Book Launch: 3 Books from Grey Matter

Grey Matter Publishing invites you to the launch of

The Wetbook: Stories from the Bathhouse
Chronicles of E
Dear Migs: Letters to Manila Gay Guy

Launch with performances, meet the authors, book signing and cocktails.

Threesome launch price at P450 (3 books in limited edition box set). Books will also be sold individually.


July 10, Saturday
4:00pm - 7:00pm
theROOM G/F Unit 8802 Crowne 88 Condominium 88
Panay Avenue, Quezon City

Coming Soon: Letters to Migs, the Manila Gay Guy

“Dear Migs…” And so begins another letter to Migs, the anonymous blogger behind the enormously popular blog ManilaGayGuy or MGG (at www.manilagayguy.net). Since Migs began his blog in August 2006, it has been generating, on average, more than 40,000 daily views from all over the world, making it one of the most-read and most-accessed blogs in the country.

More impressively, the site has attracted thousands of impassioned comments and feedback from readers, effectively turning the site into an online forum-cum-community. Somehow, Migs’ blog entries—often honest, heartfelt, humorous reflections on the everyday joys and challenges of his life as a thirty-something urban gay man—inspire many readers to share their own thoughts, and even life stories, with other readers.

This book gathers in book form the most popular and memorable letters Migs has received and posted on his blog. Here is the anguished young man wrestling with the newfound fear, confusion—and thrill—of his emerging sexuality. A “chick magnet” asks, “Ano ba talaga ako?,” while a guy on the verge of getting married seeks advice on a forbidden experience he can’t seem to forget. And in a moving piece, a former activist remembers his doomed love for an NPA warrior.

The letters are not exclusively from gay men. A wife sends a cry for help against an unconventional third party in her marriage. Another woman writes with a different story—hey, she’s happy being wife to a gay husband!

On a different front, a letter-sender insists that naturally straight-acting guys like him do exist—and readers once again take to their keyboards, spawning an extensive thread of opinions and discussion that reflect the diversity and richness, the beguiling humanity, of MGG’s online audience.

In a unique twist, the best and most useful of those comments have also made it to this book. While quite a number of local blogs have been turned into books, this should mark the first time that readers’ comments have also been published along with the original blog entries.

It’s a deliberate decision. “I believe that such sharing is valuable to many of us,” says Migs in his introduction… The blog's readers have enjoyed life's wonderful diversity through such interaction, and the encouraging thought that one is not--never--alone. I hope that with this book, you, the one reading this, will be encouraged to open your mind and your heart just a bit more--to accept not only others, but, more importantly, yourself.”

Coming Soon: Chronicles of E

Taken from the foreword of the book:

It was winter two years ago when I started reading blogs written by Filipinos. I was traveling back and forth between Malaysia and San Francisco while working for an NGO, and reading these people's stories kept me sane.

I felt like I knew them, their adventures, their joys, their sorrows. Every writer tells a different story and I learned about bathhouses, Bed, and Filipino gay terminologies such as "bet" and "booking".

Once in a while I come across a writer I get hooked on. One of them is The Chronicles of E. I read his stories in his blog unfold like an R-rated telenovela that I did not want to miss watching. Lost loves, sex, substance abuse, prostitution, relapse, deceit, hate and joy are staples in his every entry.

I went back to Manila and I was looking for something to do that would encourage me to stay here for a while, if not for good. Little did I know that one day, I would bump into E through a common friend. And suddenly, I realized what I wanted to do. I wanted to publish his blog.

Putting this book together was a journey in itself. I came to know E and his friends and reaffirmed that indeed the blogger is a little different from his blog. I found a co-publisher along the way, Dennis Longid, who gamely joined the trip. I also learned a few things about publishing, reconnected with old friends who walked us through the publishing process, and also got acquainted with new ones who generously offered help.


The journey didn’t end with this book. We have taken a detour and dared to be more ambitious. The Chronicles of E is actually one of the three books that we plan to simultaneously publish as part of our first project. As of this writing, the two other books are already in the pipeline and we are hoping to see them all in one bookshelf in bookstores nationwide.


E’s book project is a very personal one. It took me home, literally and figuratively. It made me happy. I hope E's stories will move you—either to amaze you, or repulse you, or inspire you. Because if they do, then it means it's worth it.


Gilbert Sape
Co-publisher
Grey Matter Publishing

The Wetbook: Stories from the Bathhouse

Wednesday, March 17, 2010 (taken from Mcvie's blog)
Foreword As Foreplay

“This is a collection of blog entries featuring my bathhouses experiences. I blogged about them because the incidents had funny, memorable or out-of-the-ordinary moments that lifted them above the usual hot-steamy-sex-then-forget

-about-him-and-go-home experiences one has in such places.

So why this book? This collection has a lot of sex in it, and I think sex should have a lot more humor in it. Or rather, people should have a more relaxed view of sex. Sex can be as sacred or as sleazy as one wants it to be. Let us not put it on a pedestal, nor hide it inside our closets. Let us celebrate. Let us have safe fun. And what’s safer than reading about sex?”

The abovementioned paragraphs are excerpts from the foreword I wrote for a book project I have with Grey Matter Publishing. It’s a compilation of all of my bathhouse episodes from The McVie Show, from the first season to the latest. It is currently being edited by no less than the Raymond Lee, celebrated screenwriter and author.

The bathhouse book is just one of several that Grey Matter will publish as their opening salvo into the fray that is the publishing world. Another is a book by Chronicles of E, and a third is a collection of letters sent to Migs, the Manila Gay Guy. Excited much? But wait, there’s more! They are also coming out with a fourth book project, a compilation of stories about first-time sexperiences of guys with other guys.

So I just wanted to whet your appetite for things to come. I hope you all support not just my book but the other books as well from Grey Matter. Let us all support pink printing!