Rocket Kapre: Fantastic Filipino Fiction

We have lift off ladies and gentlemen.

After months of planning, I'm proud to announce the official launch of Rocket Kapre Books and rocketkapre.com.

Rocket Kapre Books is a digital publishing imprint dedicated to bringing the very best of Filipino-made Speculative Fiction (Fantasy, Science Fiction and other works of a fantastical nature) to a worldwide audience by means of affordable and accessible ebooks (stories contained in digital files that can be read from computers, smart phones or ebook readers).

Rocketkapre.com endeavors to serve not only as the online headquarters for the imprint, but also as a home for creators and fans of Philippine Speculative Fiction, incorporating an active blog that will showcase interesting links as well as generate exclusive content such as interviews, contests, writing tips and original fiction.

So come on over and join the fun! For launch day we've got a round table discussion of our favorite Filipino-created fantastical stories, a preview of the ambitious Mind Museum going up at the Fort, and an interview with Kate Aton-Osias regarding the upcoming Farthest Shore anthology. And hey if you want a more complete explanation as to why I put up Rocket Kapre, you'll find that there too.

Hope to see you there! And please, spread the word: feel free to use our banners and promotional comic strip to get the message out: there's a new home for Fantastic Filipino Fiction.

Ozine Fest 2009

Visited my first ever anime convention while searching for local komiks/ indy manga/ doujin. I've got two posts on this: the more professional article is at Bahay Talinhaga while the more rambling, personal impressions (and more pics) are at my livejournal account.

[BaTa] Review: Philippine Speculative Fiction IV (2 of 4)

The second batch of reviews is up at Bahay Talinhaga. The post contains my thoughts on the following stories:

• "The Day that Frances, the Copywriter, Became God" by Monique Francisco
• "A Retrospective on Diseases for Sale" by Charles Tan
• "Sky Blue" by Celestine Trinidad
• "All We Need is Five Meals a Day" by Jose Elvin Bueno
• "The Sewing Project" by Apol Lejano-Massebieau
• "Dreams of the Iron Giant" by Joseph F. Nacino

Once again, thanks to the authors for sharing the wonderful stories ^_^

More on the Book and the Launch

I put the event post up on Bahay Talinhaga but I did have some more personal thoughts on the launch of "A Time for Dragons" as well as the book itself. Since they were more personal in nature, I put them up on my livejournal account instead. It has a picture of my super special "reversal-of-talent-signed-edition" :P

Book Launch: A Time for Dragons

It's late but I managed to eke out a post on Bahay Talinhaga about the book launch of A Time for Dragons yesterday. It was an honor and a great deal of fun. ^_^ More on it later but for now, zzz....

Apocrypha

In commemoration of the launch later today of "A Time for Dragons" (and in line with having BaTa serve as a home for some original fiction) I thought I'd post over at Bahay Talinhaga a slightly cleaned up version of a story of mine that didn't make the cut. It's a bit of an odd story - is "quasi-Genesis-myth "a genre? - but I felt nostalgic after reading it again so I decided what the hell: it'll stand as a testament to the fact that not everything I submit will make the grade ^_^;

[BaTa] Review: Philippine Speculative Fiction IV (1 of 4)

Just a heads up that I've posted my thoughts (let's call them "reviews" for convenience) on the first six stories of PSF 4 over at Bahay Talinhaga. I'm almost done with it but it's good to know that I'll have "A Time for Dragons" waiting for me come Sunday ^_^

In unrelated news, don't forget that Monsters vs. Aliens is showing today ^_^ Oh and for all those who've read and loved the book, check out the trailer for Where the Wild Things Are. You know... they might actually pull this off...

Enter: Bahay Talinhaga

So, my resignation takes effect this Friday, after which (between what I hope will be semi-regular writing/lawyering gigs) I will be doing a lot of planning, a lot of research, and a lot of writing. When I made the decision to put up an epublishing house and finish my novel, I knew I'd be spending a lot of time in libraries doing research into old books (partly for the story, partly to find some old tomes which I might conceivably acquire the e-rights to) and I thought it'd be a shame if I kept all that data to myself. That was when I thought about putting up a site that would gather my research into, say, Philippine mythology, (from my own books, the interwebs, and my library raids) and make it available for anyone else interested in an organized format.

