Maximum Volume in Media

Read more about the recently launched MAXIMUM VOLUME and learn why it's becoming one of the favorite must-reads today!


Maximum Volume contributing writer Crystal Koo on the book and her involvement

Inquirer.net creates buzz on the then-upcoming book launch

Yahoo! News features Manila Bulletin's write-up on the book launch

New fiction anthology Maximum Volume breaks genre barrier by Ren Aguila of GMA News Online

Maximum Volume Book Launch

Last February 28, Maximum Volume: Best New Philippine Fiction 2014 edited by Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo R. Lacuesta was launched at Powerbooks Greenbelt 4. Most of the contributors of the book were in attendance, and the audience was treated to a 10% discounted price of the book and a chance to have their copies signed.

Maximum Volume editors Dean Francis Alfar and Angelo "Sarge" R. Lacuesta with National Book Store Purchasing Director Xandra Ramos-Padilla. 

Dean and Sarge steered the event, giving commentary on the pieces featured in the book and introducing the contributing writers who then read excerpts from their pieces.

Attendees of the book launch made a beeline for the writers' table to get their copies signed by the authors. Back row L-R: Marc Gaba, Kate Osias, Glenn Diaz, Daryll Delgado, Eliza Victoria, Christine V. Lao, Michelangelo Samson. Front L-R: Editor Dean Alfar, Gino Diaz, Noelle Q. de Jesus, Francezca C. Kwe, Heinz Lawrence Ang, editor Sarge Lacuesta.

Sponsor Carlo Rossi showed off their books and Sweet Red wine, much appreciated by the audience and writers alike.

You can buy copies of Maximum Volume at National Book Store and Powerbooks branches or online at anvilpublishing.com.

You're Invited!

See you tonight at Powerbooks, Greenbelt 4!

Explorers of Fiction

The Editors of MAXIMUM VOLUME

Angelo R. Lacuesta has won several Philippines Graphic Awards and Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature for his fiction, as well as the NVM Gonzalez Award. His first collection of stories, Life Before X and other stories (University of the Philippines Press), won the 2000 National Book Award and the inaugural Madrigal-Gonzalez Best First Book Award. His second collection, White Elephants: stories (Anvil), won the 2004 National Book Award. His third collection, Flames and other stories (Anvil), was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award. 

He has received several local and international grants and fellowships, among them the International Writing Program at Iowa University, Iowa, USA. His work as an anthologist includes Latitude: Writing from the Philippines and Scotland, co-edited with Toni Davidson, and Fourteen Love Stories, co-edited with Jose Y. Dalisay.

He was literary editor of the Philippines Free Press from 2006-2010 and is currently editor-at-large at Esquire Philippines. He is married to award-winning poet Mookie Katigbak-Lacuesta. (Photo by Jake Versoza)

Dean Francis Alfar is a novelist and writer of speculative fiction. His fiction has been published and anthologized both in his native Philippines and abroad (Strange Horizons, Rabid Transit, The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror, The Apex Book of World SF, and the Exotic Gothic series among others). 

His books include the novel Salamanca, short fiction collections The Kite of Stars and Other Stories and How to Traverse Terra Incognita, and the children’s book How Rosang Taba Won A Race.  His work as an anthologist includes volumes of the Philippine Speculative Fiction annuals, as well as the forthcoming Horror: Filipino Fiction for Young Adults and The Farthest Shore: Fantasy from the Philippines.

His literary awards include ten Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature—including the Grand Prize for Novel for Salamanca—as well as the Manila Critics’ Circle National Book Awards for the graphic novels Siglo: Freedom and Siglo: Passion, the Philippines Free Press Literary Award, and the Gintong Aklat Award.  He was a fellow at the 1992 Dumaguete National Writers Workshop as well as the 20th and 48th UP National Writers Workshop.

Dean lives in Manila with his wife, award-winning fictionist Nikki Alfar and their daughters Sage and Rowan. He is currently working on his third collection of short fiction.

DEAN and SARGE were interviewed by Ruel S. De Vera for the Sunday Inquirer Magazine about MAXIMUM VOLUME and their hopes about the future of the short story and the "growth of a writing nation." Read the full article here.

An Excerpt from "The Missing"

By Eliza Victoria

THERE WERE ONLY six of them in the group, but several times during the trip in Thailand, Harold would think that they were missing one person. During dinner he would catch himself saying, Let's wait for – and then realize that there was no one left to wait for, as he counted his seated friends already digging into grilled fish and steamed rice at the sidewalk stall. One two three four five six.Inside Platinum Mall, as they made their way through hordes of fellow tourists buying scarves and cheap shoes, the sudden bursts of Filipino words (Mahal, Ang ganda o, Tawaran mo pa) causing both confusion and delight, one of his friends said, Meet you downstairs at closing time?, and Harold very nearly said, Okay, but we should tell—

One two three four five six.

