 All right. Hello everyone, my name is Christina and I'm a librarian here at San Francisco Public Library. Welcome everyone. Find a good seat. Get settled. You're in for a treat tonight. I want to thank you all for joining us today. We're so happy to be here celebrating Filipino American History Month at the library. For us Filipinos, October is always a very exciting and very full time of year. How have you been celebrating Filipino American History Month? Go ahead and throw it in the chat. We'd love to hear if you've been at a library program or watched a film that you love or maybe even seen something in person. Please share. So throughout the month of October, we've been inviting you here to learn more about the unique history and contributions of our community through interactive workshops and demonstrations, book readings and more. So we invite you to check out our website. We have a dedicated webpage and in the chat, our trustee chat monitor will go ahead and share that with you. You can see the events that we've had, but also the great books that we have here available at the library, ebooks, physical books by Filipino, Filipino authors and illustrators and more. So definitely a wealth of resources about our community here. Before we start, I want to go ahead and acknowledge that here in San Francisco, we are on the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatush Aloni, who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula and they continue to live, work and play here today. As the indigenous stewards of this land and in accordance with their traditions, the Ramatush Aloni have never ceded, lost nor forgotten their responsibilities as caretakers of this place, as well as for all people who reside in their traditional territory. We wish to pay our respects as settlers by acknowledging the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatush community and by affirming their sovereign rights as first peoples. We would like also like to say thank you to the friends of San Francisco Public Library, without their generous support, we simply could not bring programming like this to you. So find out more, look up friends of San Francisco Public Library and find out how you can also support public programming at the library. And without further ado, I want to introduce Tiff Marcello. If you're out there, give her some snaps, give her some claps. Tiff Marcello is a veteran U.S. Army nurse and holds a BS in nursing and a master's in public administration. Can I please give just like a huge shout out to all the Filipino and Filipino nurses in the world, because there are plenty, I know I have many in my own family, my Lola was a nurse, so thank you, thank you for the hard work that nurses do every day. But back to Tiff. Tiff believes and writes about the strength of families, the endurance of friendship, heartfelt romances and is inspired daily by her own military hero husband and four children. She hosts the stories to love podcast and is the USA Today bestselling author of in a book club far away. Once upon a sunset, the key to happily ever after and the journey to the heart series. And of course, the holiday switch, which we're here to discuss and learn all about today. And it is available immediately with your San Francisco Public Library card through as an ebook. So please give a warm applause and welcome to Tiff Marcello. Welcome, Tiff. Hi, everyone. This is Tiff. I am just so thrilled to be here. I wanted to thank the San Francisco Public Library for inviting me to come here today. This is so exciting because it is like coming home. I'm from Northern California, although we currently live in Kentucky. We are I'm military spouse. I was in the military too, but we've moved around all of my adult life. But coming to San Francisco is home for me just to let you all know. So I went to Sheridan Elementary School. I went to Hoover Middle School. And then I went to Lake Wilmerding High School until I was a sophomore. And then we moved up to the East Bay. And then I came back to San Francisco and went to the University of San Francisco for my undergrad in nursing. So it's so it is like coming full circle because I have written The Holiday Switch, which is a teen holiday novel with two Filipino-American main characters, which is so exciting. And it has all the trappings of the holiday season. So I'm going to give a brief description. And then I'm going to read a passage. So this story is a first person point of view. And it is about Lila Santos. Lila is 18 years old and she is a senior in high school. And it's her very, very last winter break before she goes off to college. So she's really intent on making as much money as she can. And she works in this in called The Bookworm Inn, which this entire book is set in Holly, New York, which is an upstate New York. So it's really very much like a Christmas town. And she wants to earn as much money as she can. However, she finds out that her hours are being taken by the innkeeper's nephew, Teddy. And that sparks a rivalry between them. But when they switch phones, they realize that they have more things in common than what they had expected. So I'm going to read their meat cute. And in a book or in movies, a meat cute is when the two main characters meet for the first time. So this scene is just to set the scene is that Ms. Velasco, who is Lila's boss at The Bookworm Inn brings her into her office and wants to talk to her about her her employment for the winter. And this is all in Lila's point of view. Dread rises up inside me. You were going to talk to me about something? Yes, Teddy applied for a part-time seasonal position here before you sent