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...