FINALLY!!! Freakin’ finally! The initial interior sketches for the 240 pages of SQUALO & MAGE are complete! With everything that went down since signing the contract and completing the script to bring this book to life, I sometimes can’t believe I actually made it out in one piece. It’s been a crazy past 2 years—much longer than I expected to complete this stage of creating a graphic novel. Why 2 years? Besides being totally new to this and dealing with events that were out of my control, a lot of personal life things happened, including the craziness of planning a wedding, the downward spiral my family faced following the death of our dad, suddenly having to deal with carpal tunnel pains, getting COVID, and the jampacked daily schedule I had working full-time as a music journalist. Things finally eased up after I left the day job, giving me the freedom to work on SQUALO & MAGE alongside my first picture book, BIGGER THAN ME. And then last October, Sho and I discovered that we’re pregnant with our first kiddo! There was yet again a lot of juggling, parkouring, and figuring out life in general, but halfway through my second trimester, […] Continue Reading
Why, hello there, friends! It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Since I took a step back from music journalism late last year, I’ve been hiding away at home to focus on my life as a full-time author-illustrator. It’s been really tough, to be honest, getting the chance to actually do the thing you’d always dreamed of your entire life. But man, oh man, has it been sooooo cool! So here we are! I’m super excited to finally share with you the cover of my first picture book, BIGGER THAN ME. Written by Erica Simone Turnipseed, BIGGER THAN ME follows a sweet story of two siblings who band together with the neighborhood kids to better understand the big words that are thrust upon them through crafts and play. This book was drawn entirely on Procreate, which inevitably led to an increase in iPad time over the past couple of months. Check out the cover and what the book is all about below: Children discover the impact they can have when they band together in this picture book ode to how solidarity lifts everyone up. Siblings Luna and Zion are feeling a bit overwhelmed. Big words keep rushing at them: Homelessness. Pandemic. […] Continue Reading
Took the leap and here I am now doing the author-illustrator gig full-time. Yup, I’m stepping away from the life I’ve known for 10 years as a music journalist. For the meantime. Maybe. It was a long time coming and sometimes I can’t believe I’d actually turned in that resignation letter to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a full-time author-illustrator. You still might see my byline at Bandwagon Asia every now and then, but most certainly not on a daily frequency it appeared for almost five years. In fact, shortly after my last day at work, our Editorial Director Camille Castillo called me to do an interview with Raymund Marasigan (literally a week after my retirement) about the Eraserheads‘ highly anticipated reunion concert Huling El Bimbo this December. “You’re the only one who can do it,” she told me, adding how this was going to be Bandwagon’s biggest story for 2022. It was at that “casual conversation” where Rayms talked about his retirement from music, specifying how he’s ” technically semi-retired” since his daughter graduated from college in August. He went on to share what he’d been spending his time on, and guess what, it was still music! And […] Continue Reading
“What’s it like being a music journalist?” These days, I think my answer would be “tiring.” Heck, I’ve been in the biz for a good 10 years now and two of those years were spent indoors thanks to a looming pandemic. But looking back, oh man, I gotta say it’s been an absolute blast. My friend and fellow writer in the book world Mae Coyiuto invited me to write about my journey as a music journalist for Young Star. I talk about how I got my start, the people who helped me along the way, and some of my favorite stories. Check it out on PhilStar Life. Continue Reading
IT’S HAPPENING! It’s finally happening! After sleepless nights of checking emails, getting on international calls, and drowning in anxiety, I can finally and proudly announce that I’ve finally scored my very first book deal for my very first book SQUALO & MAGE! All this wouldn’t have been possible without my amazing agent, Sara Crowe, who made sure my debut graphic novel would land in good hands. And those hands belong to the incredible Clarissa Wong at HarperCollins! It will be a while until it hits shelves—the first book comes out sometime in Winter 2023, to be a little less vague. So please be sure to look out for it laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaater. Oh, and you can add SQUALO & MAGE to your GoodReads over here. You can also follow SQUALO & MAGE on Instagram here. Continue Reading
LIFE UPDATE: I’ve signed with my dream agent, Sara Crowe at Pippin Properties, Inc. to represent my fiction and book-related art This team up is all thanks to the very first edition of #DVPit’s author-illustrator event. I pitched my graphic novel SQUALO & MAGE, which I comped as NIMONA + DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. It follows the story of a young mage named Mage and her best friend shark Squalo as they travel Mundo on a magical adventure to seek out the Bakunawa. So excited for all these projects I have lined up and I can’t wait to share them with you guys!! Continue Reading
I thought I was gonna surprise Sho on his birthday but ALAAAASSS it was he who surprised me! All I thought was that we were gonna throw Sho a surprise party for his 32nd birthday on May 1. Little did I know that he knew about it—hell, he planned it—and prepared for a surprise of his own. So there I was, hugging a bag of Cheetos, as we sang happy birthday. Just when Sho was about to blow out his candle, he looked up to make a wish. He turned to me and said, “Kara Bodegon. As you may see we’re already ten years, and this is it pancit. I wanna spend the rest of my life with you.” Ugly screaming ensued. I was all jumpy with joy and shock and started laughing like crazy as Sho got down on one knee with this most beautiful ring I’d ever seen. It’s hard to describe all the wonderful feelings that went down in stomach that night (Hahaha, and I’m a writer???). There was steak, pizza, and all sorts of chips and cake, and I had no appetite for any of it. I was simply overwhelmed with everything. I got hungry as […] Continue Reading
It’s a little bit funny how life works. Exactly six years apart from each other, I had my first article published in PULP Magazine and my name in the credits page of Angie Thomas’s NYT best-selling novel THE HATE U GIVE (Collector’s Edition). I never would’ve thought something like this would ever happen—plus the timing of it all! Makes me wonder what would happen next, exactly six years from now. It’s a little bit funny, isn’t it? Continue Reading
Back when I was six, I told the world that I wanted to write books. I had all these weird ideas I’d turn into stories with my pad papers at school and show them off to grown ups with that cheeky little “look what I made” grin. The grown ups with the money and the real jobs cheered me on, but their praise never led me to one lesson I had to learn to be a good writer: I needed to be a good reader. You see, I was ridiculously lazy when it came to reading material at school. Reading simply wasn’t my thing. I just wanted to make the stuff. I didn’t know what it took to be good at making the stuff. You can have all the brilliant ideas, you can daydream all you want, but if you can’t articulate yourself well on paper, it definitely won’t work. I thought it was enough to surround myself with fantastic video games and movies and pick up big words from the music of Slipknot, but it’s not the same. It’s through reading that a writer learns new words, different ways to structure sentences, and how to craft suspense and emotion that […] Continue Reading
