcanon looks and sounds like Fred Lo.
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Theatre

I’ve got chills; they’re multiplying.

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Yep, you guessed it. This post clearly has no other intent but to display the fine, glorious image of Aaron Tveit as Danny Zuko. He’s set to play the part in the remake to be aired on FOX in January 2016, and I guess it goes without saying that I’m gonna be looking forward to the leather jackets and the hip thrusting that’s about to go down.

Merely thinking about it makes me dizzy. I don’t know how I’ll fare in a month. #SendHelp

Anyway, here’s a first look at GREASE: Live!

And then, there’s this:

GDI Aaron–let a girl live, won’t you?

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