Candy Quimpo Gourlay (second from left) is flanked by basketball players at the Philippine launch of her novel, 'Tall Story'. Also in photo are (from left) Bryan Faundo of the Barako Bulls, and Fritz Oyao and Kady Wilson of the DLSU Lady Archers.

In her career as a journalist, Candy Quimpo Gourlay has covered the People Power Revolution, kept track of the Aquino-Galman murder case, and has even been let in the hermit kingdom of North Korea.

But even with all these journalistic milestones to her name, Gourlay says that the best reaction she has ever gotten was from someone whose age isn’t even in the double digits.

“When I got a contract for my book, my nine-year-old neighbor Hugo asked me if it was the book I read them last summer. When I said yes, he said ‘Cool!’ All my dreams were in that ‘Cool!’ This kid thought it was the best thing,” Gourlay reveals.

The author is in town to promote her debut young adult novel “Tall Story”, a book about two half-siblings separated by thousands of miles yet brought together by love and basketball.

Always was and always will be writing

One could say that writing is something that Gourlay has always been fated to do. Born to a mother who had aspirations of becoming a writer herself, Gourlay was exposed early on to the wonders of the written word.

“In my family, we are very art-y. It was normal that you were writing or drawing. My mother was always talking about writing, showing me her writing before. I wanted to be like that also,” she recalls. “By the time I was six, everything I wrote was always being held up. ‘This is what Candy wrote, read it aloud, Candy.’ It was just something that I did well.”

Gourlay would even write for “Stork News”, a newsletter “edited” by her younger sister.

“I don’t remember the first thing that I wrote. I used to write about my dog. I would report on what the dog did for the week!” she says with a laugh.

But even with such an obvious nudge towards a writing career, Gourlay says that she went into college still undecided as to what course to take. She had considered taking up Fine Arts, but growing up during the Martial Law years had also made her practical, and she decided to take up Communication Arts at the Ateneo de Manila University instead.

“It was the tail end of the Marcos regime and you had a real feeling that when you went to college you won’t have a job in the end,” she says. “When I went to college, I had no idea what journalism was. I only fell into it because Communication Arts exposed me to what journalism was.”

From there, Gourlay’s path was set. While completing her final paper, Gourlay would encounter editor Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, who would then offer her a job in the Mr. and Ms. Special Edition two days after she graduated.

“They were looking for people who were fresh talaga, ‘yung walang alam, which was us,” she says. “On the first day I had to write a column about the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL) and I had no idea what was going on. I had no political awareness at all.”

She would eventually find her legs, and she would soon be covering most of the historical events of the ‘80s, such as the Aquino-Galman murder case, the People Power Revolution, and the 40th anniversary of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung.

Tough times

In 1989, Gourlay would leave all of it behind when she transferred to the United Kingdom with her husband. Her first month in a foreign country would be, in her own words, uncomfortable.

“The hardest part for me was the food. ‘Yung family ng husband ko, meron silang attitude towards food na very healthy. Matakaw ako, Filipino ako! When you eat pork, you eat the fat! And you eat rice with every meal, even breakfast! Hindi nila maintindihan!” she recalls with a laugh.

But more than getting used to a new diet, Gourlay says she had to struggle with bouts of self-doubt as she realized that her achievements back home did not matter in this new country.

“Out there, you are nobody. All of your experience does not matter. Everybody I met, all they wanted to know from me was what Imelda Marcos was doing now,” she relates. “I felt so devalued. It was a tough time. You’ve lost everything that had made you important. I had to rebuild everything there, and that takes a bit of belief.”

It was only when she got a job as the London correspondent of the developing world news feature agency Inter Press Service that she would feel like her old self again, but even then a tragic event would set her back.

“I was covering politics, the IRA, and that was when I felt that I was a real journalist because I started to understand what I was writing about. I felt like I suddenly had a world view,” she says. “I got pregnant with my first child and I continued to work. I had my second child, and I had maternity leave for my second child. But I was determined to continue to work. On the last day of my maternity leave, I left the baby with a child minder for two hours, had my hair done, came back to pick him up, and he was dead.”

The death of her second child from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome would force her to reassess her life and her choices.

