Month: June 2016

Book # 2 Update (and then some)

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Before we get to the news, some things that happened in the past weeks:

1. #romanceclass lecture with musicians

This used to be a romance book discussion that’s transformed into a lecture, to lessen the pressure of having to read the books before the meet-up. I was excited because I like reading about musicians/bands in books, and Meah’s book will definitely have some musicians in it. It was a fun afternoon, not without some swooning and feels because that’s what always happens when I’m in a #romanceclass meet-up. Haha.

Here’s a really demure photo I had with Champ of Hale, one of our guests:

2. Godspell Manila

I used to watch a lot of theater years ago, until I realized that it was a very expensive hobby. Haha. So I stopped, unless people invited me to watch. Lately, I’ve been watching more, also thanks to #romanceclass and our very talented actors who give life to our books. Last February, we watched PETA’s 3 Stars and a Sun to support Gio, and now we’re supporting Jef Flores (coming in #romanceclass podcast season 3, I think?) in Godspell. He played…Jesus. We had too many conflicting feelings that Sunday, haha.

Up next is Rak of Aegis, this weekend. My first time to watch. I’m excited. 🙂

And now for some book news! 

(I hope you’re still reading up to here, haha)

Book # 2’s release date has been pushed from end of June to a sometime in July. That’s the last of the extension I’ll put on this, I promise (because originally this should have been out on October 2015, but that didn’t happen because I write so slowly and I revised my outline three times). So yes, it will be out by the second half of July. The exact date depends on some things, but if you want to be the first one to know, sign up for my mailing list because I’ll announce it (+ some other things) there. 🙂

Some things about this book:

  • The title is Keep the Faith, and it’s about a girl named Faith. Heh. If you’ve read Fall Like Rain, this is about one of her friends.
  • Since I’m still in the business of resurrecting my old NaNoWriMo manuscripts, this was from my 2009 novel. It’s quite unlike the original one, though.
  • This is longer than Rain’s book by around 20k words. I didn’t think it would be this long and believe me, I tried to shorten it when I was editing and revising, but that didn’t happen. So a longer book, yes, but I think Faith needed that much time/words to tell her story.
  • Even more food references here. Mostly junk food.
  • I think I may be a little in love with Faith’s lead interest here. Haha.

So yeah, Keep the Faith will be out on July 2016! I really apologize for the delay, and I hope that the (looong) wait is worth it once it’s out. 🙂

Before I go, here’s a dancing Totoro to cheer you up for the rest of the week:

GIF from CL Terry

GIF from CL Terry

Review: Maybe This Time by C.P. Santi

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MaybeThisTimeMaybe This Time: Stories of Love and Second Chances by C.P. Santi
Published on June 3, 2016
Goodreads | Amazon

An accidental reunion . . . a sneaky plot . . . things finally falling into place.

Maybe This Time contains three heart-warming stories of love and second chances. Because when fate gives you a break, you grab the chance to finally make things right.

In Sweeter by the Second, when paintings conservator Rina David arrives for the Arts Festival in the heritage town of Jimenez, she’s reunited with Tony, the guy she once loved and lost. Now vice-mayor of Jimenez, Tony wants Rina back in his life and will do everything he can to convince her that they belong together.

Pamela Quiroz hatches a plot to get her parents back together in Exorcising my Ex. But will a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner succeed in reconciling Geno and Viv? After all, it’s been more than fifteen years since they first got together and they aren’t the hormone-driven teenagers they once were. Will wine and cheese balls still do the trick?

Torch, meet hand. Arne Weichmann has been waiting twenty-one years for Bea. Is it finally the right time to make his move and convince her that they are Meant to Be? He hopes so. Because he doesn’t think he’ll survive losing the one person who brought warmth and sunshine to his life.

This review is weeks late, because life and work got in the way, but I’m catching up now!

The first time I read C.P. Santi’s book, Be Careful What You Wish For, I was giggling quietly as I went through the pages. There’s something so fresh and authentic in her writing that I knew immediately that I would read her other books, too. I had the same experience with her YA book, When Cocoy Became Kikay, so when the opportunity to read her collection of short stories came up, I immediately jumped at it. (Albeit late to read, but still!)