There was no one to tell, but Harold felt the uneasiness nestling in his bones, the same disquiet that invaded him whenever he left his rundown Makati apartment in a rush: Did I leave the light on? Did I lock the gate properly? Did I unplug the computer?

Am I forgetting someone?

HE WASN'T SUPPOSED to be on this trip. He had already said no back in October, when his friends were still putting together the itinerary, trawling travel blogs and TripAdvisor comments and consequently bugging him online. They were friends he met back in high school. They went on to different courses and universities, and got updates on each other's lives only through the social networks and the once-in-a-blue-moon dinner or coffee. They still carried with them the clinginess of high school cliques, but now coupled with work schedules and good salaries. What do you mean, no? You have VLs left, don't you? It won't cost much, Harold, we'll stay at budget hotels. Come on Harold, I'm saving up for the wedding and this might be my last trip with you guys. Come on, Harold. Come on, come on.

You've been looking strangely sad these past few weeks. How about a change of pace? •

> Eliza Victoria is the author of the short story collection A Bottle of Storm Clouds and the poetry collection Apocalypses. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in several online and print publications in the Philippines and abroad, including Daily Science Fiction, Stone Telling, Room Magazine, Story Quarterly, The Pedestal Magazine, High Chair, and the Philippine Speculative Fiction anthologies. Her work has won the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Literature and the Philippines Free Press Literary Award. Visit her at http://elizavictoria.com. 

An Excerpt from "My Life as a Bee"

By Michelangelo Samson

“YOU WERE ALWAYS the performer," Auntie Fe said, her head bent into her shoulder to wipe away her tears. "We weren't at all surprised when you ended up in showbiz. In fact your uncle expected it. When your movie made it to the West Coast, we had a big party—oh my god—we plastered the whole storefront with posters, Robin bending over to kiss Vina, a car exploding behind them, Eddie Garcia looking stern on one side, and you on the other with your arms crossed—it was amazing. Your uncle told everyone who came by the store that you were his nephew. He was just so proud, you know. So proud.”

“It was a small role,” I said. They promised me a bigger one but most of it ended up on the cutting room floor.

“A movie's a movie,” my aunt said, patting my arm, forgetting that she was wearing rubber gloves covered with soap.

I was in the kitchen helping her wash up after Uncle Bitong's fortieth day prayers. It had been a long night with people staying well past the mass and the small dinner we prepared. Jeslyn, Meng and Tita Susay were also there but they were busy wrapping the leftovers in foil, partitioning the platters of pancit and dinuguan that Auntie Fe had ordered into small containers to be given to the neighbors. So I was left alone with my aunt, drying the plates that she handed over, listening to her tales of Uncle Bitong. It was clear she missed him still. His passing was so abrupt. There was just that croak in his voice that developed one day, the one that scraped in his upper register as he launched into "Born Free" while demonstrating the features of the Minus One machines he sold. It got so bad that he stopped doing the demos altogether, preferring to play a recorded version of himself rather than ruin what he called 'the greats'. By the time he decided to see a specialist, it was too late, his cancer had spread and there was barely enough time to put his affairs in order.

He called me a few days after he found out, his voice sounding normal save for a wheeze in his throat that whistled when he paused for breath. "We have to talk," he said. I thought he was calling about work. After the incident at Grilla Manila where I fought with the owner, the only job I could find was with the San Jose SaberCats as a cheer-dancer. Three days a week, I screamed and fist-pumped to get the crowd going and sometimes ran around the arena with the SaberCats flag while the SaberKittens did their halftime dance. Uncle Bitong knew I was miserable there but he told me I couldn't be too choosy because of my immigration status. I guess he felt guilty telling me to take the job in San Jose. Whenever he called he always started by telling me about new leads he heard about.

"There's a problem," he said.

I couldn't hear him at first. My roommate Darius had the TV on with the volume high. Darius always kept it loud when he was lifting. It was 60 Minutes, something about honeybees, how they were disappearing from California, their hives abandoned, the effect of pesticides or some virus.

"What was that again?" I said.

"The tests. They found out what was wrong with me. I don't have much time left. A year maybe."

Uncle Bitong stayed quiet, letting me absorb what he said. There was just the faint whistling in his throat on the other end. "—A hidden catastrophe—mass extinction—" a scientist on TV said. Suddenly San Jose seemed as far away from Vallejo as the Moon from the Earth. "Are you sure?" I asked, not knowing what else to say.