your email. Oh, the shock of it leaves me speechless. I was fully prepared to give up my hours for KC, but not for this, Teddy. And no, there aren't my hours to give away, but the inn is like my second home. My brain undertakes the mental gymnastics to subtract my anticipated gift shop earnings from my bank account. I'm sorry, Lila. No, I get to understand, but if there's a chance here and there for extra hours, I'll take it. I force a smile and grit my teeth. Only the second half of that statement is true, but Ms. Velasco has always been kind, and she taught me everything I know about retail. She suffered through the first days when I had no idea how to talk to customers. She broke me out of my shell. I'll just have to make up the hours somehow with babysitting. Great. Thank you for understanding. Speaking of, Teddy is on his way here to drop off some of his stuff before he goes back for his last week of school. Her face lifts as another set of jingle bells rings out. Ah, here he is. She stands. A guy walks into the office. He's wearing a hoodie and comfy baggy knit pants with pristine white shoes. His skin is golden brown, and he has lush, wavy dark brown hair, which he pushes back with a hand. Tiny diamonds, said his earlobes. My jaw slackens. Oh, my. Teddy is not the little boy in the picture on Ms. Velasco's wall. Far from it, if I passed him on the street, Teddy would definitely turn my head. First, because he's Filipino, and there aren't many Filipino people in Holly. Second, he's cute. Cute in the sprouting way that bookboy friends are often described, with prominent dark eyebrows and steely brown eyes. He sets a duffel bag at his feet, and the clinking of several carabiners snapped into one of the straps momentarily catches my attention. Ms. Velasco hugs him. Anak, you look good. She squeezes his shoulders like she's trying to take him in. I know I am. Wow. Muscles. Hi, Tito Lu. He dips his head as if shy. My brain is still stuck on muscles. Lila, Ms. Velasco's voice, yanks me back, and it's only when I realize I was staring at Teddy. Yes, I'm sorry. I was looking at, yes, that's me. I'm Lila. One of Teddy's eyebrows lifts, and his lips curl into a grin. The kind of grin that says, you're interesting, but in a wearing a Halloween costume in December kind of way. My neck heats, and I inwardly groan. This feels like the world's most awkward meat cute. Ms. Velasco laughs. Exactly. Teddy, this is Lila Santos. Lila, this is Theodore, or Teddy Rivera, my nephew. He'll be working together. All of us will be working together. It's going to be such a special few weeks. Great. He nods, but doesn't say anything else. In the silence, his expression shifts minutely to what seems like weariness. I can't tell if he's being sarcastic or indifferent, but it sets off my penchant for hospitality. I want to douse this weirdness like snow over campfire. Welcome to the Bookworm Inn, home of Holiday by the Lake. I announce in perfect welcome pitch, like I'm a Holly tour guide volume eight out of 10. If you need anything at all, I'm here. Ms. Velasco claps. Great. Let me get you to my, I mean, our cabin. Lila, do you mind manning the fort? We can finish our conversation when I return. I don't mind. I release a breath. Please go before I ask him to sign the guest book. See you. I guess Teddy says, eyes blank. The guy is obviously not happy to be there. Drama indeed. Yeah, see you. The two make their way to the back, leaving me in the office with the sound of Bing Crosby piping through the speakers. Teddy's arrival weighing heavily on my mind. I just gave up my hours to my boss's cute nephew. What the heck am I supposed to do with that? So as you can see, it already begins with Lila and Teddy. And that's in the first chapter when Lila and Teddy meet. And it's, it's not great. So there's something going on with him, obviously. So what makes this book so special for me in writing it, I had mentioned before, is that I was able to put the main characters as Filipino-American, which is really tremendous. And then I was able to bring in some of my own holiday and some of my own Christmas traditions. And I wanted to go ahead and just do a quick mention that the book cover was illustrated by Jacqueline Lai. And Jacqueline Lai is Asian-Canadian, which is so super special. And the audiobook is narrated by Laila Leana Bertrand. And she's also Filipino-American. So all of this representation in this entire book has been so tremendous and special. I wanted to talk about my inspiration, what's up there on the screen. It says my own Christmas traditions. I don't want to give it all away because it was such a special thing to put on the page, but there's some things that I put in there, which is something that's out of my own childhood tradition. And that is going to mass and then going and having Buena Noche afterwards and having something to eat during Christmas Eve. And there's a little bit of karaoke in there, which is something that I also grew up with. And then I also introduced what's called leftover Christmas, which is something that we do now with my own family, which is when we get together with folks, not last Christmas, but usually we get together with folks who bring their leftovers and repurpose their leftovers. There's some also Filipino, general Filipino traditions that I placed in the book, which was so special, which the titles that we give one another. So Ate for Big Sister and Tito and Tita and Lola and Lola and all of these foods and just titles for elders that I think should come naturally in a book. So you'll notice that in this book that they are not italicized because it's just part of the language of the