#illusionary

I've been recording around ten songs this month. Some slated for something I've been making, and something intended to be released next year. Making songs just to stir something up - the people, the randoms. I tried to lock in, recording around three to four songs per day, recording ideas worth putting on a song, allocating the time to record and trying my best not to procrastinate. But now, here we are.

For the past two years, I am trying my best to be active and to release a couple of songs here and there. In fact, I was planning to improve one of my first released mixtapes for a proper release. Even if I was active behind the scenes, I managed to churn out a few songs here and there (even if you won't going to find a lot of those in one of those socials found below). Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I managed to be consistent for the past two years...

Somewhere in the timeframe of 2025, I rebranded my own image to promote my new album even if I haven't got a fandom yet. Except that all hopes are lost as I keep on delaying the release date due to a lot of factors such as me being a procrastinating scumbag for who I am, some school stuff, managing my mental health (especially OCD because I hate having that one), and me being too lazy to record something, as I keep on believing that I need time to write something big, something important, and something that will serve as my magnum opus for the future fans to come. However, I managed to release one of my previews that you can probably call a single, as a way to show off my R&B side of music:

USELESS FACT: There is supposed to be an animated lyric video for this one, except that me being a procrastinating scumbag I am, I didn't finished it nor released it.

During this timeframe, one of my external hard drives got broke - and this made me lost my motivation to finish the album let alone record a couple of songs and demos. It was also the worst that I've felt as I suffered one of the worst OCD attacks that I could experience. It was like the hell on earth that I've stumbled to, as I refuse to finish some school activities and refuse to participate in lessons due to this. Thanks to this, I didn't managed to get in the awards list. Thanks a lot, OCD.

Around late 2025, I start to post again in one of my SoundCloud pages to show you a new identity. Hell, I even have an album that revolves around this - intended to be the "other side" of the album that I was supposed to release last year. Some instrumentals and ideas are planned behind the scenes but only one song managed to get finished with actual vocals:

USELESS FACT: This is the first song that I've recorded last year. There's supposed to be a music video for this as well but again, I'm a lazy boy. In fact, the image cover of that song isn't supposed to be the actual cover itself. It really shows how much of a procrastinator I am. Blame me for this lack of content over the past two years.

I started a new Instagram account just for the rollout of the album. I post some art here and there but I won’t tell you who designed this tho. I also started a new TikTok account in that year, posting my previews in order to get attention.

In 2026, I started to make some beats that will be slated for the album supposed to be released last year. Now sadly, I didn't record a lot of demos and such however it redirect me into a new vision for that album.

We've got six books on our radar this week! Did we miss anything? What's on your TBR list?

The Other Side of Perfect by Mariko Turk Little Brown/Poppy

Alina Keeler was destined to dance, but one terrifying fall shatters her leg--and her dreams of a professional ballet career along with it.

After a summer healing (translation: eating vast amounts of Cool Ranch Doritos and binging ballet videos on YouTube), she is forced to trade her pre-professional dance classes for normal high school, where she reluctantly joins the school musical. However, rehearsals offer more than she expected--namely Jude, her annoyingly attractive cast mate she just might be falling for.

But to move forward, Alina must make peace with her past and face the racism she had grown to accept in the dance industry. She wonders what it means to yearn for ballet--something so beautiful, yet so broken. And as broken as she feels, can she ever open her heart to someone else?

Where the Rhythm Takes You by Sarah Dass Balzer + Bray

Seventeen-year-old Reyna has spent most of her life at her family’s gorgeous seaside resort in Tobago, the Plumeria. But what once seemed like paradise is starting to feel more like purgatory. It’s been two years since Reyna’s mother passed away, two years since Aiden – her childhood best friend, first kiss, first love, first everything – left the island to pursue his music dreams. Reyna’s friends are all planning their futures and heading abroad. Even Daddy seems to want to move on, leaving her to try to keep the Plumeria running.

And that's when Aiden comes roaring back into her life – as a VIP guest at the resort.

Aiden is now one-third of DJ Bacchanal – the latest, hottest music group on the scene. While Reyna has stayed exactly where he left her, Aiden has returned to Tobago with his Grammy-nominated band and two gorgeous LA socialites. And he may (or may not be) dating one of them…

Inspired by Jane Austen's Persuasion, Where the Rhythm Takes You is a romantic, mesmerizing novel of first love and second chances.

