Virginia A. Realuyo ca. 1970s Today is my mother's birthday. The picture above is one of the few pictures we have when my mother was very young. It's the face that inspired the writing of Bataan New Jersey. While the heart of the novel is Bataan, it is about the impact of successive wars on Philippine soil on the characters, especially Lourdes. One cannot write a novel without seeing the faces of the characters. They have to move, talk, cry, scream, and appear in the writer's consciousness in all possible ways. They have to be real in that alternative world of fiction. Their gestures are the language of fiction, the quiet moments that are often better than dialogues. When I started writing Bataan New Jersey, I already knew what Lourdes, Dominica, and Eugenia looked like. They are three generations of women with the same face. My mother's face. My mother, Virginia Almonte Realuyo, is a Chavacana. She is a polyglot. I took that DNA from her. Because of her background, I studied in South America. I wanted to understand that colonial voyage from early on. I learned Spanish, but not the creole that my mother's family spoke for centuries. I headed to Argentina to study. Ferdinand Magellan landed in Patagonia, Argentina first before running into the "Philippine" islands. My mother is from Zamboanga, home to Fort Pilar, the Spanish stronghold in the south. Chavacano is the language and culture born to the interaction of the Spanish soldiers and the natives of the south. My mother is born out of that heritage. I created a whole world from my mother's face. The stories of her people, so un-acknowledged in a country that embraced Americanisms over Hispanidad, will hopefully be a part of a moving literature. It is my heritage too. I am a Chavacano just like her.

An offering for today, a Rebel Sonnet "Dear Blood" I came of age in the 1990s in New York City during the AIDS crisis. The era created what I am today. Survival was very personal. Information was critical. Anger was necessary. And death often around the corner. Dear Blood on Missouri Review, with an introduction: https://missourireview.com/bino-realuyo-dear-blood/ And thank you to Savage Mind's Himati for featuring Dear Blood and creating this moving visual rendition. Here it is beautifully read by Broadway actor Marc De la Cruz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJwFTeSOIOA

It's Veteran's Appreciation Month. I can't think of a better time to create a new website. Since I started writing Bataan New Jersey three years ago, I have reconnected with all things-VETS. I knew my late father guided me through the writing of a 700-page book and will be there through its publication. As someone who collects Bataan books, I can safely say that there is almost a non-existent Filipino voice in the WWII and Bataan genre. A couple of books I have are both from the Philippines, and not even Filipinos have heard of them. My shelf is full of Bataan books written by Americans, mostly white Americans. I am grateful for being able to add to this volume of literature. Bataan, after all, is in the Philippines. World War II came to the islands, where most had never seen a war of this magnitude. As I search for a literary agent (Wish me luck!!!), I have also decided to create a new website. I wrote Bataan New Jersey in the early mornings at a coffee shop every day (!!!) for three years. I finished it early this year, and I spent the following months re-reading and editing, and layering it with poetic language. I can only be grateful to the books that inspired it: Pachinko and Cutting for Stone. These big books gave me permission to see what was possible in darkness. Thank you, Min Jin Lee and Abraham Verghese. I would like to take a different approach to blogging, less pressure, short and quick. I don't want this to be some literary task. More stream of consciousness, like the rest of this website. Some aspiring writers might visit, and I'd like them to see the human behind the work. I do work outside the MFA system. I designed this website myself (based on a template of course). I have been developing websites going back to the Geocities days. Thanks to Wix, it has become incredibly easy. Thank you for visiting. Please know that if you encounter an unfinished page, it's because I am still working on this website.

Many things to be grateful about in a difficult world. I am grateful for my research in the past three weeks on literary agents. I have queried around 15 agents so far. I can’t imagine how many queries they get but I do believe in the cosmic system of right time, right place. The literary agent who will represent my work will have to go through a journey with me with my works. A 700-page literary historical novel about WW II’s Bataan is very timely, but the added contemporary touch of most recent sociopolitical events will make it controversial. War after all is a recurring human event, and most of us don’t connect them with each other. As if unrelated events. Human ecology is much about threads of time. I do miss the characters. Three years of writing and editing, truly every day in the early morning, was so fulfilling. Walking to the coffee shop while it’s dark outside and listening to my playlist so I would be in that world but the time I sat down to write their stories. Something I had not done before. What dreams are made of. I didn’t know I could write about Bataan. It has been a terrifying legacy of my family. For years, I collected books about war and Bataan. But writing about it was different act of commitment. Suddenly I felt the urgency to write it now. It finally called me. Asked me to sit down and listen. I understood Bataan better when I finally dove into the narrative. As it turned out, Bataan was not a singular event. The ripples began decades before. In my novel, I mentioned a theory about WWII—that Japan started it, not Germany. That’s one aspect of the novel I would like to explore more in Book 2. For now, the mission is to get Bataan New Jersey represented and published. For today and the gift this manuscript has brought me, I am grateful. 🙏🙏🙏