book. A second inspiration are the epic iconic movies that I loved growing up such as Dirty Dancing, The Holiday, The Notebook. And what comes from these epic movies are just the feeling of the setting. With Dirty Dancing you have that whole, you have that entire resort that you just get immersed in in the movie The Holiday. It's just fully Christmas, it's a rom-com and you just get so excited being in that world that it really contributed to my formation of creating the town of Holly. Finally, books were an inspiration. Lila is a book blogger and books mean something to her and books are a way for her to explore herself and her emotions and also pushes her thought process. And that's what books meant to me as a library grower growing up and continues to affect me today. So I wanted to make sure that that was definitely in this book. And finally, the idea of you can change your mind. This statement has been so important to me in both my young life and in my adult life. And it's something that I tell my children, it's something I tell other authors, it's something I tell other writers. And in this book, and I hope that I'm able to convey that, that no matter where you are in your life, that you can change your mind. Now, I always am asked what the process is to write. And every book is so different. Some books, I come up with the characters first. Sometimes there is a scene or there is a moment that I experienced in my real life where I witnessed something with somebody that kind of sparks the inspiration and the process. But with this, Holly really came first, Holly the city. Holly, New York is a fictional town. And it is an upstate New York, and it is in the Finger Lakes region. If you guys know where that is, it is super duper cold with a lot of snow. And we actually lived, actually lived with my family in upstate New York and Watertown. But that's more north, that's more east than Holly, than where Holly would be. And I really saw Holly as its own inclusive town. And I really saw its streets. So my focus, I remember when I was thinking up this book was drawing this town and trying to figure out like how far things were and where the town square was. That was so much fun to do. And it really built from there, like how much, how big is this tree in the town square? And how many decorations are there? And how big is the sign that says Holly, New York population, 13,000 or whatnot. So what I wanted to do was create a Christmas town. And Holly, though it is not holidayed out all year long, it is for most of the year. And what happens with that is inherently there's going to be characters in there that support this little town. So what comes after Holly is finding out that all of these characters that are in this little city have such, have like a ton of spirit. So it's sort of like school spirit, but like exponential because they want to make sure that this town survives because it's all about Christmas. It's all about the holidays. The second thing I worked on was Lila and the bookworm in. Lila came to me almost immediately after. I knew that she was a lover of books. And I knew that she was a hard worker and that she was focused. And it only made sense for her to work at the bookworm in, which is really the, it was the scene or it was the in that was in the fictional movie called Holly by a lake. And that's why everybody's coming to Holly is because they want to be in this in and they want to take pictures at this in and they want to get to know this in. It only makes sense that Lila would have worked in like the play best place ever in Holly, New York. So then I started to look up what ends would look like. And she has a little she has a library within this in. And then I looked up all of these pictures of different libraries and and how we would look in a library. So it's like a gift shop and a library and and an in on the back. So I really had such a good time drawing this out of my drawings, not that great, but drawing this out and really knowing where she was moving around in this in. So it was quite exciting. And of course, she's Filipino American to me, that was just so important and exciting. And I wanted to surround her with people that I see every day. So it is a diverse cast for this book. And it's it's diverse in both. It's racially diverse. And it's and it's what I would see in my world. So it's nice to be able to write a small town with diverse characters. And then I moved on and I said, you know what, Lila needs to be challenged. So you'll notice that folks around Lila are just as strong in their personalities. And that is because when you have somebody like Lila, who is like super duper Taipei, the folks that will change her are almost the opposite or equally as strong in their personalities. Teddy is a strong personality too. Um, but for other reasons. But to Lila, Teddy is just stubborn, right? But actually, Teddy is strong in his own way. And he pushes her to think outside of the box, while she pushes him to think within the box. So they're really such a good pair. And I wanted them to get along but to challenge each other, as well as to teach one another. Because, you know, you hope that's the people that your friends with can do that. They can be your friends and they can support you. But at the same time, challenge you to be a better person. And what more when your crush is that way too? Finally, they're not finally, but Tinsel and tropes. Tinsel and tropes is Lila's book blog. You know, I really do think that most people have their way of expression. Some folks have their art. Some people dance. Some people sing. Some people write. And some people speak their expression. And Lila