Samantha Sotto on Before Ever After

Filipino author Samantha Sotto’s fans can now breathe a sigh of relief. Her best-selling book “Before Ever After” survived the dreaded “Once upon a time” opening.

Sotto is a Communications graduate of Ateneo de Manila University and her love for reading books is something she grew up with.“I can’t remember a time that I wasn’t reading stories or being told stories by my parents,” she relates. “I would say that they were the ones who nurtured my love for books and storytelling.”

The success of the book is phenomenal to think that she wrote the novel just to while away her time in a coffee shop. Other best-selling authors described the book as “a page-turner, romantic, exquisitely written, and inventively told.”

Sotto is a full-time mom and she drives her son to school coast to coast, all the way from Paranaque to Katipunan. “I could save up on gas and toll fees if I just wait for three hours,” she says during the book’s launch at National Bookstore Glorietta 5 last month.

Sotto is a natural-born reader so she decided to come up with her own story and her own characters drawing up inspiration from her travels to Europe and from the tomes she read in the past.

“I didn’t think about the technicalities of writing when I wrote the book,” Sotto explains. “I just wanted to tell a story. It was a matter of putting one word in front of another.”

Sotto feels that the biggest challenge she met while writing the books was trying to figure out how to start. “I stared at a blank page for a long time,” she says. “At one point, I thought of writing ‘Once upon a time’.”

During the process of writing the book which took one school year and three months, Sotto consciously didn’t read any book because she didn’t want to “inadvertently copy someone else’s style.”

She likes renowned authors David Eddings and Neil Gaiman.

Sotto confesses that as a writer, she is so connected with her characters especially Max and Shelley. “Before Ever After” is “a modern fairy tale about true love, happy endings, new beginnings, and everything in between.”

She admits that writing interesting characters wasn’t in her agenda but to write believable ones. “In order to make them feel authentic, I tried to give them flaws, strengths, and quirks. As I got deeper into the story, they felt so real to me that I eavesdropped on their conversations and wrote down what they said.”
“The book is a platypus—it crosses over genres,” Sotto explains. “It has elements of history, fantasy, mystery and humor, but at its core, it is a love story. (I probably should have added a song and dance number while I was at it.)”

The book also travels to various places in Europe aside of course from its romantic angle and recipes. Sotto tried to remember her travels there with her family and sought the help Google maps.

Sotto let her mother read the first draft. “I would not have written this book if not for her,” Sotto shares, “She’s sort of my editor.”

When asked what’s her favorite part of the book, Sotto jokes, “You mean apart from typing ‘The End’?” Sotto says she loves the chapter about Slovenia. It’s the one of the darkest parts of the book. “It was a challenge to write. I felt a huge sense of accomplishment when I finished it,” she says.

Even if she was already writing the book, virtually visiting places in Europe, and including flaws in her characters, it was not until she finished it that Sotto thought of having it published.

Sotto couldn’t contain her happiness during the launch. She struggled in her first sentence and finally shed a tear on the second.

“I feel like I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone,” Sotto says. “I’m overwhelmed and humbled by all the support I’ve been receiving. But while I am grateful for it, I also feel that it adds a lot of pressure. I wrote the book for myself and my husband and I pursued publishing it for our children. I thought that when the book came out, my job would be done. Now that people write to me and tell me how my story has inspired them, I feel that I need to work extra hard so that I won’t let them down.”

(Published in Sunday Inquirer Magazine, October 2011)

Alanguilan's Elmer reaps awards

What if chickens demand equality?

Actually, comic book writer and creator Gerry Alanguilan just got curious of the language of chickens which then led him to create “Elmer.”

“Elmer” won the Prix Asie-ACBD (Best Asian Comic Book Award) and recently, the Quai des Bulles-Ouest France. The Prix Asie-ACBD is given by the Association des Critiques et des journalists de Bande Dessinee, a group of French comic critics and journalists, to outstanding comic creations.

The comic book is about a family of chickens and their struggle for acceptance and equality in the human world.

“I’ve always been fascinated with chickens,” Gerry said. “When I was a kid, I even had a pet chicken named Solano. Every time I passed by a group of chickens, they look paranoid, indignant and I always have this curiosity of what could they be saying?”

It inspired Gerry to create a series of comic strip titled “Stupid Chicken Stories” which was based on his own experience with chickens. That one idea sparked many questions. “What would they say? What if they know their history in the world that they are bred for food? What would they say?”

Gerry lives in San Pablo City, Laguna, a fairly rural area where chickens mingle with humans within a farmyard. That one day when Gerry’s rich imagination played more tricks on him was the birth of “Elmer.”

“That process of analyzing myself sparked the process of writing the book,” Gerry said.

But “Elmer” is not about preaching animal rights or animal welfare or even compassion for animals. It is about family, acceptance, wit, reality, world domination, issues, and simply about a son named Jake.

Jake is Elmer’s son, a nearly prodigal or rebellious son who is full of angst and is having a hard time accepting chickens’ co-existence with humans. Many teenagers can probably relate to Jake which Gerry said has a teeny-weeny semblance of him. Jake’s parents narrowly escaped human fury. A human who eventually becomes Elmer’s best-friend saved them.

When Gerry started writing “Elmer,” he initially wanted to deviate from drawing inspiration from his life. “Most of my works are (already) based on my personal experience,” he explained. “So, I really wanted to create something completely from my imagination, purely fictional but I realized that I won’t be able to help it.”

The characters are all interesting enough for readers to want to know more about, say Francis or May, Jake’s siblings. “I assigned different personalities to each of them without revealing so much,” he said. That will help make people to turn the pages faster than they wanted.

Francis is good-looking, perhaps the most open-minded, a celebrity in his own right, but is he gay? That, Gerry left unanswered.

Gerry is known to be a very detailed artist. “Elmer’s” drawings are too meticulous and elaborate not to notice. “I’ve always drawn that way maybe because of my influences including Alfredo Alcala, and Bernie Wrightson,” he said.

Gerry always go for the best, not for good or better outcome, always the best. “When I’m doing my own comic books I always think how am I able to improve it more based on my own personal standards. I’m really pushing it and work harder than I could.”

Gerry published “Elmer’s” first edition though his Komikero Publishing. This second edition is published by National Bookstore which will help distribute it mainstream.

“Elmer” is available at all National Bookstore branches.

(Published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer, December 2011)