IT WAS bound to happen. Taking the next step in literary evolution, the iPod-toting, zeitgeist-conscious, latte-sipping, Facebook-wielding generation would develop a writer designed for maximum effect.

Meet Exhibit A: Carlos ?Siege? Malvar, the 26-year-old novelist whose work, such as his Not Quite Unreal series, springs from and celebrates the high jinks of being young and Filipino. ?Roles? and its sequel ?Crash? depict growing up with a cerebral authenticity, shedding light on the claustrophobic mythology that is Pinoy adolescence.

?Definitely,? Malvar answers when asked if the goings-on in his novels are based on his own experiences. The eldest in a brood of four, Jose Carlos Quinton Malvar remembers growing up a naughty child: ?My parents got called to the principal?s office more often than usual.?

He also came armed with a deep affinity for reading.

?Absolutely,? he says, recalling his growing up years in his grandparents? apartment, full of Pinoy komiks, Classics Illustrated and issues of National Geographic. ?My favorite books from childhood would have to be an illustrated Merriam-Webster?s Dictionary for Children and ?Illustrated Stories from the Bible.??

His parents used to call him ?Niknok,? after the fried chicken-loving character from Funny Komiks, due to Malvar?s resemblance to the fictional boy. ?They started calling me Joel for no apparent reason,? he says. ?At some point, I decided to name myself, inspired by Lam-Ang, and at that point in my life, I was really into gaming. My initials started as C.J., but my friends kept dropping a phoneme, so I ended up with Siege.?

It was in high school that he discovered the thrill of writing. ?I was the only one who got excited whenever the teachers were feeling particularly lazy and would make us write a ?Formal Theme/Sulating Pangwakas? just to kill time.? He remembers writing funny stories. ?One time, our teacher asked us to compose an ?Application Letter for Employment,? and I wrote one for the position of samurai salesman, citing my maimed uncle as previous employer.?

That biting sense of humor stayed intact as Malvar finished his philosophy degree at the University of the Philippines Diliman and had an abortive reach for a law degree. Instead, he stayed with words and is ?a thesis away? from earning his Master?s degree in creative writing. In 2004, he won a horror writing contest sponsored by Psicom publishing. Soon after, Psicom published his first book, ?Bloody Mary,? a horror novel based on the urban legend.

It was in UP that his Not Quite Unreal series was spawned. ?My professor Heidi Abad made us write a novel with ten chapters for young adults as a final requirement for our class,? Malvar says. He spent over a year on the manuscript that became ?Roles,? a narrative survey of the different parts teenagers play in the cloistered drama of high school.

?Roles? found a home among the innovative denizens of Visual Print Enterprises, also known as Visprint. ?It?s very, very flattering for an emerging author like myself to belong to Visprint?s lineup,? he explains. ?Before, I just used to read the likes of Bob Ong and Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah, and then I got the e-mail saying that they?re publishing my manuscript, so feeling ko talaga, wow!?

After ?Roles? came ?Crash,? where the interested parties become interested in a particular party. Malvar notes that the second time around was much easier: ?Writing a sequel is more interesting because there?s already a story I?m working on. So the challenge is how to take things further, how to push the characters harder.?

He has a flourishing following, particularly online. ?I?d always wanted to have a cult of my own during my formative years, but my plans of healing the afflicted using magnetized, distilled water didn?t push through,? he laughs. ?Anyway, a cult following is how it really is like. I don?t have a fan base ? fans are lovely, supportive people; my cult following usually leaves nasty sexual proposals on my website, mostly involving the degustacion of bodily wastes. I love it when they do that.?

Malvar has always been planning ahead. ?The original plan was for the series to run on indefinitely, just like ?Sweet Valley High,?? he says. ?But I decided, after writing ?Crash,? that the series would have a much stronger impact if I design it as a trilogy instead.? That final book in the Not Quite Unreal series, to be called ?Dirt,? is still in the works. ?I want to resolve as much as I can by the end of the third book.?

What?s next in the pipeline is something a little different. It?s a novel called ?Huwag Mong Salingin ang Patay,? a tale which twists a story virtually every Filipino is familiar with: It?s Jose Rizal?s ?Noli me Tangere? with zombies. In this case, Crisostomo Ibarra returns to his native land just as a mysterious meteorite crashes to Earth and resurrects the dead.

The idea of melding classic literature with monsters isn?t new, as readers have flocked to ?Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,? Seth Grahame-Smith?s mashup of Jane Austen and the undead. Other books, such as ?Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,? have followed. But the interesting thing is that Malvar says he thought of ?Huwag? before ?Pride?? and its ilk shambled onto bookstore shelves.

?We never have zombies in our literature,? he explains. ?I was thinking of something Gothic, like zombies in lamp-lit Manila. When ?Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? came out last year, I felt a little cheated. Then, I thought, ?why not???

An additional challenge is that Malvar has opted to write ?Huwag? in Filipino, while all his previous books were in English. However, he writes poetry in Filipino. ?The grammar is not that tricky. I?m a native Filipino speaker, but the spelling can be challenging.?

There is a hidden obstacle as well: avoiding all English words. ?I?m writing in a milieu before the Americans came to the Philippines, so even the way the characters think must be limited by the language.?

He continues to slave away at the novel and assures readers that it will definitely be out later this year. ?If I have to write 48 hours straight every weekend until it comes out, I will.?

In the meantime, he earns a living as a copywriter for an ad agency, flogs away at his blog (http://www.siegemalvar.net), rocks the casbah with his band The Batutes and has a pet, sort of. ?I?m raising a virtual representation of myself on an isolated island in ?Sims: Castaway? on my PSP. It?s about to rule as a despotic monarch of the apes.?

Beyond his virtual dictatorship, he remains hooked on everything. ?I enjoy immersing myself in the world, really. I love reading books, watching movies, walking around observing how humans interact with one another. I do things indiscriminately. I think, in everything we do, there?s an opportunity to learn.?

It has already happened. Whether in the real world or the virtual one, Carlos Malvar takes every chance to explore the lives of the generation he gives voice to, in particular, his own life and his own voice. ?Whatever my friends are up to, I try to get as much involved as I can because I don?t want to miss out on whatever the world is ready to teach me.?