writes, she reads books and she reviews books. But what happens in Tinsel and tropes, her book blog, is that she actually teases out what she's feeling inside in accordance to what she read in her book. So it's really interesting. And really, I guess I love this for her that she's able to be able, she's able to talk through these feelings that sometimes she's not able to say to the people around her. And she keeps this book blog a secret for a little while. But we find that we'll find that as we read the blog segments, that she is changing too. So that's why that's why I created Tinsel and tropes. And finally, the 10 things to do in Holly. So this is a bucket list. I don't know, I'm sure that you guys have seen some lists, like 10 things to do in San Francisco, where, you know, you have like all of these tourist traps that you do. And you hope you hit the big ones and take tons of pictures. And I really wanted Lila to go on a physical journey with her and her friends and her crush. And they undertake the 10 things to do in Holly. So now this process, I just have to say that it all didn't come at the same time. It kind of, it came slowly and it came through revisions, through rewrites, and it came also with the help of my editor who said, you know what, this really sounds great. And what I did at the next, the next time I revise was that I rewrote certain parts. Now, people usually ask me how I became an author. And I really wanted to share this because, again, that whole statement of I can always change my mind really rings true. So I mentioned that I love the San Francisco Public Library. And that is because everything for me started with library and books, started with that first green library card that I received when I was in elementary school. And then I would check out 13 books at a time, and I would scour through these bookshelves. And I read through pretty much all through the all through the children's section and then moved on to the adult books. So back then, when I was much younger, the children's shelves were like all smushed together. Nowadays, of course, you have like the teen section, and then you have the chapter books, and then you have the, the picture books, and everything in between. But back then, it was like just one big glob in the front of the library. So I went to the Tarraval branch, Tarraval Street branch, which is the Parkside branch of the San Francisco Public Library. And I used to go there after school, after getting off the muni. And I used to spend time there in the summer as well. And I did all the library programs, the summer reading programs. And that's where it all began for me. But I did, I was not always an author. So I was guided by my parents, as many of you are, and I was guided towards to become a nurse. And I joined the army after that. And it was fantastic. I loved being a nurse for a very long time. And I loved being in the army. But there came a time when I decided to make a decision, right? But we will not go there yet. So I was not always an author. However, I continued to read. Okay, so I went to the University of San Francisco, I got my nursing degree. I went into the army. And I got out of the army after four years. And I was still a military spouse. I'm still a military spouse, we move around a lot. But I still went to the libraries wherever I go and get my library cards there and continue to read. And I also joined book clubs, which is amazing, because then I'm able to talk about books. And I grow as a reader because of it. And what happened is in between, I started to scribble. I started to journal once more. I used to write in my diary when I was much younger. And I kind of lost that, you know, in school. And then I just started writing once more. I started writing in journals. And then blogging started blogging back in 2001. blogging began. And that's when I began my practice of writing. And I was blogging two to three times a week. So if you think about that, that's about 500 words, 250 to 500 words each time. And I would write it, and then read it, and then rewrite it. And I would do that two or three times before I posted it. And I blogged for about 10 years. So lots of my family memories are there. Lots of my ideas on books and my conclusions about books. And then I was also knitting and doing all these other things. And I was talking about all of my crafts. But no matter what, I just kept writing. I kept the practice of writing. And then at some point, I decided, you know what, it's time to switch things up. So about 10 or 11 years ago, I decided it's time for me to write a book. I think, I think I can do it. And sure enough, I wrote my first book. It wasn't the best book. So I wrote another book. And then I continued to write more books. So writing a book takes a long time. So sometimes I would work on two projects at one time. But I try to finish my stories, which is the most important thing, is to be able to finish your stories. And about five years ago or six years ago, actually, no, like eight years ago or something, I decided, you know what, I really want to get published. I really want to book out in the world. And I researched on how to do that. There are two paths or there are many ways to get a book out into the world. But generally, there are two paths. There's a traditional path, and that is that you get an agent, a literary agent, and then they pitch your book to a publisher, a big publisher. And there is the other path that's called independent publishing, where you publish yourself. Because I wanted to write teen novels, I wanted to go the traditional route. However, it didn't work out that way. So here comes another switch, right? So