Thank you love you
Last Saturday was FeelsFest2019. Anyone who knows me knows that I will always gush about days like this, block out entire days for days like this.
But FeelsFest 2019 was a little different—new readers, which is always fun (GOOD LORD BOO IS SO SOFT AND LET’S NOT EVEN TALK ABOUT RAP OKAY I CAN’T EVEN LOOK AT HIM RIGHT NOW), new books to celebrate (I see you Flicker girls, and I want mooore) new anthologies to announce (hello Alta girls!) and….other news.
The other news being that Carina Press is publishing my book! I know it feels like I write so much that everyone gets confused as to what I’m working on at the moment and what I’m submitting where, but this is the Christmas one, the one with the barista and the baker boy in Lipa City. (that one, we’ll talk about some other time, maybe when I’m in the throes of editing and wonder why I put myself through this)
And part of FeelsFest2019 will always be special to me because the news was ‘announced’ there first—to the people who helped me make sense of my own kilig, the people who never made me feel bad or shameful for finding someone sexy and attractive, and never judged me for uh…the things that I write.
You know, even when the live readers are reading the words out loud and I’m literally ROLLING ON THE FLOOR wondering WHY. I made it a personal goal years ago to get the OGs to read one of my books together and I got it in the form of a sex scene, and it just feels like poetic justice???? And Graie and Migs read a sexy bit of Chasing Mindy and made it even steamier than I remembered, because I distinctly remember wanting that scene to be cute and light and a little funny, and they did both except make it HOTTER???
Yes, I’m dead, hello, goodbye.
I also got to talk to some researchers about what this community has meant to me, what it means to me still. I told them about how I never would have imagined having a writing career like this, or a writing career, like…at all, if it wasn’t for the community. The Publisher’s Weekly announcement for the book had a mention of me being a #romanceclass author, and I feel that it’s fitting. It’s perfect.
Anyway. Happy Feels Fest, guys. Tita Carla loves you all.