2021 My Year in Writing and Publishing
Looking back at 2021, I almost said “ah I just released two books this year” and then…realized I did a lot more than that.
Writing year!
“Pleasure to Meet You” is a short story I wrote for our charity project, the Tropetastic Kindness bundle. It has since been republished on my site here: Pleasure to Meet You.
Totally Engaged is a novella and the last book of my Six 32 Central series. Had so much fun writing a fake engagement romance involving characters who are 41 and 39 years old. In general, enjoyed writing “tita romance” and based on emails I’ve gotten we have readers on board with this! And most of all, I wanted it out there that we should question the “green card marriage is HEA” trope, because that reinforces a lot of colonial mentality that in the real world keeps real people from being treated well and flourishing where they are. More here: Totally Engaged.
Saved by Hope is a short story I wrote in 2021, that was serialized in the Philippine Daily Inquirer. It’s part of the Six 32 Central series and involves national hockey team captain Teban (Elias Esteban Miller in this one), and goaltender Hope (Lexa from So Forward’s best friend). It’s available here (type zero in the price field to get it free): Saved by Hope. UPDATE: There will be an audio edition! Narrated by Sonja Serania and it’ll come with a bonus conversation between us author and narrator!
Your Place Next Year is a novelette about reuniting with a summer fling, if your summer fling was interrupted for a few years because of the lockdown. Still writing characters in their 40s, and being 40 matters a lot in decisions made, and where they are in their lives. More about it here: Your Place Next Year.
New editions!
Better at Weddings Than You now has an audio edition narrated by Rachel Coates and Gio Gahol! I produced this and it was our first time with two narrators. I really would love to be able to do more of this. Love it love it. More info here: Better at Weddings Than You audiobook.
Interim Goddess of Love 2021 edition! I did a new edit pass, and added a Content Notes page that identifies content/trigger warnings. Another thing that I considered changing but did not change: This book was first published in 2012, and the Philippine educational system has since shifted to K-12. That means in the present day 18-year-old Hannah would be in senior high school (grade 12), and not a college sophomore. Rather than completely redo the school system in the book or age them up, I just…explained this fact in the Content Notes. These changes have hopefully been implemented in all retailers, including the Wattpad edition. I’ve also started serializing this edition here on my website: Interim Goddess of Love. There’s also a NEW illustrated edition available only on Gumroad! More info here: IGoL 2021 Illustrated Edition.
