 I get up in the morning, I wake up my son, he says daddy what's happening, I say let's go for a run and on the road, I ask him what he want to be and Sus Maria Sapil want to be like me, to be a Pinoy, P-I-N-O-Y, I say Pinoy, P-I-N-O-Y My name is Don Magwily, I'm a Filipino American, my parents immigrated to the United States and had me. I was born in Oakland, California. I went to St. Joseph High School in Alameda and the University of San Francisco. I've had 16 years of Catholic education and I wanted to be an actor. It could have been worse. I could want to be a nun. Even so, I trained at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco and came to Los Angeles to seek my fortune. And being an actor in Los Angeles encourages you to become a hyphenated artist. There's not a lot of work for you if you're an actor. And so to create work for yourself, you also become a playwright, a producer, a director, and in my case, a novelist. As a child of television, I didn't watch just the Howdy Doody show, but Hop Long Cassidy and Disney's Davy Crockett. And in the movies, I saw Steve Reeves as Hercules and Hercules Unchained. As I grew older, I also noticed that all these heroes didn't look like me. The closest I got was Peter Lorre as Mr. Motto. I did better with Bruce Lee and the Green Hornet. I did really well when Bruce Lee was in Enter the Dragon. But who else? I looked around. Pickings were meager. I mean, Mickey Rooney as the Japanese neighbor in Breakfast of Tiffany's. That can make you weep. As I got involved with Asian-American theater and Asian-American studies, I found historical heroes mostly ignored by textbooks, like the Filipinos who fought in the Battle of New Orleans with Jean Lafitte. The Chinese Feng Zhou Gui who flew the first motor-driven airplane west of the Rockies in 1909, and all the Japanese-American 442nd combat team of the Second World War. Just to mention a few. There were so many heroes. They were inspirational. I stopped waiting for permission. I started writing stories where people who looked like me saved the day. I wanted to create a swashbuckling adventure where Asian-Americans were heroic. This is the result of my effort. The legends from the first hemisphere, the infernal promise. Here is an excerpt. Waiting before them at the gap between the canyon and the field was a looming monster beyond their understanding. At first bones thought it was an ancient armored warrior atop a katabao, one of the water buffaloes from back home. It had a great barrel torso with lean shafts for his forelegs and great brawny hindquarters. The warrior was heavy with sinew and muscle. From breastplate to back it was easily forehandsband's thick. Brod hefty arms like tree trunks hung from his massive shoulders. Its skin was muddy, but beneath the grime was an albino hue. The thick neck supported what could be called a large helmet where two sweeping horns sprang from the sides. The face had a sculptured aspect, broad nose, square jaw, thick sensual lips, and deep, inset glittering eyes. And one great hand was an oddly formed sword wide in some places, narrow in others. It had six edges at its broadest width. It might have been a kind of axe. In the other hand was a heavy iron shield. The giant loomed before them breathing through its mouth full of rage and terror. That's when to-dow realized the truth and the truth staggered him. The monster was not wearing a helmet of horns. These horns were flowing right out of its head. He was not a warrior mounted on a giant water buffalo. He was the water buffalo. Got in heaven, it's a centaur, said the priest, coming out of his amazement. Ah, half man, half horse. Eh, more like half carabao, cryptomanula man. And that's it. A selection from the Infernal Promise. You can find it on Amazon under that title. If you want more information about me, my website is www.dmagwilly.com. That's d-m-a-g-w-i-l-i dot com. Thank you for listening. More later.