From there the idea kind of... morphed, as ideas tend to do: The more I thought about putting up a site, the more I thought that it would be cool if it would not only serve as a dumping place for my research, but also if it could be something of a Tor.com or io9 (though obviously not of the scope of such professional giants) for those interested in the "Filipino Fantastic" - books, art, games, comics, shows and strange news of interest to people who make or are fans of Philippine works of sci fi and fantasy. I think that we're pretty much covered when it comes to news sites for prose and comics (what with Bibliophile Stalker, Philippine Genre Stories, Philippine Speculative Fiction, Komikero Comics Journal and Komiks News Now Philippines) but I think it'd be great to have a place where we could geek out over stuff like Trese and the Mythology Class and, yeah, downhill wooden scooter races.

So, without further ado, I present to you Bahay Talinhaga.

So far I have three articles up (not counting the intro) on google book search, Filipino deviantartists and the Igorot wooden scooters. I'll have a review for the first 6 stories of PSFIV up within the week as well, then hopefully I can fall into a T-Th-S routine.

If any of you have any ideas/suggestions or want to volunteer to write anything, let me know! (And let me know if I screw anything up site-wise too... It's a bit more complex than a typical blog.) Hopefully in the future I can beg/borrow/buy stuff like the short-short stories on Tor.com for the site ^_^

Open for Submissions: Crossed Genres Magazine (SFF + Western issue)

Crossed Genres, an online magazine, is looking for submissions for its latest issue. Each month a new non-SFF genre is selected and this MUST be combined with some aspect of Science Fiction and/or Fantasy - and this month that theme is the Western.

Submission guidelines and other info can be found here while notes on this issue's theme can be seen here. Deadline is March 31.

Ugh, I don't think I'll have the time to submit anything (especially because my exposure to Westerns largely consists of Firefly and, er, Woody from Toy Story) but hopefully some of you have more time/working knowledge than I ^_^

BookRix: First Attempt

Spent some time fiddling with the BookRix interface:
* Much more convenient to upload a .pdf file than have to redo the formatting of a copy-pasted text;
* The speed that the pages of the "book" load still leave a lot to be desired;
* Size 22 font seems to be the minimum for easy reading - I'm using size 24 in the example below;
* The embedding code works on blogger, but not on multiply or livejournal - they have another type of code that does, but that one doesn't show the cover page of the book;
* The embedded book is a lot bigger than I thought it'd be - I thought it'd just be the title page that, when clicked, would open the book in another window.
* EDIT: AAand, its so big it isn't completely seen. That's really bad @_@
* EDIT2: Changed the blog template so the whole book is visible - but that shouldn't have been necessary. BookRix needs a way to re-size the thing.

So I think BookRix still has a way to go before it becomes a viable marketing tool. Still, the idea of embedding "books" on sites appeals to me for some reason.

In any case, here's my first "BookRix" book: the script for my Animax 2007 entry:

Years ago Taryn Damour was a normal child, content to play games of make-believe with Andel, her best friend; now she is a Knight of the Twin Swords, sword to eradicate the scourge that is the Orkoi race. On the eve of her greatest mission, she finds herself suddenly reunited with Andel... but is he the same boy she once knew? Or will the secrets he carries bring her world crashing down upon them?

PSF IV Story Thoughts (The Secret Origin of Spin-Man)

I think I remember an editor (Lou Anders maybe?) saying that people don't usually read stories in anthologies in the order listed in the Table of Contents: I guess I'd be one of the minority in that sense. Maybe it just comes from long habit resisting the urge to "skip ahead" when reading novels.

Anyway I'm about a third of the way through Philippine Speculative Fiction Vol. 4, and I thought I'd post my thoughts on each story as I go along. While I'll try to avoid out and out spoilers - spoilers may still be present.

---

The Secret Origin of Spin-Man by Andrew Drillon:

I have to admit - it's hard to look at this story objectively, since the narrative touches upon names and images that trigger so many nostalgic memories: Virra mall, CATS and comic books have a special place in the heart of many Xavierians. (All it would have taken was a mention of Green Rose barber shop and the brief period where we actually had an Arbys here in the Philippines, and I think I would have been moved to tears @_@)

I'd like to think though that even without the benefit of drawing upon the same pool of memories as the reader, the story does a good job of transporting one back into the past of the POV character. It also shows clearly the close bond between the brothers - a good thing too because it is essential to the story - though there were some points where (at the expense of a greater focus on mood/setting) that focus wavers a bit.

