Rocket Kapre – Fantastic Filipino Speculative Fiction

As mentioned on the Philippine Genre Stories blog, Fully Booked, in cooperation with Pelicola, has published the stories, comics, and films which made it to the respective shortlists of the 3rd Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards.  While I assume the respective winners have already been selected, you can help determine the winners of the People’s Choice Award in each category by voting for your favorite at the links above. Congratulations to all those who made the short list!

For your convenience,  here’s the shortlist in each category:

PROSE SHORTLIST:

1. Babymakers by Laura Jermina R. Abejo
2. Leg Men by Dominique Gerald Cimafranca
3. Cherry Clubbing by Kenneth Yu
4. The Sweet Stranger by Michael A.R. Co
5. A Kind of Flotsam by Christelle Rhodamae Mariano
6. Won’t You Be My Friend, Mr. Faceless Creature of Evil? by Karlos de Mesa
7. The Street Child and the Dwarf by Diabelle Joy M. Pazcoguin
8. Filipina: The Super Maid by Irene Carolina A. Sarmiento
9. Remembrance by Dean Alfar
10. Pursuit of the Litaniera by Elyrose G. Punsalan

(Comics and Film categories after the cut)

Read the rest of this entry »

EDIT: Aaaaand he takes home the prize. Congratulations Kyu!

Fantasy Magazine recently ran a flash-fiction-and0graphic contest and Filipino author and editor extraordinaire Kenneth Yu’s story has placed in the top three (with the help of Andrew Drilon’s artwork, which PGS veterans will be familiar with).  Fantasy magazine is now holding a poll (until November 1, US Time), and the winner will be determined by the voting public, so please do check the stories out here, enjoy the quality flash, then vote for your favorite.

And hey, while you’re at the site, check out the other excellent pieces of SF fiction available at Fantasy Magazine.

Still in the throes of file/laptop deprivation (and illness), so that throws a wrench in regularly scheduled programming, but Sumintheblue has a post over at Bookmarked! announcing several events that might be of interest to Rocket Kapre readers, two of which happen tomorrow!

First is the Flips Flipping Pages September book discussion on Patrick Suskind’s Perfume. I confess that I hadn’t heard about the book, but the plot of the book is intriguing (with speculative elements, although I’m unsure if those are all in the protagonist’s head). Alas, since the sense of smell to me is like the sense of sight to a mole, I doubt I’ll sympathize much with the main character. For those of you who want to join the discussion (you don’t need to be a member of Flips Flipping Pages), it’ll be this Saturday (tomorrow) at the New Bombay Restaurant, Gil Puyat Ave. corner Ayala Extension, Makati.

Next is Ideas Alive, a seminar and workshop on how to be a “media creator” (which I read to mean tips on how to expand your story/concept beyond its original medium) by Jomike Tejido (Foldabots), and Budjette Tan (Trese). The event will be held on September 26 October 10 at 3-5 p.m in in Powerbooks Megamall. It’s organized by Powerbooks and the Philippine Star’s Supreme section.

Finally, the New Worlds Alliance is holding a multimedia review contest for the Hunger Games. Contestants must submit a creative book review of The Hunger Games either in text, text with artwork, video, audio or any other multi-media format. The winner gets: 1 copy of The Hunger Games signed by Suzanne Collins; The Underland Chronicles (books 1 to 5–this is Collins’ previous work); 1 The Hunger Games shirt. The deadline is October 30 and more details can be found here.

Angry Robot Books collected its 500th follower on twitter a few minutes ago, so it’s running a contest:

The Competition
Write a single-tweet short story about a robot – any robot – and Tweet it. The tweet must include @angryrobotbooks so we can see it.

So we can include all our international buddies, the competition will run for 24 hours, after which, a winner will be chosen.

The winner will win… stuff. But, you know – good stuff. A copy of our first 6 books plus a bunch of other really cool things.

The winning tweet will be RT’d and posted here, too (as well as a selection of other good ones).

I saw the tweet announcement at 8:49 p.m. Manila time, so that means it ends on 18 September 2009 at 8:49 p.m. Good luck everyone!

The Outlooke Pointe Foundation, together with the PTC-CSJ Foundation, is launching the “SAGIP Children’s Storybook Writing Contest.“ What they are looking for is a 500-750 word kids’ story, on the theme “SAVING OUR SEAS”. Just the words, not the drawings–the winning entry will be illustrated by one of their in-house artist-advocates. Just type it up in a .doc file (Surname.Firstname.doc) and shoot it (along with the application form) over to info@opf.org

The winning book will be published and donated to the various public schools around the Philippines, to enhance their English Literacy Program, and will also be sold exclusively at POWERBOOKS. So do it for the children eh? And if you need more incentive: how does a grand prize of PHP40,000 sound? Well, let’s say a rate of around PHP55 per word isn’t shabby at all.

Deadline for submissions is November 30, 2009. They say that they’ll announce the winners the first week of December. Heh. Good luck with that.

More details can be found at the contest announcement here. Thanks to Dominique for the tip!

The National Book Development Board (an organization that is perhaps more familiar to book lovers due to the Great Book Blockade) has announced a contest for novel-length works or an anthology of short stories. The deadline is on October 5 at 5:00 p.m. though, so that’s a bit… tight if you don’t happen to have an unpublished novel or ample unpublished short stories lying around. The October deadline also means you can’t count on using your NaNoWriMo entries.

Regardless of the short time frame, it’s always great to have a new excuse to write, and a government-sponsored one at that. The NBDB is looking for four categories:

1. Tagalog/Filipino Romance;
2. Horror/Crime or Suspense (I presume in either English or Filipino);
3. Chick Lit in English;
4. A collection of short stories or a novel in English, Filipino or any of the regional languages provided a translation in English or Filipino is provided.

Not sure if stories with Speculative elements qualify in 1- 3 1 and 3, but it should certainly fit in category 2 and 4. (And hey, you do know there’s a new publisher on the look out for Spec Fic works right? *nudge nudge* *wink wink*) You can find the rules here and the entry form here. Please note the following key points though:

• The prize is PHP15,000.00 and maybe publication at the discretion of the publisher/judges. Winning therefore does not automatically mean your work will be published. On the other hand, it also means you don’t have to agree to any publishing offer made.
• Under the rules you need to submit both a physical copy and a digital copy. The digital copy can be in a CD or sent by email.

Thanks to Dominique for the info!