Finally, available in the PHL
Writing a novel is not easy, but it is satisfying. In my case, writing my first complete novel — the actual first novel stalled at chapter three in 1998, and I haven’t resumed writing that one yet — was done in whatever stitches of time I could find between my day job as an associate editor wearing five other hats in a magazine newsroom, caring for my bed-ridden husband after he suffered three strokes, working whatever extra jobs I could to meet household bills and hospital/medical expenses for my husband and college tuition for our twin daughters.
Almost a decade ago, I wrote “How to Tame Your Tikbalang Without Even Trying” under circumstances that were, mildly put, like playing a complex computer game on the nightmare difficulty setting while juggling knives bare-handed, and not being given the option to pause.
On the other hand, writing “How to Tame” gave me the breathing space I needed, the me-time that buttressed my strength. It took eight months of writing time, distributed across two or so years, to finish the first draft.
This novel was also my way of keeping my husband focused on recovery after he survived three successive strokes and several hospital-acquired infections, including pneumonia and from flesh-eating bacteria. I read each finished and edited chapter to him, discussed plot and characters and other novel-writing technicalities with him in Filipino sign language (which he was fluent in, even one-handed, and which I sucked at, but learned anyway) because the three strokes he’d survived left him with aphasia, or the inability to speak, as well as bedridden and very weak on the right side of his body.
While it was being written, “How to Tame” became a bridge for my Relly to re-learn how language works, since the aphasia was caused by the first stroke destroying the language center of his brain. Just four months before Relly died, he began re-learning how to speak, mimicking the words I would read aloud from the text of this novel. Two days before he died, Relly could say my name. This was after three years and a handful of months of working to restore his language skills — reading, writing, and speaking. Reading aloud from books, including mine, was part of my strategy for helping my husband reconfigure the part of the brain that processes music into a secondary language center, and it was working well enough. We were hoping for and working toward a full recovery for him, but that was not to be. In a sense, I’d been driven to complete this novel because my husband kept demanding more of the story.
If anything, I am glad he was still alive when I finished the novel, which I did just four months before he passed on. He was my first beta-reader, my first critic, and the man who had never lost faith in me. Relly also knew I based the character’s female main character, Tala, on him and Buhawi, Tala’s tikbalang dude, on myself — because Relly had to do the taming of Alma in real life. The rest of the book is fiction and urban fantasy, and not a confessional of what transpired between my husband and myself.
I published “How to Tame” over Amazon as an indie author a year after his death, and I am eternally grateful to the people who purchased it over that platform, then I put it up on Google Play Books a couple of years later. It’s no longer on either platform because Erographa, a small Germany-based imprint started up by Ms. Ioanna Arka, will be publishing “How to Tame” in Europe and the US soon.
Last year, a friend of mine, Renato Tranquilinio, introduced me to Ms. Cindy Wong of 8Letters Bookstore and Publishing at the Manila Book Fair, and I took the opportunity to pitch my novel to her. I’ve signed a contract with 8Letters for them to publish and distribute “How to Tame” here in the Philippines and wherever else Erographa is not distributing my novel.
Honestly, I hope that my Relly is looking down from heaven and cheering me on now that “How to Tame” has found homes with 8Letters Bookstore & Publishing, my Philippines-based publisher, and with Erographa, my Germany-based publisher. More than anything, this book is for him. It is also for my late mother, Remedios, who believed in me from birth, and taught me to love reading and writing — and who loved romances with happy endings.
Back to this very minute: Not three hours ago, 8Letters shared the pre-order link for “How to Tame” with me, and, a few days before that, told me the virtual launch for the book would take place very, very soon.
Gobsmacked, thrilled, wired, abso-fucking-lutely ecstatic aren’t ample enough modifiers for what it is like to be in my writing chair as I type this blog entry. I am fully-joyed, over every moon, still pinching myself to check the reality of this Alma-is-getting-her-novel-published situation. I have been driven to tears of full-metal jacket happiness, and have been experiencing giggling fits throughout the day over the last few days. So this is what it feels like. I was like this when I won my first and only Palanca award in my early 20s. My 50-year-old body, I have since discovered, can handle the same dervish-like euphoria.
If you’ve read this far, and would like to buy “How to Tame Your Tikbalang Without Even Trying,” you may mosey over to the 8Letters webpage where you can pre-order it: https://www.8lettersbooks.com/shop/how-to-tame-your-tikbalang-without-even-trying/
Thank you for your purchase. Please do note that this is erotic fiction, and it is best that you be 18 years or older — and please do not share this book with minors.
