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Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe, my first new book in five years, is finally out! (All the other Twisted books are out of print, making this the only Twisted book!) In photo (L-R): Deo, Allan, and Evan, who hosted the short program and took tons of photos.

We had a book launch and signing at Fully Booked on Bonifacio High Street in BGC last Saturday. Watch video of the Twisted Travels launch at Instagram TV, @jessicazafrascats.

Thank you to everyone who endured hellish weekend traffic to come to the event. I hope you tried the Czech beer and Polish vodka. We ran out of books!

To buy copies of Twisted Travels Central Europe online use these links:

Shopee

Lazada

You can also get them direct from Visprint here. Use this link for foreign orders.

Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe is published by Visprint with Discover Central Europe and the Embassies of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary in the Philippines. In the photo from left: Joanna from the Polish Embassy, me in the same dress I’m wearing in the author photo on the book’s inside back cover, Benjamin of the Czech Embassy, Gabor of the Hungarian Embassy, and my very patient and altogether excellent publisher Nida Ramirez, overlord of Visprint.

The mastermind of this project, Ambassador Jaroslav Olsa of the Czech Republic, could not be at the launch because he had urgent business to attend to in Prague.

The book launch was a meeting of everyone in my phone directory, including my favorite human beings and readers. This is my gene pool (L-R): my nieces Mika and Dany (as in Daenerys), my brother-in-law Bryan, and my sister Cookie.
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Twisted Travels: Rambles in Central Europe will be launched on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2-5 p.m. at Fully Booked in Bonifacio High Street, BGC. Twisted Travels will be available at Fully Booked, Shopee.ph, Lazada.com.ph, National Bookstore, and Powerbooks.

We arrived in Prague in the early afternoon and were fetched by our tour guide Zoran, who announced that taxi drivers were on strike against Uber, there were violent clashes in the city, and massive traffic jams. This is perhaps not the welcome one wants at the beginning of a packed tour, but it set a bleakly comic tone for the whole trip. There was some discussion in the team as to who our guide looked like. He resembled:

a. the original host of The Crystal Maze
b. one of the War Boys from Mad Max Fury Road
c. the vocalist of the ’80s group Right Said Fred of “I’m Too Sexy” fame
d. Professor Charles Xavier of the X-Men
e. Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise

Read an excerpt.

Winning a Palanca Award changed my life. After college I was a freelance writer contributing feature articles to magazines like Metro (where I met my lovely future editor, the late, much-missed Abe Florendo) or churning out ten versions of the same press release for PR agencies (The rent must be paid), but dreaming of writing short stories and novels. There were very few places where you could get fiction published, but if you had a Palanca Award you would be taken seriously.

I remember it was an apocalyptic time, ashfall from Mt Pinatubo, the earthquake that leveled much of Baguio, war in Iraq, people having strange visions, and me feeling scared and anxious that the world was going to break apart and I hadn’t even started living yet. I sat in the dinky apartment I shared with two friends and wrote a short story called Portents. Then I thought, What the hell, submit it to the Palanca Awards.
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Soiree by Jason Moss

I’m in Poland on a research trip for a couple of weeks. The schedule is packed, so I don’t know how often I can blog, but I will document the trip on my cats’ Instagram. Quick, follow @jessicazafrascats!

Writing Boot Camp (Baguio) dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant in Makati whose name I’m not telling you, what, so it’ll be so full we can’t get a table? L-R: Gary, Reina, Annalyn, me, Vicky, Von, Allan.

I’ve updated my bio to include answers to frequently-asked questions (Where can we buy your damn books, were you in a coma, etc). Also put a current photo.