I’m in and out of trying to write an essay about my own identity, resolving issues with my mom’s medical insanity, and just trying to keep my head above water.

In short: it’s been a crazy couple of weeks.

I was thinking about the amount of joy the paperback novel has brought me. It’s an entry-level format (and at one time, especially accessible to folks below certain tax brackets) that did me so much good and while I totally understand the writer’s desire to have a hardcover release (not about to sneeze at that for my own work, I mean, come on), I find myself owning very few hardcovers as an adult.

I still love this format – THIS is what a book feels like to me. The weird charm of how they age over time and how they fray and the binding falls apart when you’ve loved the book so much. The way so many were produced that sometimes it felt like discovering a new author was sort of your own secret. These were the books on the shelves that weren’t out in the open – I legit thought nobody else knew about Clive Barker when I was a kid. That fostered such a wonderful sense of ownership.

This is all scattered, but I guess my point is that paperback, at least to me, feels magical. It feels portable. It feels right. It fits genre writing like a glove and it’s affordable enough for folks to buy on a whim and discover writing they never knew they loved.

 

Day late on the post. Not going to repeat that.

Anyway!

I’m editing a project. It’s something I’ve brought up before, but I’m going to play it a little closer to the chest until we can fully announce it. It’s personal and small in scale. It’s eclectic and won’t fit in “quite right”.

I think that sort of makes it perfect.

That said, it’s strange to put my editing hat back on when I’m working with solicited stories. There are people who are just damn good at this writing thing and sometimes you have to shove the reader back into its bucket to avoid gushing over a piece.

That isn’t the point of this blog post, though.

I wanted to talk about the idea of competition – specifically competition among POC/Marginalized voices. It’s a trap that gets set for many of us: which of these underheard people deserve to be heard the most (since we can’t have more than one at the table, right)?

Me? I love competition. But I don’t love the idea of making it something where I need to crush anyone underfoot to get ahead. I understand what it is to swim with sharks, I’ve been a door-to-door salesman (that shit is insane). The problem with that cutthroat attitude is that it stifles underrepresented voices as a whole and that’s a HUGE fucking problem.

Here’s a thing to understand (entirely built on my own cynicism): most folks who claim to be “woke” think the claim is all they need. Social media’s made awareness and being an ally as simple as clicking the retweet icon or sharing a random article with an emoji to show your support. That low hanging fruit is a plenty and fucking delicious.

It’s also tempting. As a marginalized writer I can leverage a lot of that desire to build myself a tight little platform at the expense of other artists like me. It happens all the time; satisfaction through tokenism, and it damages us. Let’s be real, it’s what let dudes like Junot Diaz get away with their shit as long as they got away with it. Build that platform on the backs of other Latinx writers and use the fear of looking racist against your initial boosters.

I know – very shocking – con artists come in more than one color.

And the damage that shit causes. It loses allies, it allows pieces of shit to further their agendas, and it takes us ALL back three steps. All that neck stepping ultimately hurts those with broken necks twice as much as the goddamn neck stepper and it drives me fucking crazy.

Let me breathe before I spit fire.

So back to that stuff about editing above.

I have the privilege to be reading some beautiful work from Latinx authors right now and I’m amazed, intimidated, and already cried once. I read this stuff and I think my own work is hot trash compared to them – they’re amazing – and while my competitive nature drives me to want to outdo them, I’ll stop at nothing to let you know their names.

We need to be there for each other. We need to boost each other and sometimes that means we let ourselves feel a little jealous or overwhelmed. It’s a lesson I’m learning (I ain’t gonna pretend I’m some guru, fuck that) and I’m finding it to be potentially one of the most important lessons of my writing life.

I can’t wait to share these stories with readers.

 

 

 

Been thinking about the breakthroughs I had while writing Hell Chose Me.

Nothing major, just the weird realization that I put a lot more of me into that book than I originally intended. Isn’t that sort of the way it should work, though? We take what we love and embrace and the only way to really make it our own is to inject our love or happiness or pain into it.

I mean, holy hell, the way Bryan describes his grandfather? The things he consumed because of the man? All me, my friends.

Hell, my grandfather’s name was Marcelo – take a wild guess how long it took me to find the proper spelling of the Irish version?

Anyway, writing about those things – my grandfather, my relationship with my mother and my brother – some of the most difficult and strange moments of my life were at a keyboard bathed in the light of this damn screen and realizing through revision how many things I’d never properly worked through before. There’s a lot of anger and sadness and confusion and that can lead to so many negative things, but to be honest, it all led to something I felt was healthy.

I’m absolutely never going to be “okay” but I’m a lot better now than I was when I started writing Hell Chose Me.

That’s pretty big.

 

So HELL CHOSE ME is out today (you’ve bought a copy for you and all your family members, right…RIGHT?) and I’m going to do a little something new.

Nobody ever reads acknowledgments, so here’s the acknowledgments page of HELL CHOSE ME. I truly want to thank everyone that made this book real.

The list of writers I have here would be ludicrous and out of fear of leaving many out, I’ll simply say thank you to any and all of the writers I’ve read and interacted with. Inspiration has come from everywhere and I am eternally grateful.

That said I think there are a few folks I need to call out by name.

Rob Hart—This is all your fault. All of it. I think you probably hate hearing that but thank you.

Sara J Henry – thank you for your edits and for whipping my ass into fighting shape. I’m so proud of this book and it is in no small part because of you.

Chris Holm – thank you for not only giving me some assistance with a query for this one but for putting Sara on my radar. It’s outstanding to be a part of a community like this.

Peter Steinberg – thank you for your eye and guidance.

Todd Robinson – thank you for teaching me to be confident of my own voice. I don’t think I’d be as in love with writing again if it wasn’t for your advice and friendship.

Now go buy my damn book.