It was Christmas of 2023, and I was in the basement of my brother-in-law’s house in Manitoba, surrounded by the warmth of family but retreating, again and again, to the solitude of my laptop screen. The house was alive with laughter, the scent of holiday food, the glow of shared stories—but I kept slipping away, drawn to the quiet space underground, where a different kind of story was waiting to be told.
That was where Redeeming Renato: A Memoir began.
The story had been with me for years, living in the crevices of memory, surfacing in conversations, prayers, and moments of doubt. But for the first time, I committed to putting it down in words. I wrote in bursts, at odd hours, between holiday gatherings. By the time I returned home, the seed had been planted, and I knew I had to see it through.
I dedicated my weekends to writing, settling into our sunroom—a space filled with light, a contrast to that cold Manitoba basement. Week after week, the words accumulated. Some came easily, others had to be coaxed, rewritten, questioned. There were moments of doubt, but also moments of clarity, where the narrative felt like it had been waiting for me all along.
Before I could push forward, I needed a second pair of eyes. My husband, Boyd Tolton, read the first fifty pages—my first true reader. His response gave me the confidence to keep going, to trust in the story I was trying to tell. His insights, both as a reader and as someone who knows me deeply, shaped the way I approached the rest of the draft.
By the summer, the first draft was done. A moment of relief, but also of reckoning. I knew that finishing a draft was only the beginning of the real work.
That’s when C.E. Gatchalian stepped in. A meticulous and discerning reader, he didn’t just offer feedback—he dissected my writing, diagnosing patterns and tendencies I hadn’t even realized I had. He examined the prose at a structural level, pointing out where it meandered, where it tightened, where it needed to breathe. His insights were invaluable, even when they were difficult to hear. With his guidance, I tore through the manuscript again, reshaping it into something stronger.
Then came my friend Niles Bries, an award-winning Filipino novelist and Edbert Darwin Casten, who read the second draft with fresh eyes, offering their own critiques, sharpening the edges. They saw things I had missed, challenged me to go deeper, to be more precise in my storytelling.
With each revision, Redeeming Renato became something clearer, something more fully realized. It was no longer just a collection of memories—it was a story with a rhythm, a purpose, a life of its own.
The next step was crucial: sharing it with a beta reader. John Gulak became the fourth person to read the manuscript in its entirety, and his response was a turning point. His engagement with the book, his reflections on the themes and the narrative, reassured me that I had written something that resonated.
And now, I am here: standing at the threshold of the next challenge—querying agents and publishers. Sending out letters, waiting for responses, hoping that someone on the other end will see what I see: that Redeeming Renato is a story that matters. A story that speaks to identity, faith, love, and redemption.
From a quiet basement in Manitoba to the sun-drenched weekends of relentless revision, this journey has been one of faith—not just in the story, but in the process, in the people who have helped shape it, and in the belief that somewhere out there, this book will find the home it was meant for.
Since revising the manuscript five times I’ve decided to rename this memoir to Unpriesting: A Memoir of Faith, Desire and Becoming.
Renato Gandia 