One time entrepreneur, avid traveler and full-time mom Samantha Sotto never really thought of becoming an internationally published author. Living in Parañaque, she had to drive her son to school all the way to Ateneo and wait for him for three hours to save on gas. Not wanting to waste her time waiting until her son’s dismissal, she thought of writing a book. Fresh from reading The Time Traveler’s Wife, she conceived a unique love story – part fantasy, part reality. In writing the book, Sam spent her weekends brushing up her knowledge on European history and her weekdays putting it together to create her book. After one school year, she came up with Before Ever After.
Getting it published was a different story. She relied heavily on The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Getting Published. As a trained marketer, she knew how to sell her book to literary agents. She had one literary agent in mind but chose to send it to different agents anyway. After getting both acceptance and rejection letters, she decided to try her luck and send it to her top pick, Stephanie Rostan. Stephanie read her full manuscript overnight and made an offer the next day. A few revisions were made before sending it over to different publishers. It took only one month before Random House bought the rights to publish the book. Now, National Book Store is making an exclusive trade paperback edition available in its stores nationwide.
Ahead of its US release, Samantha Sotto launched her book at National Book Store Glorietta 5. Hosted by fellow Ateneo alumna and NBS merchandising director for books, Xandra Ramos-Padilla, the launch was a dream come true for this full-time mom who has inspired other moms and emerging writers to dream big.
Before Ever After follows the story of Shelley, a young widow who discovers that her dead husband may in fact be very much alive—which would be wonderful if the bearer of this news wasn’t her thirty-two-year-old husband’s thirty-two-year-old grandson. As outrageous as Paolo’s claims seem– Shelley desperately wants to know the truth. She and Paolo jet across the globe to track Max down– and along the way, Shelley recounts the European package tour where they had met. As she relives Max’s stories of bloody Parisian barricades,medieval Austrian kitchens, and buried Roman boathouses, Shelley begins to piece together the story of who her husband was and discovers that not all stories end where they are supposed to.
The trade paperback edition of Before Ever After is exclusively available in National Book Store for P499.
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