“When something like that happens, you make big decisions. My husband and myself decided I would not go to work,” she says. “All my ambitions changed. I didn’t want to be super journalist anymore. I left all that. I stayed at home with the kids.”

Back to her roots

With all that time with her children, Gourlay says she found herself going back to her earliest writing roots – that of telling stories.

“Writing fiction was always at the back of mind, but because of journalism work and making money, it wasn’t a priority. But suddenly I had all that time with my children,” she says. “I was reading the books that my children were reading and I started thinking that I could do something like that or do something better.”

Gourlay would flex her writing muscles by making books for her children and illustrating them herself. She would even give them to neighborhood kids during Christmas!

“I would write a story and turn it into a little book for them, illustrate it and photocopy it, at pinamimigay ko pa sa mga bata sa neighborhood kapag Christmas,” she says. “What I do kasi is I change the name so that sila ‘yung hero nung book. May mga special edition diyan where the children are the heroes of the books.”

Soon enough she would begin writing novels, all of them unpublished.

Her first attempt, “Dead Cool”, took her three years to write. Her second, “Volcano Child”, would take a year and six months. Her third, “Ugly City” would win an award and catch the attention of the woman who would become her literary agent.

“‘Ugly City’ is set in a dystopian future where the parents must go and the children must stay. That one won a prize and that’s how I got my literary agent,” she reveals. “But even when she was looking at that, I already told her that I was writing what would become ‘Tall Story’.”

‘Tall Story’ was inspired by an Indonesian giant named Ujang Warlika, whom Gourlay’s brother-in-law was training to become a basketball player.

However, Warlika wasn’t really tall, but suffering from gigantism, and would die after a brief basketball career.

“I thought that would make a great story and I thought of how I could make it more interesting. I was looking for a Filipino myth I could combine with the story and I thought of Bernardo Carpio,” she ays. “I wrote ‘Tall Story’ in 10 months. It had a very strong story and the characters had a very strong voice and they just tell the story.”

Gourlay says that a lot of her own experiences during her first few months in London would also find its way into the character of Bernardo.

“All of those little feelings of embarrassment, not knowing the right thing to do. Or when you say the wrong things or pronounce something the wrong way and then they correct you,” she explains. “I also put in a lot of sensitivities that they don’t have. I try to make these sensitivities funny, but at the same time show that this is something we can be proud of.”

She would also read the book to children in her neighborhood, who all had positive things to say about the book.

“In the summer of 2009, I had only written the first act. I came to the end of part one and the kids I was reading it to were all asking me to read more. When I told them that I hadn’t written any more, they were all dissatisfied. ‘Why didn’t you write more?’” she recalls with a laugh.

Her agent ended up loving the book and pitching it to David Fickling Books, an imprint of Random House Publishing. David Fickling would also end up loving the book, and from there its publication would be fasttracked.

“When you get taken on by a publisher, it takes two years to bring out the book. They got the book in October of last year, and I thought it would come out in 2012. When I met David Fickling, he said that it should be launched next year, and I thought it would be in December, but he wanted it in June!” she says happily.

Rave reviews

Since its publication, ‘Tall Story’ has gained rave reviews in England, named one of the 100 Best Titles for the Summer by The Sunday Times, and a “Brilliant Summer Book” by the National Geographic Kids magazine. As the accolades came pouring in, Gourlay admits to feeling a bit of the pressure.

“Nahihiya ako when the accolades came pouring in. I find it very hard to take praise. But at the same time I’m very proud,” she explains. “I’m very Filipino because I think that this will be good for the Philippines, that this will be a success for all of us.”

Gourlay hopes that the success of “Tall Story” doesn’t just open doors for her and other Filipino writers, but encourage in young people a desire to read once more.

“I remember how when I was a kid I loved to read, and when I opened a book it felt like magic. I want the kids to be like that. I want to create that feeling, especially now when you have the Internet and TV and cellphones,” she says.

For all the young people now looking to her as a writing inspiration, she has this piece of advice to impart.

“First, you have to read. And they have to have a life. Experiencing life is just the kind of input you need to write a novel that will move people. Live, read, and finally just write,” she ends.