I promised myself I would be better at blogging about these things, even if just for documentation, so here we are!

I don’t think I fully mentally grasped what running a booth at Kilig Cafe would entail–several times in the months leading up to the event I would remember something that I would need to know or prepare that I hadn’t considered before. It was a little daunting, to be honest, and I admit I was stressing a little when I was setting up.

I can’t believe I forgot the flowers I bought the day before! Oh well. The theme of the event was Kilig Cafe, and my little mental picture for myself was that my books lived in a floral themed cafe, which really only made sense in my head. Haha. I was kind of nervous, could you tell?

But I really liked running my little booth! I wanted to hug every person that came by and bought Comeback to Me huhu. Even the ones who picked up the browsing copy and eye emoji-ed it. I missed this part of selling books! The chika, the kilig on their faces, the figuring out what to sign the book with. Bakit parang reunion yung feeling, even if we’ve been there the whole time?

You could just feel the love in the air, or maybe it was just because I was running on a single coffee and little sleep that morning, haha!

photo by Gwenn (@qvvem on Instagram)

Honestly my only regret is that I didn’t give myself the chance to go around to the other booths and get things! I wanted to grab some of Vanessa from Whimsical Books’ plus size tita books, stickers from Rebluna and The Erudite Artist, and Kat Sales’ heart trope stickers! Plus the new releases from Ana Tejano, Anjeli Dumatol and Celestine Trinidad huhu!

photo by Gwenn (@qvvem on Instagram)

Here’s a fun story, at some point I was so hungry that when Chachic asked to have lunch at Mary Grace I went around and grabbed Ben and Chi as well. I even offered to buy Mina lunch–only for me to sit at the cafe and realize that I had a panel happening in a few minutes! Haha. Anyway thank you Chi for buying me and Mina lunch. Medyo out of body experiences happening.

But yes, there were also panels happening! I loved hearing about Leng’s preferences of choosing local artists to work with for her work, it really aligned with my ideas also (and a common admiration for Shai San Jose after seeing her work on Scandalized). Celestine talked about working with artists mostly for komiks, and as a fan of her Sinukan and Tikbalang Mysteries, I was so curious about the matching process for it!

I think I loved the panel that followed ours though. It was a panel on Community Building by three different writing communities with different approaches, different selling models and audiences–Guilty Reads, which is a community of creators mostly from the Wattpad space, Whimsical Books with authors that have been writing books for 20 years(!!!) and Romanceclass, and we’ve been here the whole time, chos.

photo by Gwenn (@qvvem on Instagram)

Anyway it was like watching something magical come together, three different author groups sharing the same ideas about community building and why spaces like theirs had to exist in a somewhat “different” format. And it was…lovely, hearing other groups talking about their experiences, how it mirrored and differed from ours.

Which I think was kind of the point of Kilig Cafe, was bringing all of us together. Because it’s not just us. The romance community has always been way bigger than our little group of romance authors, it’s groups like Whimsical Books and Bru Multiverse and Guilty Reads. I’m sure even that’s just a small slice of it, too.

photo by Gwenn (@qvvem on Instagram)

Tapos may live readings paaaaa

One of the interesting things that happened for this round of readings is that because the releases are so new, the authors had to be the one to choose their scenes for the reading. IT WASN’T EASY OK I have favorites huhu! But I ended up choosing the one where Lia reveals to Cal that she was a fan of his back then, mostly because it says everything about the book I wanted it to, also because I selfishly wanted to hear the “your ex. I hate it so much” line out loud.

A new thing I’ve been doing (brave na kasi ako char) is helping out with the rehearsals, orienting the readers about the context of the scene when I can. And I saw Leng do it for her book as well, haha she was not okay. Which was fine because I was also not okay HAHA.

it’s giving “compress!” tapos magpipinsan kayo

But it’s amazing to hear how the readers switch things up from rehearsal to performance, sometimes even mid-rehearsal when the dynamic kind of clicks for them. I think Jef and Rachel in particular, are great at switching it up without you noticing that they did? I find it really hard to explain, but it’s really (maybe) because I’ve been watching them do this for the last ten years! Happy anniversary by the way hihi.

We also got to meet new readers, Camille and Rendell! Welcome to the class, guys. Kamusta naman haha. They were so good too, every time they said I line I was mentally like “NOOO ITS SO GOOD” haha.

Anyway napagod ako dun ha. I remember thinking to myself, why is everyone congratulating me, and so proud, it’s just another day with romanceclass?

But it wasn’t actually? It was a long day, but it was a really different one. I deeply, with all my heart, appreciate everyone who came to the event, to people who bought copies of Comeback to Me (naubos!) and the mini books, and I love you all so much. Hay.

my favorite people!

Sa uulitin hehe.