Julia Christine Botin

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ABS-CBN Lifestyle

<div><span class="fr-img-caption fr-fic fr-dib" style="width:960px;display:block" width="960"><span class="fr-img-wrap"><img src="https://od2-image-api.abs-cbn.com/prod/editorImage/1775195382647Composite 2 Slanted (2).jpg" style="width:960px" class="fr-fic fr-dib" width="960"/><span class="fr-inner" style="text-align:left">Samantha Sotto Yambao and her book, &quot;The Elsewhere Express.&quot;</span></span></span></div><p>&quot;Your purpose in life is to find your purpose,&quot; as the saying goes. Countless sagas have been written on quests for meaning, and &quot;Find Your Why&quot; is a modern mantra.</p><p>But what if there was a train that could bring you to your life&#x27;s purpose? A train that finds you, so you can discover You?</p><p>That&#x27;s the premise of Samantha Sotto Yambao&#x27;s &quot;The Elsewhere Express&quot; (Del Rey, 2026, 416 pages), a magical mix of speculative fiction and philosophy and a bonafide New York Times Bestseller. </p><p>It features Raya, a songwriter who gives up her dreams after her brother&#x27;s death, and Q, a painter gradually losing his sight, who find themselves on a train full of wonders, secrets, and danger. </p><p>They&#x27;re tasked to find the mysterious stowaway who threatens to destroy the train, and in the process, discover if The Elsewhere Express can bring them closer to both their destiny and each other.</p><p>As she did in &quot;Water Moon&quot; – her 2025 novel that&#x27;s been translated into 27 languages – Yambao deftly uses magical realism to answer life&#x27;s big questions. </p><p>She had answers, too, for our questions on her own writing journey and purpose.</p><div><strong>Congratulations on another huge success! I feel the New York Times editors enjoyed your analogies as much as I did: cherished memories are likened to bottled perfumes; fleeting thoughts, to hummingbirds. Grudges are imagined as sticky things strong enough to be building materials. How they&#x27;re visualized in the book makes quite an impression.</strong></div><p>&quot;Thanks, I appreciate that! I knew I was dealing with something very abstract – a train of thought. I had to think long and hard about how I would approach the story. How do I communicate the strange ideas I have in my head and have another person picture the same thing? How do I create a whole train, car by car, thought by thought, in a way that will make sense to them? That was the biggest challenge for the book, but also the most fun.&quot;</p><div><strong>How did the main concept come about?</strong></div><p>&quot;The idea of a train made out of thoughts came when I was on a train in Japan. I looked around and noticed that even if the train was full, it was actually &#x27;empty&#x27; – because everyone&#x27;s minds were elsewhere. You can see it in their faces. They could be on their phones or just staring into space, but they&#x27;re not on that train. </p><p>&quot;So I said, if they&#x27;re not here, where do these people go? Where do our thoughts go? I like playing around with words and it struck me: what if our thoughts went on a literal train of thoughts?&quot;</p><div><strong>How did you link that to the theme of finding one&#x27;s purpose?</strong></div><p>&quot;I asked myself, what would happen if your thoughts wandered too far? Could you pull them back?  What anchors us to our seats? What calls the mind back to reality? I came up with one answer: Purpose. It&#x27;s what gives our life weight and meaning, what anchors us in the day-to-day. That&#x27;s why we come back after daydreaming.   </p><p>&quot;The next challenge was conceptualizing and crystallizing how thoughts behaved. That&#x27;s why I chose the analogies in the book – they&#x27;re a way for readers to relate the book&#x27;s abstract concepts to something more tangible and accessible in real life. </p><div><strong>I think the best analogy – transport being the main metaphor – was &quot;excess baggage.&quot;</strong></div><p>&quot;Thank you! I&#x27;m in this season of my life where I&#x27;m reflecting on the things I carry, why I carry them, and why I need to let go of them. And also what I need to keep. You can&#x27;t let go of it entirely because everything that comes into your life is a lesson, and you don&#x27;t want to throw out the lesson.&quot;</p><div><strong>What category do your books belong to?</strong></div><p>&quot;It&#x27;s really funny, because on Amazon, I have the strangest categories: I&#x27;m in folklore, I&#x27;m in fairy tales, I&#x27;m in cozy fantasy. Personally, I&#x27;d say my stories fall into magical realism or speculative fiction.&quot;</p><div><strong>It&#x27;s that philosophical side that makes your books so different.</strong></div><p>&quot;I like books that make you think. For my stories, the darker or the deeper the topic I want to discuss, the more fantastical the setting has to be. I feel it&#x27;s easier to linger over things that you otherwise wouldn&#x27;t want to look at or think about if you enjoy the setting of the story. </p><p>&quot;The same applies to me as a writer. I don&#x27;t think I&#x27;d be as motivated to write the things I do if everything were dark. Writing is an escape for me, and I need this kind of balance to make it enjoyable.&quot;</p><div><strong>What’s your next philosophical fantasy book?</strong></div><p>&quot;I&#x27;m not a philosopher by any means, and so I&#x27;m not sure if I want to say that my next book will fit into that category. It will still be a blend of magical realism and mystery, but it will be different in terms of tone. It&#x27;s called &#x27;The Night Movers Disappearing Service&#x27; – coming out US summer next year.&quot;</p><div><strong>But meantime, your readers can still enjoy your work – I hear your backlist is going to be published.</strong></div><p>&quot;Yes! My publisher acquired &#x27;A Dream of Trees&#x27; and &#x27;The Beginning of Always,&#x27; my two previously self-published books. They will also be rereleasing &#x27;Before Ever After&#x27; and &#x27;Love Gravity.&#x27; All four books will be published around the middle of this year, before my new book is released.&quot;</p><div><strong>You actually went to Isaac Newton&#x27;s house to do research for &#x27;Love and Gravity,&#x27; right?</strong></div><p>&quot;I did! I recently looked through my Kindle and saw all my Isaac Newton research books. The amount of research I did for that book was insane!&quot;</p><div><strong>And yet your biggest success came completely from your imagination.</strong></div><p>&quot;I know, right? It&#x27;s almost funny if you think about it that way. You really don&#x27;t know which book will become a commercial success. I&#x27;ve learned that I can only write a book from where I am in my life. It wouldn&#x27;t be authentic otherwise. If I were much younger when I wrote &#x27;The Elsewhere Express,&#x27; I think a lot of it would have been conjecture. I would have had to stretch my imagination for many of the emotions and conflicts in the book because I wouldn&#x27;t have experienced or understood them in the way I do now.</p><div><strong>Do you have a secret favorite among your novels?  Which do you think is the best one?</strong></div><p>&quot;No, I definitely don&#x27;t have favorites. I always like to think that the best is still ahead.&quot;</p><div><strong>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</strong></div><p>Vanessa Bicomong is a marketing teacher and consultant who has been writing book reviews since 2021. She is the program director for customer centricity at Acumen Strategy Consultants, and general manager of The Learning Library, an online tutorial center offering reading comprehension and writing classes in English and Filipino.</p>

<p>What if there was a train that could bring you to your life's purpose? A train that finds you, so you can discover You?</p>

What if there was a train that could bring you to your life's purpose? A train that finds you, so you can discover You?

How Samantha Sotto Yambao turned a literal 'train of thought' into a New York Times bestseller

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How Samantha Sotto Yambao turned a literal 'train of thought' into a New York Times bestseller

ABS-CBN Lifestyle,

Vanessa Bicomong

Published April 03, 2026 12:48 PM PHT

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Updated April 03, 2026 01:49 PM PHT

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