Anne Plaza

Author | Dreamer | Blogger

Hello again, world!

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Hey, everyone! It’s been two years since I last wrote something on this blog/site. Two years. Wow. What the heck have I been up to?

For the most part, I’ve relocated to the lovely country of Taiwan for work. I’ve always made these petty “excuses” about settling in the new environment and then coming back to writing (which was obviously a whole lotta BS). But now that I’ve got a lot of stuff happening in my day job, I figured nothing’s gonna happen if I don’t make time for things.

So, here I am carving time to dust the cobwebs off my old author blog.

Yes, I’m coming back to writing.

I’m back to writing. 🙂

But I’ll be taking baby steps (there’s still a mountain of work in my day job), but suffice to say, I’ll be taking small steps until I’m able to really grease up and put my writing gear back. Because gosh darn it, I miss writing. I miss being a writer.

So yeah. I’m back. Wish me luck.

Book Review: Ghost of a Feeling by Celestine Trinidad

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Ghost of a Feeling Book Cover




Ghost of a Feeling





Celestine Trinidad




Romance




October 31, 2017




e-book




The Author



All Cris Villareal had ever dreamed of was becoming a doctor. But after the death of a patient under her care and the subsequent humiliation she suffers under a senior resident in her hospital, she begins to lose faith in herself. And no one else could understand her and her despair.

So one Halloween night, up on the rooftop of her apartment building, she decides to end it all.

She is stopped from jumping by Emilio, the ghost of a young man who haunts her building, who also committed suicide there many years ago. Eventually, Cris finds herself opening up to him, in a way she had never before, with anyone living or dead.

There is only one problem.

Emilio isn’t really a ghost.

He is actually a living young man named Nathan Morales, and Cris was just one of the unwitting victims in a prank he had once played on the tenants of her apartment. But being Emilio was the only way he could think of to stop her that night, and the only way now he could get her to open up to him. As Emilio, he was someone she could trust enough to help her, in a way Nathan himself never could.

As their relationship grows deeper and their feelings grow stronger each day, can he finally help her find a reason to keep living?

But how long can he keep lying to her?

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Disclaimer: I’ve known Celestine Trinidad’s brand of magical writing in the many speculative fiction anthologies she’s part of. Her stories were the ones that have always stood out and became memorable to me that she’s become one of my auto-buy / auto-read authors in the genre. Her first foray into romance was sort of an exciting thing for me as a fan of her work. But let me tell you nothing…and I mean NOTHING braced me for what was to come when I started reading Ghost of a Feeling.

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On Getting Back My Writing Mojo and #BookbedFictory

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It’s finally out!

It’s no secret that I’ve been out of the writing scene for a year and it has been the worst. So I thought to get myself out of that rut hole, and Bookbed happened to serendipitously came along with the #BookbedFictory—a short story writing challenge based on a chosen prompt. Baby steps, yes?

I chose a prompt that’s close to my heart, something that involved local myths and everything fantastic. Writers chose from a selection of story prompts, and I have to admit there were a few that caught my attention. Eventually, I settled on a prompt that had something to do with siblings and a duwende, and thus, The Mark of the Duwende was born.

A germ of an idea popped in my head when I first saw the duwende prompt. Lower myths have always been a fascinating topic for me, and growing up in a household that still believed in age-old superstitions fueled my hyperactive imagination to write something about it.

For those who are not familiar, the duwende in Philippine mythology is a small creature (usually depicted as old and look like goblins or earth spirits) that can be both malevolent and benevolent. They are usually found on termite-like mounds or ant hills (a.k.a. “punso”) in provincial areas. In order to maintain order, people would sometimes leave food near the duwende‘s place of residence. These creatures were known to curse people who would defile their home or do something to anger them. 

It wasn’t easy getting back into writing, though. I had to struggle with procrastination (who doesn’t?) and the overwhelming urge to delete the crappy stuff I’ve written. Deadlines proved to be a good enough motivation to get me to finish the first draft. The initial pass yielded around 5k+ words, but the final draft came out one word short of the maximum word count. And it made the deadline. What a relief!