"They’re very sure," he said, “second opinion confirms it. But don't worry. I'm going to fight this. I feel great.”

From that conversation it was a short two months of intensive chemotherapy and radiation before an infection brought the curtain down on my uncle. He had a nice memorial service. My uncle owned a video store. That’s all he did. You couldn't tell that though from the number of people who came to his wake. There was so much warmth, it surprised even my aunt who didn’t expect the crowd that gathered for my uncle’s fortieth.

After Tita Susay and the girls left, I decided to stay a while longer to make sure Auntie Fe would be okay. She cut a lonely figure in the kitchen, backlit by the refrigerator light. She and my uncle had a modest house, a one-floor affair typical for that neighborhood. Now, with my uncle gone, the house felt enormous, like a newly discovered cavern that my aunt was exploring by herself. •

> Michelangelo Samson lives in Singapore with his wife and daughter. For the last sixteen years, he has worked as a banker focusing on mergers and acquisitions. His stories have appeared in the Philippines Free Press and in the anthology Fast Food Fiction. 

An Excerpt from "The Red Cup"

By Francezca C. Kwe

There are cups from which we all drink, such as that from which pours our shared suffering in these dark days, when no one is safe in the government’s crackdown on its enemies, and there are cups such as the one lodged in my pelvis as I wait to see Dr. Sacramento at her clinic. It is nearly six, time for the evening news to console us that all is well, the price of rice has gone down, and so have the margins of poverty, and the army trucks from Camp Aguinaldo are on their way to replenish the checkpoints. I have to call my husband to see if he is all right, if he has gotten home from one of his meetings as the head of the now-outlawed Association Against Forced Disappearances, meetings which now—since the state has clamped down on protest and dissent, visible or invisible—can only be held in the storerooms of small bookstores, and in internet cafes, which have at least been allowed to keep their opaque glass storefronts.

I can no longer count the number of moments I had decided to stand up and leave, but as happens in the cruel game of waiting rooms, the more you stay, the harder it is to go, and the closer it gets to nightfall, the more I dislike the idea of being out on the heavily patrolled streets, and the more sensible it seems to stay where I am, stay waiting for the doctor, until the revolution mercifully comes. And, though the order in Dr. Sacramento’s roll call is as arcane as in any doctor’s clinic—none of us knows who is next or last—the closer I get to crossing the border guarded by her ferocious secretary, the more keenly I feel what has been bothering me all day: that wayward cup that has disappeared into the recesses of my vaginal canal. It has been a very long day, and I have fished around my insides as much as I can stand, and my panic has now crumbled into misery.

At this hour, the hallway is still crammed with people shivering in the Arctic drafts of the central air-conditioning; since Dr. Sacramento shares her office with a pulmonologist, the music of our dreary wait is a bronchial volley. One elderly man who got here ahead of me keeps coughing into a huge plastic bucket so forcefully, his organs are bound to slide out any moment, and a sick child is barking close by like a Chihuahua. The rest, perhaps gyne patients like me, are wearing those anxious frowns customary in hospital waiting rooms, but which are nowadays common fashion, on the streets that the army and police have sectioned off, and in the workplaces—banks, offices, stores—from where quite a few have been hauled away by uniformed, or worse, plain-clothes state agents. It is really quite nerve-wracking to have to be in the hospital at a time like this, instead of being home—locked, gated, curtains drawn. But then, home has also ceased to be a safe place. I look down the hall that has slowly been shortening as lights go out along it.

As more and more doctors close their clinics, the darkness moves closer to where we sit, and we all flinch with every snap of a light switch, as if a lash has come down on our backs. I feel a little guilty that I am not, strictly, in the same category of pain or discomfort as my comrades here—for we are all comrades in our ills—but at the same time, I feel certain that my need is as urgent. I close my eyes and try to sense the minute rippling of my uterine muscles, as if I can pinpoint the cup’s location by listening to my body’s subterranean sonar sweeping over its seabed. It’s the only thing I can do at the moment, for comfort; I’ve tired myself out with continual visits to the bathroom to hunt around in my vagina, squatting on the grimy, tiled floor, wincing up at ants crossing the ceiling. The attempts have so far ended in frustration; I return to my seat dejectedly, offering a meek smile to my comrades, who seem to recognize me less and less the longer my bathroom excursions take. •

> Francezca C. Kwe has published short fiction in a number of anthologies, magazines, and journals and has received the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Award and the Nick Joaquin Literary Prize for her work. She teaches full-time at the University of the Philippines–Diliman, and works as a copy editor on the side. She collects dogs, cats, and sunglasses.