The Life and Loves of Victoria

This question and more are answered in my novel, The Life and Loves of Victoria. With a word count of about 43,500, it follows the story of a modern and liberated Asian woman named Victoria (Vic). She's in her 20s and has just graduated from college. She moves abroad for her first job as a customer service executive for a big shipping line and goes dating mostly foreign men. From an unnamed country to Singapore and back to the Philippines, the novel chronicles the minute, intimate details of her romantic albeit sexual connections; her losses, survival, triumphs, and what she has to go through to have the life she aspires to have.

Victoria is created not out of some pretentious literary concept: she's based on a real person and the story is based on that real person's story. There's no attempt to glorify her. As for the male characters, they're not portrayed out of concepts of how men are and/or how men should be; they're based on real people. The actions and dialogues of the male characters are written out of real occurrences.

There are a good number of sex scenes. They're in plain language and don't spare details. But although the novel is full of these graphic scenes, they're simply not what the novel is about. The scenes may be brutal and shocking but they're essential in portraying Vic's lust for life and love, and her desperation.