The Mark of the Duwende is up on the Bookbed site. Hope you can take the time to read and share your thoughts about it. Have you encountered something similar, or know someone who did? Let me know! And if you enjoyed the story, I’d be grateful if you shared it and/or commented on the Bookbed website. Also, thanks a lot to my editor, the Bookbed beta readers and to Chris Mariano for helping me get this story to a great shape!

Book Review: Activated by E.K. Gonzales

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Activated Book Cover




Activated




Tales of the Activated 1





EK Gonzales




YA High Fantasy




January 30, 2015




Kindle




Amazon



In two regions where elements are controlled by programs, four young people must work together and save Pendi from an invasion by Selatan. Fire programmer Lan has given up on life. Heal programmer Beika has to prove her worth and her friendship. Futuretell Marceau must defend her new authority. Ice programmer Soji must seek his reason to live. They will have to work together to get back Pendi’s new Crimson Master before it is too late.

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I could definitely see this as an anime.

E.K. Gonzales’s Activated is a YA high fantasy story of young programmers who control the elements. I honestly think it’s a creative way of presenting magic apart from what we’re used to. E.K. has a way of telling stories that resound well because of the interesting characters that come along with it. E.K. has been writing since forever, mostly for speculative fiction anthologies both here and abroad. Her short stories have always been a personal favorite precisely because of the characters that are pretty much complex and three dimensional.

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Cover Reveal: Ghost of a Feeling by Celestine Trinidad

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Ghost of a Feeling Book Cover




Ghost of a Feeling





Celestine Trinidad




Romance




October 31, 2017




e-book, print




The Author

All Cris Villareal had ever dreamed of was becoming a doctor. But after the death of a patient under her care and the subsequent humiliation she suffers under a senior resident in her hospital, she begins to lose faith in herself. And no one else could understand her and her despair.
 
So one Halloween night, up on the rooftop of her apartment building, she decides to end it all.
 
She is stopped from jumping by Emilio, the ghost of a young man who haunts her building, who also committed suicide there many years ago. Eventually, Cris finds herself opening up to him, in a way she had never before, with anyone living or dead.
 
There is only one problem.
 
Emilio isn’t really a ghost.
 
He is actually a living young man named Nathan Morales, and Cris was just one of the unwitting victims in a prank he had once played on the tenants of her apartment. But being Emilio was the only way he could think of to stop her that night, and the only way now he could get her to open up to him. As Emilio, he was someone she could trust enough to help her, in a way Nathan himself never could.
 
As their relationship grows deeper and their feelings grow stronger each day, can he finally help her find a reason to keep living?
 
But how long can he keep lying to her? 

I may have taken a break from romance writing, but I’m still lurking more or less at the #romanceclass group. Writing classes within the group have always been there, always bringing about a fresh batch of authors with new stories. Last year when Celestine Trinidad joined the group and had her story pitched, I was hooked.

I came to know of Celestine when she was (and still is) a regular contributor to most speculative fiction anthology publications that I follow. I know for a fact that this woman writes awesome stories, and when I read that her story for #romanceclass has a different spin to most contemporary romances, I’d always been on the lookout on when she’d release her book. And it all comes down to Ghost of a Feeling.

Of course, this goes without saying that the book cover is a-w-e-s-o-m-e, thanks to the magic of Miles Tan. I already have this feeling of wanting to pick up this book and start reading. 

Although I’ve come to know the author as a great purveyor of spec fic stories, you have to admit, the mysterious element in the blurb kind of makes think all sorts of questions on how the story adheres to the class’s rule of adhering to a contemporary setting (meaning no magic realism of any sort). 

I know I have to wait until end of October to dig in, but I’m sure it’s going to be worth the wait!

 

About the Author

Celestine Trinidad is a physician (particularly, a pathologist) by profession. In her spare time, she writes fiction of several genres, including romance, speculative fiction, crime fiction, and children’s stories. Her other stories have been published in other print and online venues, such as First Love, The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories, Philippine Speculative Fiction, Philippines Free Press, Philippines Graphic, and Insignia. Her author website is http://celestinetrinidad.wordpress.com.

 

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