From Little Tokyo, with Love by Sarah Kuhn Viking Books for Young Readers

If Rika’s life seems like the beginning of a familiar fairy tale–being an orphan with two bossy cousins and working away in her aunts’ business–she would be the first to reject that foolish notion. After all, she loves her family (even if her cousins were named after Disney characters), and with her biracial background, amazing judo skills and red-hot temper, she doesn’t quite fit the princess mold.

All that changes the instant she locks eyes with Grace Kimura, America’s reigning rom-com sweetheart, during the Nikkei Week Festival. From there, Rika embarks on a madcap adventure of hope and happiness–searching for clues about her long-lost mother, exploring Little Tokyo’s hidden treasures with a cute actor, and maybe…finally finding a sense of belonging.

But fairy tales are fiction and the real world isn’t so kind. Rika knows she’s setting herself up for disappointment, because happy endings don’t happen to girls like her. Should she walk away before she gets in even deeper, or let herself be swept away?

Illusionary (Hollow Crown #2) by Zoraida Cordova Little, Brown Books for Young Readers

Reeling from betrayal at the hands of the Whispers, Renata Convida is a girl on the run. With few options and fewer allies, she's reluctantly joined forces with none other than Prince Castian, her most infuriating and intriguing enemy. They're united by lofty goals: find the fabled Knife of Memory, kill the ruthless King Fernando, and bring peace to the nation. Together, Ren and Castian have a chance to save everything, if only they can set aside their complex and intense feelings for each other.

With the king's forces on their heels at every turn, their quest across Puerto Leones and beyond leaves little room for mistakes. But the greatest danger is within Ren. The Gray, her fortress of stolen memories, has begun to crumble, threatening her grip on reality. She'll have to control her magics--and her mind--to unlock her power and protect the Moria people once and for all.

For years, she was wielded as weapon. Now it's her time to fight back.

Angel & Hannah: A Novel in Verse by Ishle Park One World

Hannah, a Korean American girl from Queens, New York, and Angel, a Puerto Rican boy from Brooklyn, fall in love in the spring of 1993. Hannah, who comes from a strict Korean home, meets Angel, a free and beautiful boy, at a quinceañera:

Beyond flushed, sweating bodies pushed, pushing like cattle below black & buzzing speakers, under a torn pink streamer loose as a tendril of hair--lush-- his eyes. Darkluminous. Warm. A blush floods her. Hannah sucks in her breath, but can't pull back. Music fades. A hush he's a young buck in the underbrush, still in a disco ball dance of shadow & light Their forbidden love instantly and wildly blooms along the Jackie Robinson Expressway.

Told in seasons Angel & Hannah holds all of the tension and cadence of blank verse while adding dynamic and expressive language, creating new kinds of engrossing and magnetic forms. The hip-hop sonnets and poems are dynamic, arresting, observant, and magical, conveying the intimacies and sacrifices of love and addiction and the devastating realities of struggle and loss.

Committed to cultural details and the vernacular of Queens and Brooklyn, this is a hip-hop love story, not of the Capulets and the Montagues, but two New York City kids trying to survive and grow within their families and communities, driven by an all-consuming love.

The Eid Gift: An Adam and Zayneb Story by S.K. Ali Simon & Schuster

Even though it’s during Ramadan, a month of fasting and spiritual devotion, A and Z can’t help spending any and all free time with each other. Enter parents and their idea for a nikah at the end of Ramadan, on Eid day itself.

Which would appear to be the greatest Eid gift of all — except that, unbeknownst to each other, A and Z have been working on spectacularly surprising Eid gifts for the other all along.

The only thing? In true “The Gift of the Magi” fashion, these Eid gifts are at complete odds with the other. Along with a nikah day over-run with “benevolent” family interferences, A and Z are up for either recording this Eid as the best one ever, as a real marvel...or as a completely upsetting oddity.

Author's Note: WHEN IT TAKES PLACE:

The Eid Gift is a part of the Love from A to Z storyline; it occurs shortly before the epilogue. (If you haven’t read Love from A to Z yet, please consider doing so before reading this story—some of what occurs will not make sense otherwise.)

SOMETHING TO KEEP IN MIND: