The book I will be featuring today is Interim Goddess of Love. This is a trilogy, meaning a 3 book series, available complete and free on my Wattpad account MinaVE, and in print at bit.ly slash mvebooks.
My book is about Hannah, a 2nd year college student, who has just been told that the goddess of love is missing, and if she wants to, she can temporarily replace her and learn to perform the role of the goddess of love. She will be guided by the God of the sun, who appears as this really handsome college senior, and who happens to be her crush. There are other students on campus who are secretly gods of Philippine mythology, and they have powers, and not all of them like that a "regular" college girl like Hannah gets to be one of them. But is she really just a "regular" girl? Or is this her destiny? Interim Goddess of Love explores the themes of fate, and choice, and deciding what your life will be about. But it's also about the kind of relationships you have with friends, with people you help, and yes, romantic partners.
I wrote this book in 2012 because there were so many American books about fantasy or supernatural characters in high school romances — I was reading all these teen romances with vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts. And I wanted myself and us Filipino readers, to have that kilig and feeling of how being in love connects us to bigger magical things — so Philippine gods and adapted Philippine folk tales in a modern Philippine college setting. College, because I wanted all the characters to be 18 and certain things we see in US high school teen romances can actually only reasonably happen here when Filipinos are in college.
I hope students who find out or read this book look up and learn more about Philippine mythology, and know that there are so many stories from such a diverse group of people. There are conflicting stories, and sometimes missing stories. The idea of a missing goddess of love came to me when I tried to research folk tales on love and couldn't find a well established one the way we know foreign counterparts. At some point when looking for stories you'll find ones that were created recently, not in ancient times, and maybe it's not because we didn't have them but because they weren't written down. It's also part of my book that we who write and read these stories are part of the tradition of making myths. This is not an activity that can just remain in the past. So maybe, look for stories that our ancestors used to tell, wonder what inspired them then, and see how certain things are still true today.
Readers of my book should try reading Sagala, a graphic novel series by Tori Tadiar, that I think spins and merges our myths in beautiful new ways. And for thoughtful teen romance with real world issues, I recommend books by Ines Bautista Yao.
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Author Talks: RomanceClass authors talking about their books
Non-FictionSeries of Filipino authors from the #RomanceClass community talking about their books. Read these, or watch the videos, as you study from home this year, or if you just want to know more about our books and authors.
