I grew up in Cagayan de Oro City, Philippines — in a house with only a handful of books because they were too expensive to buy. Whatever second-hand books we owned were stuck together with sticky tape, worn out from constant use. But we kept reading them anyway.
On my first day in Year 1, I discovered the school library on my own and stayed there every chance I got. When our teacher finally took us to the library for our first Library Day, I immediately rushed to my favourite section, then promptly got told off. Apparently, I was supposed to wait for the librarian to show us around.
When I was in Year 6, Mama took me to a magical place called the City Public Library. My love affair with books intensified. While my classmates played outside during recess and lunch, I was in the classroom reading.
My teacher came up to me one day and said, “You should join your classmates outside.”
In hindsight, I think she meant I should join my classmates outside and play games. But instead, I sat outside and continued reading my book.
Aside from the library, my other happy place was this little Sari-Sari store near our home. I’d save up whatever money I had and then, after class, I’d walk to the store to rent Komiks while eating Jackfruit Ice Candy. My favourite Komiks was one called Shocker, which was totally inappropriate for my age as it contained a lot of gory horror stories (with graphic drawings and everything).
My first big story idea came to me one day, while I was sitting in Religion class listening to my teacher (who looked like the real-life Mr. Weatherbee from Archie Comics).
What if the pyramids were actually created by aliens and they were left here on Earth for some greater purpose?
I wrote that short story on a yellow paper convinced that it was an original idea that would become a bestseller.
Then the movie Stargate came out. I was devastated.
Still, it fueled my imagination enough that I continued to write short stories (only in private, though).
Years later, after a career in broadcast journalism and a master’s degree in communication, I started to fiddle with the idea of writing a book.
I just migrated to Australia and was staying home a lot looking for work online. I wrote a semi-autobiographical story about a migrant trying to figure out the ways of her new home.
I abandoned it after two and a half chapters.
A few more years later, while looking after my little girl, the hunger to write became more intense. I decided to write The Dragon and The Lizard – a story that our mother made up to entertain us before bed (because, you know, we only had three books in the house). I wanted to preserve that story so that it would be around forever, long after we’d forgotten the details.
The writing thing snowballed after that.
While I was still working from home and making sure my toddler was fed, I spent whatever free time I had to write.
I wrote, I edited, I joined festivals, I learned online, I listened to other authors.
Several published books later, I still hadn’t stopped. And I have no plans to.
I guess that’s the thing with devastating unoriginal ideas, you never know where they might lead you.
Kristyn Maslog-Levis is a recruitment marketing specialist, author, ghostwriter and former journalist. Several of her stories have landed in The New York Times and Al Jazeera. She finished her masters degree in communication at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore under the ASEAN scholarship. Kristyn is the author of the bestselling YA Engkantasia series published by Anvil Publishing. She started her Doctor of Philosophy candidature in 2021 with University of Technology Sydney for Creative Writing under the Australian Research Training Program, focusing on cultural diversity in middle grade literature in Australia.