here I am, I'm thinking that everything is good to go. I have my books. But I realized that it's not going to be that easy. I wanted to write for young adults, but I could not get an agent for young adults. And I then had to make another decision. And I said, you know what, let me try to write for grown-ups, for the adult audience. And it's with that that I got my agent. And my first contracts were for adult novels. And so actually, the holiday switch is my eighth novel. So it took a little bit of time. So it is worth the wait, though, right? And it is worth the learning. And it's worth the trouble of figuring things out and finding new things and figuring things out that you love to write other things. So be open to that switch. So I like to give some writing tips. Read, read, read. So there is no substitution for reading. I would say read everything, different genres, enjoy the ways that people write. In fact, I still read for fun. I still read for fun about 20 to 30 minutes a day. So all the ways that your teachers have told you to, you know, to read 30 minutes a day, I still do that myself. I also am still in book clubs because I still want to talk about books with other people. And the great thing about libraries, let me tell you, and this is what I loved about going to the library, is that if a book doesn't work for me, it's totally okay. You can bring that book back and you can pick up another book. It's like never ending source of fun when you're in a library. You should see me today or when we were going to public libraries. I would walk in and it's like being a kid in the candy store. I just pick as many books as I can and then I just sort through them and keep them until the very last minute and then turn them back in. But, you know, you'll notice that as you continue to read a lot that there are going to be books that are going to jump out at you. And those are the books that I think that you should examine. And by examining what I mean by that is that you can take a look at the things that really strike you. You can see that if a dialogue like makes you laugh, you can actually take that dialogue between those characters and say, what here makes me laugh? Did he say something funny or was he doing something? Did the author write him doing an action that made me laugh or what made me cry? Look at the things that really strike you about a book and that's what you should examine. And perhaps that's something that you can keep in mind for the book that you're going to write. Now, if you own the book, because I own a lot of books, not everybody can own as many books, but if you own a book that you can mark up, I don't know if the librarians are going to like this, but when I own my own books, I mark up my books because I like to highlight it. If I fall in love with something, I highlight it. And I come back to it because if it inspires me, then it's really doing its job, right? The author is really doing their job. So the next thing I want to encourage you to do is to journal and to write. Now, everybody writes in a different way. Some folks can write snippets. Some folks write linearly, which means they go from the beginning of the story to the end of the story. Some folks just do poetry. You can brainstorm and just put words on the page, but there's really no substitution to journaling and to writing. And you can write whatever you want. This is the most exciting thing about writing is that you can literally make things up. Like, I mean, if you just think about that, sometimes when I'm writing my books and I'm having a hard time or it's a hard writing day, I tell myself this, like, Tiff, you can make it up. So go ahead and be free with your notebook. Just make stuff up and write what you want to write and just open your heart to be able to put things down on paper. Now, I listed that if you can take writing classes, you can probably have it in your schools or you can take a summer program or you can take an online course. But I want to tell you all that I was not formally educated in English or did not have a degree in creative writing or in journalism or any of that. And still I was able to become an author. So I think what's important here is that you read and then you write. And then when you get to a point where you can share your work, that you can take feedback. But if you can also take a writing class that's available for you, go ahead and take it. It's a great way to learn tips. It's a great way to kind of open your mind and heart to a new way of accomplishing a certain thing, like how do I write funny books and perhaps you can learn learn some tips here and there to and I still take writing classes myself. Honestly, I go to conferences or online conferences with other authors and they break down their work. They take a look at it, we examine their work and we figure out, okay, what makes this scene funny? So everybody can improve. And finally, I wanted to mention and this is the most important thing is that to keep your dreams. I am a person that did not have her work published until she's 41 years old. So I had an entire career and and I have no regrets. And that is because I just kept my dreams in front of me. You can be who you want to be. So if you want to be a nurse or a doctor and then right on the side, you can do that. If you wanted to be a lawyer, an attorney, if you wanted to be, you know, a dentist or a teacher and then right on the side, you can. If you want to be a writer only, you can also. But keep your dreams in front because, you know, there's going to be things that you'll need to do, like get a job and do all of these adulting things that we all have to deal