Chicanonautica: The Return of Smoking Mirror Blues

by Ernest Hogan

Smoking Mirror Blues is back! I’m experimenting with Amazon’s Kindle Select program, which means that it will be exclusively available on Kindle for 90 days. Amazon Prime customers will be able to check it out for free through the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library (and they pay me every time it’s checked out!), and from Halloween through los Día de Los Muertos and the Saturday after the Dead Daze weekend, it will be FREE.

I do hope some of you can’t wait, and buy it ASAP -- the Ernest Hogan Defense Fund could use the money.

It’s already being hailed as “A raw, raunchy voice/A Burroughs-esque horror show . . .” and “One of the great ‘lost’ SF novels of the c.21st” which is good for the avant-garde literary and speculative fiction crowds -- but for La Bloga, I should make it clear that it is Chicano/Latino Lit, and not just because I’m a Chicano of Villaista/curandero lineage.

The whole story of Smoking Mirror Blues is kicked off  by the antics of a Chicano mad scientist/hacker. Beto Orozco is based on what has become an Aztlán archetype. I have met a lot of tech-savy chamucos who are aware of their culture and their struggle, who are bringing a special kind of creativity to living and working in the Information Age. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that one or more are working on god-generating software.

It is an Aztec god that is brought to life,Tezcatlipoca, the warrior/wizard trickster. I plug Aztec mythology into a cyberpunkoid world, and the novel explodes into the readers mind and echoes across reality. Really. With Tezcatlipoca such things are possible.

The action starts on Halloween and continues through both Days of the Dead. They have been combined into the cross-border recombocultural Dead Daze. I think Dead Daze is a great idea. And I keep seeing the holidays and cultures colliding, creating a brave, new celebration.

The location is Los Angeles, El Lay, the city where I was born, the epicenter of my Eastlos roots. I rev up my imagination and bring the personality and possibilities of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora La Reina de Los Angeles del Rio de Porciúncula to dazzling life.

When writing a novel, if you’re lucky, you are like a mad scientist -- the monster comes to life, runs amok over the environment, and all you have to do is take notes on the mayhem. Smoking Mirror Blues is that kind of a monster. Now I’ve turned it loose on the world again. I wonder what kind of mayhem I’ll be taking notes on . . .

Ernest Hogan is busy promoting Smoking Mirror Blues and getting High Aztech ready for ebook release. Tezcatlipoca keeps putting diabolical ideas into his head. Meanwhile, the Sacred Calendar is coming to an end.