The speculative twist is one many will see coming - but that doesn't dilute the feeling of loss that pervaded the last few pages. That the scenes that unfolded had an emotional impact, even if I was expecting their occurence, is a testament to the fact that in the space of a few pages, the story had created in me empathy for the characters.

I was surprised though that the POV character never engaged in a what if rumination about what would have happened if he had taken up his brothers offer. Hey, a Watcher cameo would have fit in with the theme :)

BookRix - Embedding Books?

Alright, I still need to do the due diligence (legal-ese for making sure something that a client is buying is up to snuff/ has no hidden pitfalls) on this site, but if it is what it says it is, then this looks to be a very, very interesting new way to market books/stories. (Ah, serendipity... how I love thee.)

At the Tools of Change for Publishing Community, I ran into a post advertising a site called BookRix which dubs itself as "an internet portal and the first book community where anyone can place their own books, short stories, poems etc. to be promoted on the web, just like a published piece."

OK, nothing special so far - just another manuscript display/peer critiquing site right? Writer Beware Blogs has an article to that effect. It's not the "put your unpublished works up here and be discovered" part that intrigues me: it's the fact that, from the looks of things, the site allows you to create something akin to a widget in the form of a picture of the title page of the story which, when clicked, opens up a new window that allows a user to read the story using an interface that tries to emulate a physical book. This can then apparently be embeded in websites/social networking pages and spread in that manner.

Haven't given it a whirl yet, but I just might to see how it goes. No analysis of the terms and conditions yet as they are particularly obtuse (the site originated from Germany I think and the terms were translated awkwardly.)

Piercing the Veil

Had a good time over at the launch of Philippine Speculative Fiction IV. Thanks and congratulations all around. :)

It was good being in a room with other writers again: that hasn't happened since that lunch with Kenneth for the Digest of Philippine Genre Stories Issue 3. I was happy to reacquaint myself with a few familiar faces, writers I respect and admire.

Speaking of which, it was the first time I got to see/meet many of the authors in the local spec fic field, including many of the famous Litcritters. Dean Alfar did a great job as ringmaster. Seeing him in person, he reminded me of Chow Yun Fat for some reason (my wife tells me it's because of his eyes. I think it was a general aura of zen :P)

I also met Vin Simbulan at last, the editor for the "A Time For Dragons" anthology coming out in at the end of March, which will hold what is arguably my first official short story (well, second really - I sent two for that particular anthology). He also talked a bit about the launch on March 29.

He also mentioned a parade. I thought he was kidding. Apparently not. @_@

Philippine Genre Stories editor Kenneth Yu was also there, and did me a huge positive by mentioning my digital publishing ambitions before an audience which consisted of, well, the distilled essence of Filipino Spec Fic writing talent. Much gratitude for that sir Kenneth :)

All in all, me and my wife had a great deal of fun. Congratulations again to all the authors, and thanks to those who signed my copy! (And for those of you who didn't bring pens *looks at Charles* - remember, you're celebrities now ;) )

A Declaration [Up the (Main)stream Without a Paddle (Part 2)]

I love stories. I love science-fiction and fantasy. I think a lot of us here in the Philippines love it. I’ve read some of our cracks at the genre – and I really like what I’ve seen. I want to see more of it. I want more people reading it.

Yesterday, I gave my thirty-days notice; come the 28th of March, I will cease being an associate at the 4th largest law firm in the country. (Hence the reason why I couldn't post these thoughts with Part 1 of this entry @_@)

Come the 28th, two things happen: first – despite whatever odd jobs I may need to pull to keep from having to mooch off my wife - my primary vocation, my primary occupation will be that of a writer. I have an urban fantasy novel that needs finishing.

Second, I set about trying to establish a publishing house. A digital publishing house, with a special place for novel length Philippine Speculative Fiction.

