“Have you read this? I thought of you!” my friend Flisha said to me a few days ago. I clicked on the link she had included in the message and read:
Once upon a time, there was a young mom who decided to kill time by writing a novel. She had just read The Time Traveler’s Wife and was so bothered by the ending, she felt like she needed to dream up a different love story to get it out of her system.
Because her son went to prep in Ateneo, and they lived all the way in Parañaque, she would drive him to campus, and then park herself at the same table every day for a year in Starbucks Katipunan while waiting for his dismissal. “To save on gas and e-pass,” she thought. Which also proved to be the perfect place and time to bring her characters to life, between sips of non-fat green tea latte.
When she was finally satisfied with her tale of true love, she decided to get in touch with literary agents abroad, well, because, why not dream of being published?
As fate would have it, a literary agent from Levine Greenberg took notice, read her manuscript, and eventually sold her book to Random House Publishing in New York.
Before Ever After is the first book written by a Filipino mom, who killed time at a Starbucks near Ateneo while waiting for her son to come out of school.
Everything happened in the blink of an eye. Her book is due for release in the US this Aug. 2. There will be a Philippine launch and book signing party at National Bookstore on July 27 before she flies off to New York for her press launch.
This is a true story. It really happened to first-time author, Samantha Sotto who is now On the Radar.
Read and be inspired by her narrative that is equal parts guts and genius. And don’t forget to pick up her novel Before Ever After. It is proof that fairy tales do come true.
Read the rest of the article and her interview that follows that here.
Wow, this is very inspirational! I wish I could follow in her footsteps. (I also wish I could go on a Europe tour like she did, and yes I know this is not related to the topic at hand.) But of course, the first thing I need to do is actually write a book, and I don’t even know what to write about or even know if I have the dedication to actually finish writing one even if I did think of something to write about. Eeps.
I really wanna read her book. I hope they’ll have copies for sale here in Singapore soon.
Samantha’s official website is here but I found a blog of hers here too. Go check them out!
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