salamanca status

It is the first day of the NNoBloMo and I walked to my office so I can write and post my novel's first entry. To reduce the intimidation factor, I've divided the task of writing into bite-sized chunks of 1700-2000 words a day, hopefully exceeding this on some days but not going under my self-imposed minimum.

Here's how things begin:

Three years before I was born, my father, the famous dissolute author Gaudencio Rivera, decided to settle his incoherent sexuality and beget a child. His sudden announcement, made during a dinner party held in Los Angeles in honor of one of the exiled pouty-lipped scions of Clan Electric Company of Manila, was greeted first with laughter and then, later, with stupefaction when a powerful earthquake struck to seal the veracity of his declaration. As the small party sat under the dining table feeling the earth toss like a miserable sea, Gaudencio told them that there came a time in every man’s life to part the gossamer curtain that separates childhood from the real world; that in his case the moment was forty four years in the making; that artists, especially gifted writers like himself, while often able to crystallize miraculous observations of mundane things, were sometimes blinded to more important matters; and that, ultimately, women were necessary to continue humanity’s existence even if, occasionally, men proved to be better fucks.

Read Salamanca.

And thanks to Joey Alarilla for promoting the novel before even a single word was written in INQ7 (so now I really have to do it or die trying - damn your eyes!). Check out The Maharlika Legacy, his own novel-in-progress. Give him some love and tell him I sent you.

Like Hamlet, I was postponing my decision (To write or not to write? To blog or not to blog?), but then my friend Dean Francis Alfar, one of the writers I respect most, decided what the heck, he'll go for it. You can check out his blog for Salamanca (which is the working title of the novel he'll create in 30 days) at http://salamancanovel.blogspot.com/. Alfar is a multi-award winning writer. This year alone, he won two Palancas (for a total of seven so far), a National Book Award as editor of the "Siglo: Freedom" grafiction anthology and saw his short story "L'Aquilone du Estrellas" (The Kite of Stars) included in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror Seventeenth Annual Collection. Yup, his short story is side by side with works from Stephen King, Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. Leguin in this anthology.

As for Nikki, well, the untimely viral infection of her computer last night prevents her from starting today, but hope springs eternal. Her novel, Crocodile Laughter, is something I look forward to reading in full. Sage is skipping writing her novel this year. It's difficult when one cannot even read yet - makes editing hell.

Rickey is also in this thing (what can I say, we are all gluttons for punishment). Read The Practical Piglet, which he describes as "a fantasy-science-fiction-erotica-children's book", as it develops.

As for my cool self-proclaimed protege Buddha, I look forward to his glimmering mindfucks in the novel he will vent from his psychosomatically-attuned brain, Pop Monster!

UPDATE: Another comrade-in-letters, Banzai Cat, joins the fray with The Gonfaladiere!