I’m angry so I wrote a thing: “Make Good Days” for the Hello, Ever After web series
Yes, it’s kind of sudden. But hey…we’re producing a web series! An official announcement is up here at the romanceclass website. This post will be more about the feelings that led up to writing what would be an episode for a sudden #RomanceClass web series.
I actually have been working on my books throughout quarantine. Not with as much time as I would have been able to, if my daughter were at school and there hadn’t been an actual pandemic to deal with, but I did major revisions on a book, got started on the publishing process for it, and am several thousand words into book 4 of Six 32 Central. I’m not sure if anyone has noticed but the books in the Six 32 Central series are set in a somewhat concurrent timeline, with What Kind of Day, Kiss and Cry, and the upcoming So Forward happening in 2018 (but the epilogue of Kiss and Cry is in 2019). Book 4 is comfortably happening in 2019 as I write it, so the plot hasn’t been affected by 2020’s COVID-19 all that much.
But the other, tricky thing that maybe only I care about, is that I set up Six 32 Central as a series about people who are challenging and changing systems. I’ve managed to populate the maybe-4 book series with Filipinos who happen to be: a senator’s staffer, a tourism enthusiast, winter sports advocates. (And in the next books: business school and family corporation rebels, a tech education startup co-founder, a sustainable-fashion entrepreneur.) Fine, the timeline for the series ends in 2019, but they would be the types who’d care about 2020 wouldn’t they? They would be as angry as I am about the massive failure of the systems they’re part of, or serve, or were trying to change.
I was/am angry about a lot of other things too, so I set aside the WIP and wrote a conversation between Ben (the senator’s speechwriter) and Naya (the tour guide) from What Kind of Day. Set in the present day, so it’s sort of a new epilogue, checking in on their (obviously strong because HEA) relationship since the end of their book.
This anger/frustration/helplessness cycle is a daily thing that I’ve not managed to keep to myself. I’m constantly in touch with fellow authors, talking about the ways we’ve all had to adjust our expectations of productivity and really just try to cope. I did my heated writing sprint for myself. It felt good to write this down.
And then…within days? Seven other #RomanceClass authors wrote their scripts. Tania Arpa had been testing this web stream service. I asked actors Rachel Coates and Raphael Robes to perform as Naya and Ben on camera, just to see what we could do with this…and they did that. So now, Hello, Ever After is happening.
I don’t mean to be flippant, like we just stumbled upon a web series idea. It really is sudden. But we also do consider the actors/live readers we work with as part of #RomanceClass, and their industry (theater, stage, film, live performance) is facing an uncertain future right now. It’s great that while we’re figuring so many things out, we’re able to come up with a new project that still includes them.
If this is something you want to help us make, you can buy us a ko-fi at ko-fi.com/minavesguerra and put “Hello, Ever After” in the message field. We’ll produce as many eps as we can afford to. I’ll have news on the “premiere” of this series very soon.