The other week I attended a seminar on Publishing in Cyberspace, sponsored by the National Book Development Board (NBDB), in partnership with the Book Development Association Of The Philippines (which I heard of at Philippine Genre Stories). The publishers in attendance were affable, intelligent sorts, but many of the representatives seemed to be at a loss with regards to the full potential of the Internet (with the exception of those who sent younger representatives). This shouldn’t come as a surprise – many big US publishers seem to flounder a bit in the ebook realm.

Yet, the ebook market is here, and it's steadily growing. Lots of people all over the world already read reams of stories online, on their computers - just look at how popular fanfic is. Mobile devices that can read ebooks will only become more prevalent: the iPhone has apps like Stanza – which is free – which can read most ebook formats (though there are some formatting issues) and can receive files via wifi. The Kindle 2 has just been released, and late this year/early next year, the plastic logic reader might finally come out. In a year where traditional publishing struggled, Ebook sales increased - by quite a bit.

Back at the local level, at the Publishing in Cyberspace conference, a representative from yehey revealed some telling numbers: around 27 million internet users in the country, 83% of whom were part of a social network (1st in the world); 90% of whom have perused blogs. Even just limiting ourselves to the Philippines, there are a lot of eyes on the internet, a lot of people before whom we can display our works. I think there’s an audience here for genre fiction: look at the number of people who flock to the SFF section of Fully Booked – the people from all social classes who splurge on complete collections of the works of Rowling and Meyer; the number of fans drawn by Neil Gaiman whenever he’s in town; the droves who descend upon Komikon; even the popularity of story-intensive RPGs.

There’s room for growth in this market I think. As I said last post, I think there would be a market for homegrown SFF novels and serials… These are the type of stories I’ve always loved to read. These are the type of books that create not only readers, but FANS. Let’s go make some.

Of course, going digital also means that whatever the state of the market here may be, we don’t have to limit ourselves to our own shores: the accolades received by the Philippine Speculative Fiction Sampler of Charles Tan and Mia Tijam should be encouraging. In the United States, the number of people reading fiction is on the rise. Books can do well even during a recession – all the more when they are so much cheaper than other entertainment forms… as ebooks have the potential to be.

That doesn’t mean that the author will be getting less – ebooks can allow an author to get a larger slice of the revenue pie. Ebooks allow the author to do things which would be difficult (high def color photographs on every other page) or impossible (experimentation with audio files, or hotlinking, or what have you) with a physical book. We could even experiment with visual novels – the Ren’Py Visual Novel Engine is free and, from personal experience, I know there’s a great community that supports it. This is a great time to be an author.

There’s a lot of work to be done yet: a business plan to make, investors to convince, bandwidth to purchase, editors and codemonkeys to hire, marketing strategies to figure out. It will be hard work. It may fail horribly – but if it does, I hope others will learn from my errors and push forward.

But for now, I am throwing my hat in the ring. I am 29 years old and from now on I’m setting out to cross out quite a few things from my list of potential mid-life regrets. If I don’t end up contributing anything to the development of Philippine Speculative Fiction… well, at least no one will be able to tell me I didn’t try.

I’m betting on us – us as readers, us as writers. If you like the odds – or, hell, if you don’t like them but want to spite them anyway, then welcome aboard.

Let’s do this.

Up the (Main)stream Without A Paddle (Part 1)

Read a pair of interesting articles today, taking opposing positions on the question of whether or not Philippine Speculative Fiction is marginalized: For the affirmative we have Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker; for the negative, we have Bhex of the Philippine Speculative Fiction Blog.

My favorite (and only, but shh...) editor over at Philippine Genre Stories then posits that ol' Marvel Civil War question: Whose side are you on? (Well he doesn't really say it that way, but... @_@)

My answer: I got nothin'... Largely because from my (admittedly limited) experience, the issue isn't really framed the right way.

First off though I'd like to say thanks to both Charles and bhex for sharing their thoughts in such clear, succinct ways. Both essays are well written and peppered with illustrative examples, so I'll refrain from summarizing (and probably over-simplifying) the arguments of each, but while the keyword in both is "marginalization" that concept needed to be understood in relation to the word "mainstream."

Yet if "mainstream" refers to the prevailing attitudes/preferences of Philippine readers (as opposed to publishers/critics)... I just don't think that they care about whether a story is spec fic or not.

