How a love of fantasy, Filipino mythology, and apparently making things unnecessarily difficult for myself turned into the world of Kalintara.
I don’t particularly like writing, which is probably an unusual way to introduce myself on an author website.
To be fair, I’ve been told I’m an okay writer. But creative writing has always felt like a completely different beast. Writing in general tends to feel like work to me, and creative writing even more so.
So naturally, on New Year’s Eve 2024, I had the genius idea to write a book.
Actually, not just a book. A trilogy.
My husband still makes fun of me for this, because of course I couldn’t just casually try writing a short story or a standalone novel. I had to turn something I already considered a chore into a multi-year project spanning three books. In my defense, though, there was a reason I wanted to do it.
I wanted to read a fantasy story rooted in my culture.
I’ve always loved fantasy. I also love mythology, particularly Greek, Roman, and Egyptian mythology, and I’ve always been fascinated by the way old beliefs and stories get transformed into completely new worlds.
Fantasy, though, tends to have familiar patterns. I don’t even mean that as criticism. I actually like some predictability in the books I read. There’s something comforting about recognizing the shape of a story even when you don’t know exactly where it’s going. It’s a little like a comfort blanket: familiar and reliable.
But after reading enough fantasy, I started wondering what those familiar pieces might look like through a completely different cultural lens.
I’m Filipino. I was born and raised in the Philippines and moved to the United States when I was eleven. And despite growing up there, I realized how little I actually knew about the beliefs, mythology, social structures, and traditions of the Philippines before Spanish colonization.
I remembered learning plenty about Philippine history in school, but not much about the pre-colonial period in any depth. I knew the superstitions, and I knew the usual mythological creatures. I knew the stories and warnings that get passed around Filipino families, sometimes seriously, sometimes jokingly, and sometimes in that very Filipino category of we don’t really believe this…but maybe don’t do it anyway.
That kinda intrigued me, especially because I’ve always been interested in mythology from everywhere else. I thought it would be really cool to read a fantasy novel inspired by pre-colonial Filipino culture and mythology, and it also seemed like a pretty great excuse to learn more about my own culture while I was at it.
Turns out, pre-colonial Filipino history and culture was such a rich source of inspiration that half the fun was narrowing it down. I was particularly drawn to the role of babaylans and the Baybayin script/writing system, so I started researching those more.
And that was more or less how Kalintara began.
Why a trilogy, though?
Honestly, the trilogy idea came pretty early.
I wanted the scale of the conflict to grow naturally. Book One begins with a relatively contained antagonist. Book Two expands that threat to a larger group. Book Three reveals something bigger still.
Three books also give me enough room to show more of the breadth of Filipino culture, mythology, belief, folklore, and history that inspired the world without trying to cram everything into one novel. Someone who knows nothing about Filipino culture should be able to read it and enjoy the story completely on its own. But I also love the idea that a Filipino reader might occasionally recognize something underneath the surface and think, Wait. I know what that is. There are creatures and superstitions I grew up hearing about that I want to weave into the story almost as little “if you know, you know” moments. Some I’ll use fairly faithfully. Others I fully intend to turn on their heads.
And if a reader who isn’t Filipino encounters one of those things and later gets curious enough to look up where it came from, even better.
And if the writing sucks?
Entirely possible.
This is my first novel. I am, quite literally, learning how to write a novel while writing one, which feels a bit like building a plane while flying it. Probably unwise, but at least I get to play the “noob author” card whenever necessary. Well, duh. I’ve never done this before.
Sometimes I spend my free time working on the actual manuscript. Sometimes I somehow end up redesigning a fantasy map, researching creature lore, tweaking a story bible…or building an author website for a book that is nowhere near finished. I’m not taking myself too seriously about any of this. But I am taking the story seriously.
I started this because I wanted to read a fantasy story rooted in my culture. I wanted a character I can relate to. I wanted colors, music, strange islands, complicated spirits, familiar superstitions hiding in unfamiliar places, and characters forced to choose between competing versions of what is right.
And even if I finish all three books and decide I never want to write another novel again, I’ll still have written the story I wanted to read.
But earlier this year, life also changed in a much bigger way: my husband and I found out we were expecting our first child. I’m currently about 29 weeks pregnant with our baby boy, and we’re very excited to meet him.
My husband is white, so our son will grow up half-Filipino and half-white. One of the things I’m most excited about is finding creative and genuinely fun ways to help him connect with the Filipino side of his family and culture not only through food, holidays, or the things we deliberately teach him, but through stories.
It would be incredibly cool to read this book to him when he’s older and tell him that I was writing it while I was waiting to meet him. I love the idea that Kalintara could become one small part of how he discovers unique things about his culture.
It’s also partly why this website exists now instead of someday after the book is finished. I’m hoping that writing occasional journal posts, sharing pieces of the world as I build it, and publicly admitting that I am in fact trying to write this thing will help keep me accountable enough to make actual progress. Because apparently my solution to struggling with one writing project is to give myself another writing project.
So that’s what this journal will be: part progress report, part research notebook, part accountability mechanism, and part collection of whatever side quest I’ve wandered into instead of writing the next chapter. But the story also means more to me now than it did when I first started. While I wanted this kind of fantasy to exist for myself, now I also like imagining that someday, my son might get to experience it too.
I’ll share pieces of Kalintara as I build it: characters, locations, mythology, research, maps, concept art, decisions I’ve changed my mind about, and probably plenty of evidence that I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
The first book is still very much a work in progress, but the world exists now. And hopefully, if I keep showing up here, the book will eventually exist too.
Welcome to Kalintara.
— Denielle