JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Thank you for a good year. The world is on fire and going bonkers, but it’s comforting to know that there are humans who think, read, and want to understand. Thank you for being alive! We have something for you.

Start the new year with a fresh outlook. Come to our Free Sanity Maintenance Workshop on Saturday, 11 January 2020, 2-6pm at the Nexus Center, 1010 Metropolitan Avenue, Makati.

2-4pm Lord Fernandez on Mindfulness–what it is, how to practice it, and how it helps clear the noise from your head.

4-6pm Jessica Zafra on Writing–how to stop procrastinating and actually write something.

We hope you can join us. Parking is available. DM us @jessicazafrascats to reserve a seat.

Yes, I am holding my new book. You can buy it at Fully Booked, Mt Cloud, Solidaridad and Shopee, or order a signed and gift-wrapped copy right here.

I apologize for not having blogged regularly in the last couple of years. The page views had dropped, but that’s not an excuse. I figured the readers had all decamped to the social media, so I asked my friends to set up and manage social media accounts for me. This blog has a Facebook page and my cats have an Instagram account—they’re updated daily by our social media manager Bubbles, and doing very well, thank you. My hiatus from blogging allowed me to figure out how to keep writing for a living when all my old jobs have died or mutated.

The answer, funnily enough, is Books. Having spent the last quarter-century wondering how to support myself so I can write books, I find that I should just write the blasted books. The digital revolution has killed a lot of things, but books have survived and are thriving. Yay!

So this blog is aliiiiive, and from hereon I will be updating it at least twice a week. I hope my old readers will come baaaaack and new readers will wander onto this site. In the coming weeks I will post photos, videos, and podcasts from my book talks in November.

You can reach me in Comments, by email at saffron.safin@gmail.com, or DM @jessicazafrascats.

Have a comparatively stress-free holiday season, and don’t feel compelled to act happy unless you really are happy!

“Both Jessica’s journalism and fiction are delicious. She is a wry observer of Filipino society, and her stories are gems of social history.”

– F. Sionil Jose, National Artist for Literature

The Collected Stories of Jessica Zafra will be launched on Saturday, 2 Nov 2019, 4-6pm at the lobby of The Nexus Center.

Published by Ateneo University Press, the book contains award-winning fiction from Jessica’s two previous story collections, plus new and uncollected stories and an introduction by Don Jaucian. The cover is by renowned artist Jason Moss.

Jessica will give a talk, do a Q&A, and sign books at the event.

Books will be sold at the event. SRP P345. Merienda will be served.

The Nexus Center is the newly-opened Art Deco headquarters of Nexus Technologies. It’s at 1010 Metropolitan Avenue near the Makati Post Office and Fire Station, near the corner of Ayala and Buendia (Sen Gil Puyat Avenue), Makati City.

See you there!