* I've never known anyone who would turn their nose up at a book because it was Philippine Spec Fic. Frankly, I know few Filipinos readers who would turn their nose up any story just because of fantasy or science fictional elements - the level of realism of the story just doesn't seem to be that big of a factor to Philippine readers.

* I do know that there are people who read Spec Fic but not Philippine Spec Fic. This seems to me to be because: (a) they only visit the SFF part of the bookstore, and never set foot in the Filipiniana/Philippine Publications section (or just can't distinguish the Spec Fic stuff from the rest because the book covers just don't scream "Genre!"); (b) what is available in local Spec Fic is either (i) not in the genre they want; or (ii) not of the length they want - i.e. novels.

* In relation to the above, I know people who simply do not read short fiction - an attitude I am intimately familiar with because I was of that persuasion until, oh, PGS :P It was not because of any inherent dislike of the form, but simply because my readership preferences were honed by not only novels but Big Fantasy Series': I think the sequence of my early reading chronology went like this - Guardians of the Flame Series (5 books at the time) - Belgariad/Mallorean Series (5 + 5 books) - Lord of the Rings/Hobbit (4 books) - Shannarra Series (6 books at the time) - Memory, Sorrow and Thorn Series (4 very loooong books) etc. Heck, I don't think I red a stand-alonee genre novel until I was well into high school, and had been reading voraciously for years.

* Philippine readers also seem to sharply diverge when it comes to language - most of the Philippine Spec Fic I've seen is in English, and a lot of our countrymen just aren't that comfortable with English to be reading stories in the language for fun.

I don't quite agree with bhex's definition of "marginalized" as exclusion to the point of "never having a shot" - with a definition that universal and categorical, it makes it difficult to see any form of literature as being "marginalized." I do agree with Charles that, while the situation has improved, genre fiction doesn't get the respect/encouragement it deserves - but this is a problem for genre in general (not just or even primarily locally), and chiefly in the literary/academe.

I do agree with bhex however that Phillipine Spec Fic doesn't need to be celebrated by the literary elite for it to be widely read - and I think the aim for all of us who read, write and love it should be precisely that: to make it more widely read.

I don't think that the fantastical element of the stories is an obstacle to that however: Putting aside the issue of the vernacular, I think it's just that locally we haven't yet produced the kind of spec fic that readers are accustomed to and look for: the sword and sorcery epics, the serial urban fantasies, the multi-arc space operas.

To use a movie analogy - we've got great animated shorts, insightful documentaries, biting political satires - but no hollywood blockbusters. Not yet.

(I've got some proposals to change that... but for reasons that'll become clear, I can't go into those reasons until Friday or beyond... But I hope you guys can help me brainstorm on those too ^_^)

Adequate Expertise and Emotional Impact

Some of the best essays and reflections are those which answer a question I've always asked but never knew I was asking: Case in point, this essay by L. Ron Hubbard: "Art, More About"

The question? "How good does a professional work of art have to be?"

More than simply asking a question that had been, unbeknown to me, begging to be answered somewhere in the back of my mind, he also provided a surprising answer. I had initially expected something catchy-but-vague, some warm and fuzzy non-answer to the question, as is the wont of successful professionals giving advice to younger aspirants.

Hubbard's answer was instead not-very-catchy (quite unwieldy in fact), practical, and in all likelihood true. What must a professional work of art have? "Technical expertise itself adequate to produce an emotional impact."

Not exactly something you'd put on a T-shirt or bumper sticker. Yet Hubbard makes a good case for it.

Without the technical expertise, you'll never be able to reach the audience with your message; if you can't convey anything to the audience, then it is not professional art - i.e. art for public consumption and not just for personal satisfaction.

Note that in Hubbard's opinion such expertise merely needs to be "adequate to produce an emotional impact" - it doesn't have to be exemplary, or sui generis. That's not to say that a writer shouldn't strive to better his craft - what it means I think is that there is always room for improvement, but once you reach the level where you can convey your message to the audience, it becomes time to buckle down and (a) think of that message; and (b) write down the damn story.

So in Hubbard's words:

A lot of artists are overstraining to obtain a quality far above that necessary to produce an emotional impact. And many more are trying to machine-gun messages at the world without any expertise at all to form the vital carrier wave.

So how good does a piece of art have to be?