[Author Interview] Getting the 411 on Blossom Among Flowers from Jay E. Tria

I have been on a hiatus for several months already, and this week, I decided I needed a break from my off-line life. Luckily, I've come across author Jay E. Tria!

One could say that it was fate which led me to virtually meet author Jay E. Tria on Twitter through fellow author Anne Plaza's fan-girly tweets. Or you know, I was being nosy and she was nice enough to talk to me about our shared love for words, Japanese visual novels and JDoramas (Japanese Dramas). Either way, I scored an Author Interview out of it!

Writing a novel that's also like a manga is a novelty. 

What made you decide to write this kind of story?

It started with the frustration that Hanazawa Rui did not end up with Makino Tsukushi in Hana Yori Dango. So I guess this is a fanfic of sorts, fueled by a lot of pent up feelings and my enduring love for Rui. I was writing it with no outline, as if I was writing dorama episodes or manga volumes, guided only by a very clear image of Takeshi and Hikaru in my head. To be honest, I didn’t know how to finish it. It kind of got out of hand; I spewed out 165k words for the first draft. And at first I was writing it only for my fellow HYD fangirl. She lovingly read it and we giggled over it for days. Every so often I would come back to the manuscript, read it again and feel something again, and I would edit it, write some more. This year, about five years since the first draft, I realized I still love the story very much, so I decided to put in some real work and get it out there.

(Aaaahhhhh, I remember being a Hana Yori Dango fangirl... Still am. haha! Thank God for Hana Yori Dango, and the phenomenon that was the F4!)

[Book Review] Blossom Among Flowers

Blossom Among Flowers

By: Jay E. Tria

July 15, 2015

New Adult, Contemporary Romance

Links:

Goodreads // Amazon

Being invisible can't be that hard, can it?

Unlike most people, 17-year old Hikaru Saito likes being invisible. Perfectly happy with her nose buried deep in her growing manga collection, she hardly notices how her "harmless hobby" is taking control of her life. But when she fails an important exam, Hikaru is forced to spend more time with her studies and her new tutor, fellow student, campus genius, and golden boy Takeshi Hinata.

Unfortunately for Hikaru, Takeshi's popularity in school forces the spotlight on her too. His adoring fans don't like seeing how much time they spend together and punish her for it. Luckily, Tetsuya Sakuishi, a new young and beautiful teacher, is always there to save the day for Hikaru. It doesn't help that his smile distracts her, however.

Like her tormentors, Hikaru cannot understand why Takeshi keeps showing up in her life long after the tutoring sessions are over. As if the complications of grueling exams and university applications weren't enough, a haughty socialite mother, an imposing business mogul father, and a princess-in-hiding all come bearing down on Hikaru. Through it all, Takeshi is there, looking at Hikaru like she's not invisible after all. 

[Feature] Language, Conjectures and Inflections

I do not own this image. Found it on Google.

As a voracious reader, the idea of being able to read different books in different languages while understanding all the inflections, conjectures and implications in between the written words is probably the ultimate dream! If it was up to me, I’d give myself the superpower to be fluent in all of the languages around the world. It doesn’t even have to be in spoken language. Think of all the literature I would be able to read!

Thanks to the efforts of linguists and translators, language barriers in literature have been reduced to inexistence. Books of famous authors are easily translated, reproduced and distributed in different languages for the consumption of the reading public. This is something that’s really benefitted me, because if it isn’t obvious enough, reading is a huge part of my life.

The most important part of translation, in my opinion, is to convey the emotion. It’s more important to preserve what the author wants to convey, rather than to stick rigidly to word for word translation. As Maya Angelou said, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” I find this statement true because no matter how many books I’ve read, I’ll always remember the ones which evoke the most emotions in me.

With the advent of technology, texts and documents can be translated from one language to another with the click of a mouse. Easy-peasy, and with very little to no effort at all, since translation softwares do all the work and at very incredible speeds. I see this in a positive light because people who speak minor languages are given the power to voice out opinions and be read by a wider audience through the world wide web – all in just a few clicks! This is where translation softwares such as Smartling comes in! What's even amazing is that Smartling isn't only for translating documents. It can also be used to to support website translation, a tool for app localization, or a translation management system for business documents and other enterprise translation projects.

Personally, English isn’t my first language. It’s my third or fourth. My primary language is Karay-a, which is a language spoken by only a fraction of the population in the Philippines. My second language is Tagalog, which is the national language in the Philippines. I was told that by six or seven years old and despite not having any formal education in speaking Tagalog, I was already fluent in it. This was largely thanks to local children’s shows on TV which dominated my attention and time at that age. I also speak Hiligaynon, which is a regional language here in the Philippines. And then of course, there’s English, which is the medium of instruction in schools and universities.

I’d like to think that it’s not that obvious that I’m not a native English speaker, but that’s just me.