Maybe This Time: Stories of Love and Second Chances features three short stories about…well, love and second chances. Haha. Similar to her first book, the characters here are a little bit older than the usual contemporary romance novel – more accomplished, more settled into their lives, and maybe have allowed themselves to not really think about love and romance because of this reason. And yet love finds them again, in the form of old lovers, teenage daughters, and old friends.

I really liked how we get to see older characters in these stories who still fumble around love and romance, telling us that we’re all probably just fumbling along, trying to make things right at this front. Haha. But I guess because of their age and their accomplishments, they also know exactly what they want now, and then they go get it. The stories were funny and heartwarming and of course, provided all the feels you’d want/need in one sitting. (I read this in an Uber ride with a bit of moderate traffic.)

My personal favorite from this collection is Viv and Geno from Exorcising my Ex. I just loved how their current situation came from a complicated background, but still they made whatever they had work for the sake of their daughter. Though the story was short, the author provided enough back story for us to understand where they were coming from, and then you’d want them to get their happily-ever-after, too. (Okay fine, perhaps more for the sake of sPammy, because she’s such a darling.)

Maybe This Time is a perfect collection to give you a dose of warm, fuzzy feelings about love finding ways – sometimes with a little help from you. 🙂

About the Author:

C. P. Santi is a Filipina author based in Tokyo, Japan. She is a wife to an engineer/indie songwriter and a full-time mom to two energetic boys. She loves cooking and baking, and enjoys feeding people, gorging on chocolate, watching J-doramas, belting it out in the karaoke box, and running around the house playing tickle tag. She also loves dreaming up stories about the people she meets.

In another life, she is also an architect and academic.

Also by C.P. Santi: Be Careful What You Wish For | When Cocoy Became Kikay

Blog | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | Wattpad

Some Social Media Experiments

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So last week, I realized that my Facebook page just reached 300 likes. While not all 300  people will probably see my posts because of the Facebook algorithm, I realized that hey, 300 is still a pretty nice number and it’s not so easy to get to that especially when you don’t post as much as I do. So thank you, friends and family.

As a little gift, Facebook people had the chance to get a free ebook copy of Fall Like Rain via Instafreebie. And because I took up social media marketing a few months ago, I decided to do a little social media experiment with the entire thing. I figured I had enough data points already to see if it will work or not.

Here’s what I did:

  1. Ran a Facebook ad for 2 days – budget was Php 150, with some usual romance-related categories that told me I could reach up to 3,000 people.
  2. Also ran an Instagram ad via FB, so I could also see what an ad looks like, and if it would convert.
  3. Didn’t do much tweeting about it, because it was a Facebook promo, although a day into the promo, Instafreebie tweeted about it because I had indicated that the promo was shareable.

What happened?

This is what Facebook/Instagram gave me back:

FB stats

So yes, I did reach 3,000+ people, and there were more than 1,000 reactions to my photo – that’s about 32% engagement. But from the 1,085 actions, only 11 were the link clicks, which translated to about 5 around Friday, until Instafreebie tweeted about the giveaway which gave me 16 more downloads. If I’m basing it on the 11 clicks and 5 downloads, that’s just roughly 1% of the total actions, but 46% converted by downloading.

I’m pretty sure all 5 were from Facebook because the Instagram ad had no clickable links – that was my bad. Tip: when posting Instagram ads, make sure it has a link (or a video) instead of just a photo with a caption that contains a link. The 1,036 likes on the Instagram ad gave me an estimate of the target audience, though, so I expect that I’ll get to have around that kind of benchmark when I run another experiment. That said, there could be just some people who like liking stuff on Instagram, so we don’t know.

I didn’t exactly get any return of investment in this, except maybe a practical application some of the things I learned in my social media marketing class. I must admit that Instafreebie’s tweet was still more influential in terms of downloads, so maybe Twitter is still the best way to market books?

So there’s our social media marketing lesson for this day, sort of. I’m definitely experimenting more next time.

One more thing: I’ve got some fun stuff coming up this month, and I’ll be releasing som of the news on the mailing list first. If you want to have first dibs, click here to sign up for my mailing list (or use the form on the side to sign up). I promise not to spam you. (And there may just be a gift hiding in the confirmation email. :D)