TRN PUB#4 Recognizing "Heart and Hero" Milestones + What's Next?
to Start off 2025 with a hopeful note!
I wanted to start the year with a Newsletter but, knowing me, if I think too hard about how I want to do this, the perfectionist side will take over, and then I’ll never get anything out there. So I decided to go with the Draft that never got written from December last year—talking about milestones.
As 2024 winded down and everyone posted their recap reels, I looked back at what I’d like to call ‘Small Writer Journey Milestones’. The small writer is me, because I still feel like I’m at the beginning of my writing journey, and also I’m 4’11 to be exact. These milestones mattered to me, but I didn’t think to post so publicly on my Author IG at the time. It was either I wasn’t sure whether it counted as a win or if I needed to be embarrassed about being proud of it.
Yep, the Imposter Syndrome is still strong here but, as always, I’ll try to be vulnerable in this newsletter. My goal is to be less perfectionist this year and let more words out.
Conversation on Author’s Journey (April 23, 2024)
2024 was the year I had my first in-person event revolving around my writing.
I mentioned this event briefly in a previous newsletter, about how I conquered my introverted fears and said yes to a panel where I got to talk to a group of students about my book and writing process. I think I panicked more about sitting in front of an audience than the actual talking bits. I loved talking about writing and books. It was a rewarding feeling getting invited to do just that and to see the genuine curiosity in some young writers’ eyes. I want to take a moment to mention this again because I hope I can say yes to more Writing related stuff like this, despite the panic of every introverted cell in my body. As long as the event is fun.
Frankfurter Buchmesse (FBM) 2024
Heart and Hero was included in the collection of books taken by the Philippines to Germany last October 2024!
This is another one of those things where I wasn’t sure if I could share because, throughout the whole process, I wasn’t at all sure whether I was even qualified! But I tried to share about it anyway. I celebrated it as a win to have my book baby out there with so many other Filipino writers’ books. I was so grateful to Ms. Mina V. Esguerra for championing Filipino independent and romance authors! She’s an author who has inspired me so much since my college days and continues to inspire me today. She’s written so many books and that has always been the goal.
It was also so humbling to know that this thing I wrote made it to a book fair across the globe. I mean, I knew I must have had a few readers outside the country before, but it was something else to see it displayed like that.
What’s Next?
☀️Love and Justice Progress Report⛈️:
I don’t know if you remember me mentioning in a previous newsletter that I’ve had a few ‘AHA!’ moments that gave me a better direction for the Revision, but since then I’ve made good progress. I’m currently RE-WRITING what I believe to be the final revisions before officially sending it to my editor and beta readers.
I’ve rewritten 12/50 Chapters so far! My goal is to have it all rewritten by February or March. If all goes well, you’ll be reading about a proper release date in a future newsletter!
What I love about the process now is that there is a streak of work being done week after week. I may pause and procrastinate now and then, but I'm soon able to pick the manuscript up again.
I always feel so much better after having written!
What's Next?
I fully intend to finally publish Love and Justice this 2025, but other than that I still have hopes of putting out more writing.
As I've mentioned before, I wanted to make Substack a home for some of my stories, but it wasn't until recently that I realized that it really has to be.
The two other stories/series I've had at the backburner, which I'm calling 'Elites’ and ‘Unusuals’ for the sake of this post, are also Superhero stories, but ones that I can't yet imagine publishing as a physical books.
I love Superhero stories, I enjoy the genre, but it's become clear to me over some time that the category is a bit niche in terms of the book community, and I am still too small that I haven't quite reached my target audience. I haven’t yet found a group of Superhero Romance readers!
Though i know they’re out there, I have this impression that if I self-publish these two other series right now and try to sell physical or ebooks, they might not do to well, at least not now.
So I've decided to intentionally reserve the Unusuals and Elites projects as online first stories, posting here on my Substack and eventually also on Tapas. If they do well or if I managed to have the budget to self-publish them down the road, then we'll see where it goes.
But the New Heroes Series will continue to be the main superhero book series I will publish as physical and ebooks.
And then…
I'm also considering plotting and drafting ideas for new book series in the romantasy and contemporary romcoms. I've always meant to write Fantasy Romance novels, and fantasy was my first bookish genre love since I was a kid. I would love to get into new world building, character lore, and magic!
As for contemporary romance, I'm leaning towards novel ideas revolving Filipino college teens in the arts or struggling millenial new adult geeks in love.
I also don’t plan on letting go of the New Heroes universe because this series has always had multiple plot points available for side character spin-offs and novellas. I can even post some short stories here on my Substsck (and probably will!)
If not for a big readership, then at least for me to enjoy. Heart and Hero, Karla and Andre's world, is special to me in that way.
Some say that you get better as a writer when you write the next book, my hope is that I could continue to have fun with each new project. The goal is this, to make a library of books I wrote.
It all sounds too impossible and grand, standing at the beginning of the year, like setting one’s self up for New Year's Resolution epic fails. But I think, at the end of the day, when the writer is excited for the ideas, then wouldn't the books be all the more better for it? Or if not yet books, then an archive of drafts I can continue to polish next year.