I was born in the historic province of Bulacan, Philippines, 🇵🇭
and raised on the beautiful island of Guam 🇬🇺.

I have a deep appreciation for the arts--on Guam I worked as a copy editor and graphic artist. Before that, I worked at a local bookstore and did my best to exact my comicbook nerdiness on the purchase habits of our buyer, but consistency with popular titles, let alone comicbooks considered 'niche', were really hard to come by. I never thought that I would ever leave the island, nor did I ever think that I'd ever in my life get to attend Comic Con.

But never say never say never, right? In my 30s I said goodbye to the island I called home and moved to Japan 🇯🇵 to work as an English teacher and just ... figure life out.

I never figured life out, but I did end my contract 3 years later to take a chance on a pastry chef position. While the hotel was working on my visa, I went back home to the motherland, the Philippines, and took a crash course on pastry arts.

It was hell, but I got through it.

At the end of my pastry course, the hotel was still working on my visa and so I decided it would be a really great time to surprise my family in California for Christmas, since it had been over three years since I last saw my mother, and nearly a decade for my sister and father.

It turns out the surprise was on me. A surprise holiday visit turned into "Surprise I'm homeless and have no job," as my hotel contact called me to inform me, after all that, that the position became unavailable when the outgoing pastry chef decided to stay in the country.

I never got a chance to collect myself. I worked in kitchens until I couldn't, worked as a medical clinic staff taking on a workload I was never trained for until I couldn't, and said goodbye to stability, dreams, and passions in order to stay afloat. 

I'm still trying to figure it out, but this year, at the age of 42, I got a chance that I never thought I would get in my life, thanks to my mentor and best friend, Rus Wooton: I got an opportunity to letter two titles from Giant Generator: The Tin Can Society and Dust to Dust.

It's hard to put into words what this opportunity means to an introverted islander who used to lock out the world and draw comicbook characters to numb the acute loneliness I felt whenever I was in a crowd. A person who immediately collected comicbooks from the Philippines during a four-month stay--suitcase filled with more graphic novels than clothes. I went from never seeing enough comicbooks in stores, to celebrating seeing my NAME in a COMICBOOK in a comicbook STORE (WHAT?!).

I would love nothing more, than to humbly use my skills to continue to be a part of telling stories that compel. My greatest wish is to amplify stories from marginalized communities and add more indigenous perspectives to the world.