Pounding The Keyboard

2017's history and it is our duty to commemorate it. Here are some of my favorite things that came out or I discovered in the year 2017: Movie Get Out Album Is This The Life We Really Want? Song The Most Beautiful Girl In The World Book Mga Kuwento Sa Dilim Food Pik A Pikel Pickled Mangoes Drink Clipper Organic Tea TV Show Black Mirror So there, the basic necessities in life. Get Out is a fantastic and a highest-grossing horror-thriller movie that deals with racism while Black Mirror is an awesome Twilight Zone -ish series which episodes deal with modern technology and mankind's dependency on it. Is This The Life We Really Want? is the fifth studio album of former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters while "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" is a haunting track from it.  Mga Kuwento Sa Dilim is a little horror book that contains true supernatural stories, Pik A Pikel Pickled Mangoes is a great-tasting delicacy and ...

      Looking for good, terrifying reads this coming Halloween? Something that will give you the inability to sleep at night alone and with the lights turned off? Try these two Tagalog horror books from Precious Pages Corporation (yup, this is the company that publishes those awesome Filipino romance novels) namely, MGA KUWENTO SA DILIM and LIBRONG ITIM. These two books contain Tagalog short horror stories that are guaranteed to scare the living daylights out of you.  My advice: read them in the morning and with a companion to lessen the goosebumps you will get. Mga Kuwento Sa Dilim features horror stories that really happened.       You can buy these books from Precious Pages Bookstores (they have branches at SM Malls). Or you can check their online store HERE.       Please click HERE for the Facebook Page of Librong Itim .

"There is no friend as loyal as a book."                                              Ernest Hemingway       A sense of gloom quickly pervaded inside our car while we were approaching the parking area in front of SMX Convention Center in MOA yesterday, 16 th of September,2017—we could see a throng and seemingly endless queues (yup, that’s plural) of people in front of the convention center, all trying to get inside, eager to be part of Manila International Book Fair. We were there for the book fair, too.       We walked towards the convention center, we already had some complimentary tickets with us, it was already a little past two in the afternoon, and trying to find the start of of a queue was already an ardu...

       A friend of mine who wants to be a writer is thinking of creating an account on Wattpad and put his short stories there and hes’ planning on using a pen name—he’s been whacking his brains for days and he hasn’t come up with one.          “Is William Shakesfear good?” he asked me.        “Nah,   I don’t think so,” I said.        “But I’m writing horror stories, tales that will make people shake with fear.”        “Regardless.”        I asked him why the need for a pen name, and he couldn’t really articulate on it; some kind of writer, my friend is.        So why do some writers use pen names? I asked the tambays here and this is what they told me: aside from the fact that some publishers require it for marketing purposes, some writ...

Sex sells. Romance sells. These are two facts that no one can dispute. But what do you get if you join these two? The answer is Rush, a best-selling erotic, sex-filled (whew!) romance novel written by Maya Banks. Another fact, August is the month when the Philippines celebrates Buwan Ng Wika (a month-long celebration of the Filipino Language). And what do you get if you mix Rush and Buwan Ng Wika? The answer is Rush (The Filipino Edition). Lol. Anything to plug a product. But yes, there is a Tagalog version of Rush and it is now available at Precious Pages Bookstore   and other bookstores. Rush , which is written in the tradition of Fifty Shades of Grey, is part of the Breathless Trilogy (which includes Fever and Burn ). Incidentally, Fever and Burn also have their own upcoming Filipino editions. A FRIENDLY REMINDER: Rush (the original version and its Filipino version) is strictly for adults only.

        Around two years ago, while we were busy preparing the first set of Black Ink graphic novels that we’d release, I asked our publisher if we could come out with a comic book that had short stories in it. A 60-page comic book which would be divided into three 20-page short stories.   All the comic books we were readying then were all 60-pages and I knew for a fact that there were a lot of komiks readers that didn't have patience for long stories.         The publisher immediately approved my suggestion and named the comic book Shortcuts.   You can’t find a more amiable and approachable boss than   the publisher of Black Ink, who incidentally, is also the publisher of Precious Pages and Lampara.        And it was decided that aside from a traditional (or Western-styled) Shortcuts komiks, we’d also be working on a manga Shortcuts.   The first traditio...