I’m catching my breath for a minute on this Saturday morning as I look back on this week… and what a week it’s been! I can’t believe it. I released my second novel! This makes for an exciting time that is to be celebrated and cherished to the fullest.
Unlike within the first few days following the release of A Moment’s Worth, the response to An Absolute Mind has definitely been more immediate. For one thing, as mentioned in my previous post, the very first review was released a week before the novel was published, and I’m so happy to see how the reviewer Catie made it evident on how much she liked it.
Another example is that the This Filipino American Life podcast, which I am a subscribed listener of, helped by sharing the news on their social media, and I’m so very grateful for them doing that.
Due to the print edition of the novel being made available for purchase sooner than I had expected, a lot of people have already bought copies of it, happy that they don’t need to solely rely on an e-reader to gain access to it this time around.
A few days ago, I e-mailed a number of professors I had while I was in college the good news. One of them, who was also my advisor for my theatre minor, has since responded back. Not only is she working to convince my alma mater’s library to make a copy available for people to check out, but she’s also going to see if she can arrange for me to do a reading later in the school year. On another note, a copy of my novel has already been bought to be placed in the library of my old high school.
My dad has been putting the news on blast via e-mail to a number of his friends, sharing the link to the review. A lot of them have responded back with congratulations galore, and some of them have even said that they are going to purchase the book.
Amidst all the praises and good that have been coming out of my novel’s release so far, I can also say that not everything has been great; in particular regarding the response – or rather lack of – from my friends and peers. In all honesty, I’ve been hearing more from my dad’s friends than my own. Well, seeing that I’m going to be promoting this book hardcore over the next year, I very well aim to change this unnerving silence.
On a more serious note, An Absolute Mind continues to be reflective of our current reality, except this time, it’s for the worst. It hasn’t even been two weeks since Donald Trump was declared president-elect, and already there are talks of setting up a registry for Muslims; which, as described by this fool, Carl Higbie, is a “precedent to Japanese American internment.”
Responses and dialogues have since started up about just how wrong this is. George Takei and my district representative, Mike Honda, both of whom were young children when their families were sent to the internment camps, have bluntly denounced how wrong this is, and I’m so glad they did that. Meanwhile, online, I’ve seen conversations start where people would ask if we learned about the internment in school. That’s when it hit me that while I did learn about it in school, it was nowhere near to the amount that I had learned on my own.
This is not a spoiler, for this was mentioned well in advance of the release of the novel; the internment camps are mentioned a fair number of times throughout the story, and the protagonist, Sonya, is a descendant of internees. Even though the story is set in the future, this background history about her family plays a role to some extent in her present situation.
That’s why there’s an author’s note at the beginning, briefly explaining what the internment camps were. That’s why, as I reiterated earlier, I will be promoting An Absolute Mind hardcore over the course of the next year, for contextually, this is a book that needs to be read during these times.
There’s dialogue going now on the importance of creative works – and good quality creative works, might I add – going forward into the future. I hope that with time, my novel can be seen as an example of such.
An Absolute Mind is now available for purchase from the following venues: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, CreateSpace, iBooks, Kobo, and Smashwords! If you read it, please leave a review, for they’re greatly appreciated and help me grow as a writer. Also, be sure to check out its Goodreads page , and feel free to leave any questions you have about the book.
Lola By The Bay 