with. But if you keep your writing dreams for a front, then you will accomplish it. And so the final thing is that just remember sometimes a little switch can lead to some fun and something good. So hopefully Lila and Teddy will be able to show that too when you read them on the page. That is it. Any questions? Thank you so much, Tiff. I have to agree with Erica, who wrote in the chat, just love these tips. I mean, just one after the other, I was like, yes. Yes. Yes. So please publish those so that we can have easy access to them. I really appreciate, you know, especially for our younger audiences, you know, this is a YA title. And we're, we really, you know, we welcome everyone to be able to come to this program. But we're hoping that we have young viewers who are, you know, teen readers themselves. And I just really appreciate your adulting tips, because sometimes I, you know, in mentoring, young people do, you know, sort of think that it is just all linear. And if you just kind of set your mind in one way, that that's just how it's all going to happen. And so just thank you for being so transparent about all the ways that you had to make different decisions or things didn't exactly turn out, you know, you weren't a YA writer, you know, at the very, very beginning, but and here you are. So it's just, I really thank you so much for just laying out, you know, your process so openly with us. Oh, thank you. I'm so glad to be here. And it's just, it's, it's exciting because there are also so many options. I did not get into it, but the independent publishing side of the house really provides the opportunity for anyone to be to be read. So there's really no barrier. If you have the support, you know what I mean, if you have the support and the encouragement and most importantly, a book. So, and that's why it's so important that if anything, reading and writing is really the two key things because everything else is all going to just fall on your lap after that happens. A nominal thank you so much for just that positivity and confidence and for plugging the library so much along your journey too. We really do appreciate folks for you not to mark in your books, but I was like, I know, I'm like, you can put my daughter, I have an 11-year-old daughter and she asked me today, she's like, mom, can I, she didn't know I was going to talk about this, but she said, mom, with my books, can I mark them? And I said, oh my gosh, of course you can. If they're your books, you may mark them. Well, we have a wonderful audience that's giving us a lot of love in the chat and I do want to make sure that we get their questions answered. So if you have questions, just go ahead and throw it in the Q&A box. I have a question from one of our audience members, Monica, who's saying, how do you stay focused on your characters when writing more than one thing at a time? Yeah, and more than one book at a time? Does she mean that? I think that's what she means, yes. Okay, yeah, you know, I just try to get into the space and that is something that is hard. Shonda Rhimes wrote this book, it's called The Year of Yes, and she talks about getting into the door, her imagination, and then once the door is open, then she's good to go. But getting to the door is like, oh my gosh, how do I get there? And that's how I find my process is. I just need to be able to get to the door and once it's open, then I am just full on writing my book. So what I do try to do is I listen to, I have a different playlist for different books. And what I do is I segment my day so that in the morning I will be working on a specific book and then I will break and then do another book in the afternoon. I try not to mix it up too much. And when I say break, it's like a full, like I'll walk the dog and have lunch and then maybe, maybe work out so that it's a full kind of dump of what I did before. And then I'm in a new project. That's great. I love the association of the switch being audibly with music. I think that's awesome. Mary asks a really good question and one that I also I'm going to say was a question that came up for me. Are you planning on writing any more holiday stories? Specifically, are you planning to flesh out some of the books in the tinsel and tropes blog, which I just found was so intriguing. Yeah, I've had so many people ask that. And I was like, wow, this is great. I mean, it's definitely an idea. You know, it's all of my contracts thus far. So the holiday switch is my eighth novel. My ninth and 10th novel novels are coming out next year in 2022. And they're both adult titles. And then I have another adult title in 2023. So I don't know when that next teen novel is going to come. I'd like to be able to sneak in an adult Christmas novel. At some point, you know, I have all of these big dreams. But wow, you know, it's so interesting that whole blog, those books and the blogs, it's it is an idea, isn't it? I mean, it's yeah, I had fun. I had fun writing those and I had fun pretending that there was really a movie associated with the bookworm in and pretend, you know, pulling things from different iconic movies like the canoe, which is the canoe from what is that? The notebook. You know, they were in the canoe. So I was like, oh, this is a canoe from whatever. You know, so it's like all these little kind of itzy bitzy things. Yeah, absolutely. I just think the setting that you created, I mean, immediately I was like, I want to go to Holly New York. Is that real? And just, you know, it was so interesting being, you know, we're in San Francisco in California, where, you know, we do have a very strong and visible Filipino American community, Filipino immigrant