In a village called Aigues Mortes, in southwestern France, my husband and I decide to live on land that has belonged to his family for seven generations. It is part of a nature reserve, and laws prevent us from building anything of concrete. To get around this restriction, we bring in two mobile homes, put them together in an L shape. In the rectangle they half-enclose, we construct a wooden terrace. The indoor living space is tight, just barely enough for two, yet despite this inconvenience, the place is without doubt a writer’s dream.

Do a search on Dean Alfar. Google will come up with about 51,200 hits mentioning him and Wikipedia will give you a brief summary on Dean and his accomplishments to date. Wikipedia calls Dean Alfar an advocate of the literature of the fantastic and this is an apt description when it comes to the work this man has produced since he started writing and publishing professionally.

While a majority of Filipino writers choose to write what is defined as literary or academic work, poetry and prose, Dean Alfar's work occupies interstitial spaces. Defying the literary norm, he is perhaps the first professionally published Filipino writer in the Speculative Fiction world to date.

Any speculative writer who knows their speculative alphabet ...