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This is the blog of Ian Rosales Casocot. Filipino writer. Sometime academic. Former backpacker. Twink bait. Hamster lover.
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Bibliography
The Great Little Hunter
Pinspired Philippines, 2022
The Boy The Girl
The Rat The Rabbit
and the Last Magic Days
Chapbook, 2018
Republic of Carnage:
Three Horror Stories
For the Way We Live Now
Chapbook, 2018
Bamboo Girls:
Stories and Poems
From a Forgotten Life
Ateneo de Naga University Press, 2018
Don't Tell Anyone:
Literary Smut
With Shakira Andrea Sison
Pride Press / Anvil Publishing, 2017
Cupful of Anger,
Bottle Full of Smoke:
The Stories of
Jose V. Montebon Jr.
Silliman Writers Series, 2017
First Sight of Snow
and Other Stories
Encounters Chapbook Series
Et Al Books, 2014
Celebration: An Anthology to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Silliman University National Writers Workshop
Sands and Coral, 2011-2013
Silliman University, 2013
Handulantaw: Celebrating 50 Years of Culture and the Arts in Silliman
Tao Foundation and Silliman University Cultural Affairs Committee, 2013
Inday Goes About Her Day
Locsin Books, 2012
Beautiful Accidents: Stories
University of the Philippines Press, 2011
Heartbreak & Magic: Stories of Fantasy and Horror
Anvil, 2011
Old Movies and Other Stories
National Commission for Culture
and the Arts, 2006
FutureShock Prose: An Anthology of Young Writers and New Literatures
Sands and Coral, 2003
Nominated for Best Anthology
2004 National Book Awards
Follow the Spy
Recent Crumbs
Blogs I Read
© 2002-2021
IAN ROSALES CASOCOT
Saturday, June 08, 2024
12:00 PM |
Notes on the Writing of 'You Don't Love Me Anymore'
In 2009, the writer Lilledeshan Bose invited me along with other writers to transform some of her dad’s talisman drawings into literary pieces. The great Baguio artist Santiago Bose had died a few years back, in 2002, and Lille wanted to put up an exhibit of his works (along with their literary interpretations) in something she called Confessions of a Talisman.
That’s when I began writing “You Don’t Love Me Anymore.” I was only able to send her an excerpt, because I couldn’t quite finish the story. I felt that it was going to be the story of a husband and wife who have slowly fallen out of love for each other, with the burning of the husband's anting-anting by the wife becoming the ultimate schism in that relationship.
I based it on my memory of my parents. My father once abandoned us when I was a tween, but came back after a few years to live with us again — with an anting-anting in his wallet that he picked up from some adventure in Manila. [He swore by its powers.] This freaked out my mother, who was fervently Born Again, and I remember her taking the anting-anting from him and burning it, and shouting all manner of “In Jesus’ name!” while doing so. That whole scene is embedded in my memory. I wanted to make that the basis for my story — and this may be why it took me such a long time to finish. I didn’t want it to be too autobiographical.
Year after year, I would come back to the story, writing a paragraph here, another paragraph there. One year, I decided to set it in Malaybalay, Bukidnon for some reason. A few years later, the husband became a writer, and the wife a maker of longganisa. A few more years later, he wasn’t just a writer, he was a writer of balak [or Binisaya poetry]. The story built on like that. And now it’s finished.
The illustration below is the original Santiago Bose art Lille gave me. This story will be one of four new stories to be included in the reissue of Beautiful Accidents to be published by the University of the Philippines Press in 2025. Obviously, I’m still working on the new edition.
Labels: fiction, writing
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