Celebrating Loving Day Every Day

On June 12, we commemorate the 50th anniversary of Loving v. Virginia, the landmark decision by the United States Supreme Court which invalidated the state laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

I celebrate because I’m a direct beneficiary of this decision. My husband’s American, I’m Filipino. He’s white, I’m brown. In 2005, we were able to marry legally because we could, because we were allowed. I celebrate not just on June 12, but every day. Thanks to Richard and Mildred Loving. Thanks to the US Supreme Court in 1967.

The Lovings’ story, my own story, and the stories of more than half a million interracial couples are the inspirations for my books. I’m also encouraged by the great multicultural romances I’ve been reading recently. Surely, they too have been inspired by real-life stories of mixed-race pairings. Some of them are: Courtney Milan’s Cyclone series beginning with Trade Me (Chinese-American heroine); Alisha Rai’s upcoming Forbidden Hearts series with its first book Hate to Want You (Japanese-Hawaiian heroine); and Tif Marcelo’s North to You (Filipino-American hero), the first book of her Journey to the Heart series.

All of these books show the love between two people, regardless of race or skin color. All of them prove that love is, indeed, color blind.

Photo credits: Love is Color Blind – quotesgram.com, Loving photos – lovingday.org, book covers – Bing images, and Share the Love – RWA

My Name Is Maida And I’m A Bookaholic

I am not exaggerating when I say I have a To Be Read mountain–ok, fine, hill–rather than a mere pile. There are a couple of hundreds of paper books on the floor of my home library and a few hundreds each of ebooks on Amazon Kindle, Apple iBooks, and Nook. Add to these my membership to the San Antonio Public Library and Houston Area Digital Media Catalog and I have an unlimited access to thousands of books

Does that stop me from buying more? Heck, no! Yesterday, May 30, was release day for some of my favorite romance authors–Lorraine Heath, Eva Moore, Julia Quinn, and Nora Roberts. Naturally, I bought them all.

Bibliophile. Book Collector. Book Hoarder. No matter the label, that’s me. As another Bookaholic said, I’m “Addicted. Obsessed. Passionate.” about books and I’m proud of it.

Eating And Reading Are Two Pleasures That Combine Admirably

I love reading. I love food. I love reading books with food in them. I love it so much that all my books will feature local food from their respective setting (Philippines, Singapore, Thailand). Also, the hero of my third book, Craig, is a chef.

I thought of this quote by CS Lewis because I recently read two food-centric romance novels – Sherry Thomas’s Delicious and Laura Florand’s The Chocolate Thief. The food descriptions in both novels were so vivid and sumptuous that the first thing I did after reading was go to a French café and buy madeleines and chocolate tartlets and mini-croissants.

I always give high marks to books that make me react – whether it is to cry, laugh, or think. Those that induce me to go out and buy food deserve no less than five stars. It doesn’t hurt that they are fantastic stories told by talented authors. These were my first books by these two writers and they won’t be the last. I already have their backlists on my Overdrive holds. What are a dozen more books to pile onto my TBR mountain? Why, nothing. Nothing at all.

Read A Lot, Write A Lot

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There’s no way around these two things that I’m aware of, no shortcut.”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

I have no problem with reading a lot. Last year, I recorded 465 books on Goodreads. It’s the writing a lot that is hard for me. On January 1, I set my Reading Challenge to 120 in order to give myself more time to write. This was based on my experience in November when I wrote most of my first book, One Week in Boracay. I managed to put together 51K words, but only read a dozen books. So far this year, I’ve already read 80 so I had to increase my goal to 180. However, apart from the title Christmas in New York, I haven’t written a word of my second book yet.

Then I saw Katy Regnery’s blog post and my jaw dropped. From September 2013 until April 2017, she published 31 books. She completes one book every five to six weeks. Talk about prolific! I’m awed and envious.

Can I do that? Possibly. I did put the finishing touches on Boracay five weeks after I started it. Will I do it? Maybe someday. When I don’t take three months to edit, or when I have a team to help me with editing, cover design, formatting, etc. But not yet, not for a long while yet. For now, I’ll read a lot first, then maybe I’ll write a lot of the second book, and the third, and the fourth…

Not maybe. I will. Starting now.

Write Without Fear, Edit Without Mercy

Among those I credit for inspiring me to write my own books are Rainne Mendoza and RG Gallardo. They are two brave souls who trusted me to be part of making their dream–publishing their first book–come true. They allowed me to opine on their labors of love and believed that I knew what I was doing when I clicked on my imaginary red pen and slashed my way through their manuscripts. Thankfully they emerged triumphant and managed to release their books in spite of my meddling.

Now that I have completed a book of my own after having gone through five rounds of editing, my respect for Rainne and RG went up a thousand-fold. I hope I have even a fraction of their fearlessness when it’s time for me to publish. Thank you both for the inspiration and for the encouragement. I learned so much from working with you. I hope I learned the lessons well.

Fobolous is available on Amazon Kindle and other sellers.

Survivors 1 and Survivors Part II are also available on Amazon Kindle.