community. And so I thought it was so interesting to have this story be set, you know, in more of like a quaint, like you described Christmas town. And I'm just curious kind of how that came about for you in terms of really deciding that this was going to be, you know, not only the setting, you said that was how you started, but that this was going to be really centered on Filipino characters. How did that piece come into play? Yeah, I just knew that my goal is to have as many Filipino American characters in my books. And then I didn't want, and when I've, I've lived in upstate New York and I've been in that area, and there's not very many Filipino Americans up there. And so I really wanted to create a space where it is like California, but it's up with all the snow. Yeah, yeah. So, but I fell in love with upstate New York, quite honestly, when we lived there, we only lived there for 23 months. So we had two winters there. And I fell in love with that place. It was very cold. And there was a lot of snow, but there's just a magic to it being up there with all the trees. And the snow is really pretty when you're inside. Yeah, some chocolate and some books. Exactly. So it created like the perfect backdrop of Christmas and the white Christmas of having all the snow. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is just a perfect time that we're having this program, you know, as we start kind of thinking about the holidays coming up. So it's making me feel very cozy. Yay. Before we finish, I definitely want to get a question in from Angela, who asks about, you know, getting through difficult plot problems and how do you stay writing even when you're feeling discouraged? Yeah, you know, I think that there is a thing to this to determine is this a plot issue or a motivation issue, right? When it's a motivation issue, that is like a totally different answer. So if it's a motivation issue, potentially, then what do you need to do to kind of get your motivation up? Perhaps you need to get up and walk, or you need to listen to a lot of music, or you need to fill that well. Maybe that well is depleted. Maybe you need to watch movies or read books. But when it's a plot issue, and I really can't get it, that's when critique partners and my critique group has really helped. So I have a close set of friends. There's five of us. And we have been together since before any of us were published. So it's been a long time. And we go to one another for plot issues. Sometimes they don't even really need to know the entire plot. They just need to know like the basics. And they'll brainstorm with you. They can brainstorm with you and then come up with many different ideas. And potentially the answer is not there, but it will kind of strike a chord. And then next thing you know, you're coming upon the answer that you need. I love that. Yeah, it's hard. This is the imagination. There's so many places to unlock. And sometimes it takes a lot to walk a door. Absolutely. And I love just, you know, you reminding us that this is done in community. And I hear a lot of people talk about how writing is a solitary process. But I also, my favorite thing to read in a book often is the acknowledgements because you see all the people that helped create this. And I always tell folks, or well, folks have told me and so I repeat it is that you can't compare your book, your work in progress to a finished book. Because your work in progress is what you're working on currently. And a finished book has been read and reread probably 13 to 20 times. And it's been through editors. And so critical that you have a wonderful editor. So I have just been so lucky in all the I'm with three publishers. So I'm with Simon and Schuster and Random House and with Amazon Publishing. And I have had the most amazing editors that really see the heart of the book. And they're able to tease out that answer. So just know that you're not doing this all alone. Like yes, you can come up with a first draft and yes, you can revise. But at some point, then it's time for feedback. Yeah. Thanks for that reminder, Tiff. As we wrap up, I do want to thank our audience for being here and just invite you. Are there any words of farewell that you'd like to say to the to the audience here today? Oh my gosh, you guys have just I'm just so thrilled. This is a full circle for me. So I as soon as the opportunity was available, I'm like, please raise my hand, take me please. So I'm absolutely happy Philippine American History Month. I mean, this is just October is always so wonderful. And I just want to wish everybody a great month and and a very safe holiday season. Thank you. Thank you so much Tiff for saying yes. And for the homecoming of San Francisco and we're seeing some USF love on the YouTube chat as well. So thank you to our audience for being here. Oh, Don. Yes. And if you love today's program, folks, please check out our calendar of events. We still have some wonderful opportunities to celebrate Philippine American History Month, for example, right behind me are poster. It's it's a little bit in the shadow. But this was custom designed and created by local artist Lydia Ortiz, who also works at Chronicle Books. She's got one foot in publishing as well as an artist in her own right. So she's going to do a program as well coming up. So check out the chat for the dates and details about that. And, you know, just like to say, take care of yourselves, folks, and be well. Stay safe. We hope to see you. Our libraries are open. We'd love to see you here in person and also at our virtual library at a program like this soon. So thank you so much, everyone. Have a wonderful evening.