Cover Story – Boracay Vows

Last week, I revealed the cover of my debut novel Boracay Vows and I’m so happy with the response I got from everyone who’s seen it. Some kept asking if that was me in the photo. I wish! I may have looked like the model twenty years ago when I first went to Boracay, but not now.

This has always been my vision of it from the beginning. A girl sitting on the white sand of Boracay facing the sea. When I was writing it during NaNoWriMo2016, this was my working cover.

Renee, my friend from high school, took it in Palawan and although it’s beautiful, it is not Boracay. So I pressed on.

In the past year, every time one of my friends would check in from Boracay, I’d send a message asking them to take a photo and explaining my concept. They were always accommodating. Here are a few samples from the ones I received.

Stunning, right? Whenever I get a photo, I was always envious that I wasn’t there myself.

Although great on their own, I wanted more of the recognizable Boracay icons on the cover. However, I’m not too proficient with photo enhancement softwares, so I consulted with an expert. Lucy Rhodes of Render Compose came to the rescue. After a few email and Facebook Messenger exchanges, we got it done. And it’s done very well indeed.

I really love it. I can’t wait for the readers to meet Krista and go to Boracay through my book. Coming very soon.

Photo credit: Renee, Tiara, Jonathan, and Chippy.

Cover Reveal: Boracay Vows

Friends, meet the luscious, vavavoom Krista Lopez, heroine of my first book Boracay Vows. Krista is spending this week in the island paradise of Boracay, Philippines to fulfill her Turning-Thirty Vow — the promise she made with her barkada to do something extraordinary in celebration of this milestone birthday. Today, November 2, is her thirtieth birthday. Happy birthday, Krista!

Many thanks to Lucy Rhodes for her patience while I hemmed and hawed over every image, color, shade, and font before deciding on the final combination. I really appreciate you.

Thanks also to my sister Myrtle Ruaza, photographer-extraordinaire Celeste Odono, and my token male-point-of-view opinionator husband for bearing with my constant demands for observations and agreement with my concerns. Thank you, salamuch, mwah!

I love it, y’all! Release news coming soon.

Camp NaNo Winner 2017

Winner again!

I wrote and completed the first draft of my debut novel in November 2016 during NaNoWriMo. I started without an outline, without a plot. Nothing but one page of a scene I wrote in 2003 and never finished. I only knew two things that first day of NaNo: 1) I will set it in Boracay 2) It will be a multicultural romance. Yes, I was a Pantser. One month, two titles, three name changes, and 54,000+ words later, I had a complete book. Not finished, only completed. It had a Beginning, a Middle, and an End.

Naturally, first drafts are the worst. It went through four more revisions with Beta readers chiming in and editors turning it down. The verdict is clear: they want more conflict. Fine, I said. This July, I joined CampNaNo and with the support of my Old School Romance Book Club cabin mates, I wrote, rewrote, retitled, and edited my first book. As a result, I now have a 58,000-word sixth draft with a little more drama, a lot more love.