Exploring Authentic Stories at the Filipino American International Book Festival

For reasons predictable by now, it’s been a hot minute since I last was at a book festival; whether as an attendee or as a participant. To have seen book conventions like BookExpo shut down in recent years, as well as a recent surge in book banning in different parts of the country, books feel particularly precious now more than ever — especially those authored by historically underrepresented communities.

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Thoughts About Where I Am As a Creative

Ten years ago this month, I wrote, what would eventually become, the tenth chapter of A Moment’s Worth. While I didn’t make the conscious decision to write a book until a few months later, to me, I see it as the starting point of everything that has come since then for me, creatively.

Remembering the Summer of Inspiration

Social media reminders of posts and moments that occurred a number of years ago have reminded me that it’s now been a whopping decade since – what I call – the summer of inspiration. In 2012, two distinct occurrences happened that summer that ultimately inspired me to start taking my creative writing more seriously.

Thoughts About Directing

So this is a subject matter I’ve been meaning to address for a while now, in a manner of clearing things up and to express my thoughts about this.

Wesley Chan on Re-Envisioning “Shell” Through New Sci-Fi Webseries

I rarely conduct interviews for my website, but when I do, I often center them on writers and storytellers who I either know or admire about their creative process and/or their latest project. This case scenario is particularly exciting for me, as this is a conversation with a filmmaker whose work I’ve come to admire and be inspired by over the years: Wesley Chan.

5 Years of Playwriting

There is a series from PBS called “The First Twenty,” where it explores significant, altering events within the first two decades of the 21st century. One of the episodes, “20 Years of Asian American Playwriting,” interviews playwrights – from David Henry Hwang to Lauren Yee – about how Asian American playwriting has evolved.

Thoughts About Historical Fiction

By now, I think I’ve made it clear as to the kind of fiction I’m adept to writing. My go-to genres are contemporary fiction, magical realism, fantasy, and science fiction. However, in my little corner of the Internet, I haven’t been shy about dissecting other genres that I’m not necessarily the strongest at writing in; most notably young adult fiction and romance (even though ironically, I seem to have developed a bit of a skill for writing rom-coms).

Meeting David Mitchell

It’s the dawn of a new year with very little to expect. That’s why to kick things off, I decided to have a little fun with this first post for 2022 and share something that happened to me a few weeks ago.

How Playwriting and Screenwriting is Making Me a Better Writer

Nearly five years ago now, shortly after releasing my second novel, I started making the journey towards writing for both the stage and the screen. A Christmas gift of the word-processing program, Scrivener, jump-started my expansion into other creative writing mediums. Within that time, I have since written multiple stage plays, a few spec scripts, a few pilots, a few short films, and even a feature-length screenplay. Oh, I also upgraded to Final Draft earlier this year, because I felt that it was time to up the ante.

Looking Back on “An Absolute Mind” 5 Years Later

Well… here we are. Two days from now will mark five years since the release of my second novel, An Absolute Mind. Half a decade has passed since I made this work of mine available to the world, and I continue to be astonished as to how relevant some of the themes and topics covered in the novel have and continue to become.