My Ambitious Plans for 2014

Personal Notes:

I have been out of the circulation for more than a month and I do really feel sad for that long absence. But the most important thing of all is I'm here now for my Synopsis Lounge blog. Though I would not feature any book title in this issue, but sharing the big plans for 2014 would be the main topic.

I have been working four different books and one of them would be released by early next year. (Oh, come on, Raf, you should have said "early next month". Oh, yes, so to speak). And my first novel Prince of Nepal will be on paper back soon. My editor is on the process of finishing up two projects and one of those is the erotic-action-thriller Secrets of the Bayou. And I have been dreaming to release the next one, 'In the back of the House' in mid-February.

When super typhoon Yolanda struck the Philippines on the 8th of November, I had to spend my time monitoring the situation. My loved ones live there. My countrymen suffered a lot with this catastrophic chapter of 2013. I had to donate something and expressed my deepest sympathies to the ones who grieved and lost their loved ones. Prior to that big one, just a few weeks before Yolanda hit the central part of the country, a ferocious one, though it was not as popular as Yolanda, struck my hometown where I grew up. Houses and crops were destroyed and people were still on the process of recovering from that deadly typhoon. Most of the farmers suffered from the catastrophe. They lost their crops, they lost everything.

The Yolanda Aftermath

I have too many plans for this coming year. 2014 is a big year for me, God willing. I will launch my Raf Radio, my books-on-radio-concept about book launching, reading, playing music and even do the podcast of my fellow book writers and readers doing their reviews and all that. It's almost ready and all I need to do is to finalize my own website to set up and incorporate all of these. I already set up the Raf Radio Facebook page and I will choose Voscast  website as the unlimited audio streaming provider. This means unlimited access of my future listeners who will listen to the web radio.

Raf Radio is almost ready to get on-line: very basic and very simple.

Another dream that I have for 2014 is the creation of my build-a-library project in the Philippines and other parts of the United States. That is going to be my goal. It's a non-profit organization for literacy enhancement. This will be my advocacy for the enhancement of literacy especially in rural areas that need it most. I know, in the Philippines for instance, mostly in the rural areas, many communities need a library (both traditional and digital) and my aspiration would be on both. They must have Kindle or Nook e-readers as well. They must feel and experience the wonders of these new technologies while preserving the traditional way of how a typical library works.I will buy books and ask my friends to donate theirs for the cause. My friend, who used to be a librarian in one of the cities here in North Texas would help me to make it happen. In the beginning, I envision the kiosk-type libraries as a start up. My contact in northern Philippines is coordinating with some communities in Region 2 to select a place where we can start doing our model project.

This looks great for small communities

I am so lucky to have some friends in the Philippines and here in Dallas, Texas who would be with me in this journey. I will reveal the whole plan when it's all set to launch. My senior editor is with me on this and he is more than willing to do and lead the tasks. As I do my full time jobs here in Dallas, writing my books and collaborating with other authors to write on both fictional and non-fictional works, my allies will share their time and energy for this advocacy. We will start in a simple way. As one of the popular Chinese proverbs says; "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step". We'll start from small steps.