For you writers, belated presents for your works

What you wanted wasn't under any tree this week. So, to give you some inspiration, here's things stuck in the bottom of your stocking. Hope they give you some ganas to begin the new year. Check all upcoming deadlines.

Nakum - a website for mestizo writers

For Chicanos y otros to connect their writing better to our indio roots.

Info from the website: "For centuries, the identities of the peoples native to the U.S. Southwest and Northern Mexico have been subject to legal, political, and social interpretations that serve colonial interests.  The mission of Nakum, the Coahuiltecan word meaning “we speak” or “I speak to you,” is to offer a public forum through which scholars of Native and Chicana/o studies can do precisely what the title suggests: speak from their own perspectives.

"In keeping with the general mission of the Indigenous Cultures Institute, this journal offers a space for the continued exploration of Hispanics’ indigenous identities.  The journal thus brings together many of the conversations that the Institute has cultivated and, through its online presence, makes them available to a vast and growing audience of scholars, journalists, creative writers, and students with an abiding interest in hearing the voices of those who contribute to those discussions."

Open call for Sci-Fi reprints

Deadline: 4 January 2015.

Upper Rubber Boot Books issued an open call for reprint submissions for an upcoming anthology of fiction and poetry, The Museum of All Things Awesome And That Go Boom, to be published in 2016.

"Editor Joanne Merriam is interested in explosions, adventure, derring-do, swashbuckling, dinosaurs, ray guns, von Neumann machines, fanged monsters, flame-throwing killer robots, chainsaws, antimatter, and blunt force trauma. She is also interested in writing which explodes our perspective of science fiction itself—literary fiction employing SF tropes, cyberpunk, speculative fiction, magical realism, infernokrusher, etc., are all welcome."

Here's the details.

Open call for First Contact submissions

Book Smugglers Publishing is looking for original short stories from all around the world, written in English. "Our goal is to publish at least three short stories, unified by a central theme. Each short story will be accompanied by one original piece of artwork from an artist commissioned by us separately.

"The theme is: FIRST CONTACT. While we are huge fans of aliens and would very much like to receive submissions featuring first contact with aliens, we would love to receive a broader pool of stories and traditions. We welcome authors to subvert this theme, to expand horizons and adapt the prompt to other possible connotations and genres within the Speculative Fiction umbrella.

"What We’re Looking For:

• Diversity. We want to read and publish short stories that reflect the diverse world we live in, about and from traditionally underrepresented perspectives.

• Middle Grade, Young Adult, and Adult audience submissions are welcome.

• Creativity & Subversion. We love subversive stories. We want you to challenge the status quo with your characters, story telling technique, and themes.

• We are looking for original speculative fiction, between 1,500 and 17,500 words long. These SFF offerings must be previously unpublished."

Deadline: December 31 2014

Hidden Youth: Submissions

Crossed Genres Publications will publish Hidden Youth: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (expected release Jan., 2016).

"We welcome stories by authors from all walks of life. We especially encourage submissions from members of marginalized groups within the speculative fiction community, including (but not limited to) people of color; people who are not from or living in the U.S.A.; QUILTBAG and GSM people; people with disabilities, chronic illness, or mental illness; and atheists, agnostics, and members of religious minorities. The protagonists of your story do not have to mirror your own heritage, identities, beliefs, or experiences.

"We also especially encourage short story submissions from people who don’t usually write in this format, including poets, playwrights, essayists and authors of historical fiction and historical romance."

Follow submission details carefully. Submissions due April 30, 2015

Before you sign a contract–things writers should know now

An article by Kristine Kathryn Rusch contains only her opinions about where U.S. publishing is headed. It's not all good, but seems to be worth knowing about. Read it after half a bottle of whiskey.

 

From: Business Musings: What Traditional Publishing Learned in 2014.

"Change has been happening for years, as mergers and acquisitions grew. Some of it has come from the fact that the large companies have finally understood the impact ebooks and online shopping have had on the industry.

"Much of the change is in response to 2013’s dismal fall sales, which happened courtesy of the Justice Department’s investigation of six major publishers and Apple for price-fixing. It didn’t matter how that case turned out; the case itself changed business as usual inside publishing."

Read the entire article.

Es todo, este año, 
RudyG

Young Chicano writer not burned out by Global Heating

On August 29, 1970 in East Los Angeles, the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War staged a march and rally that drew tens of thousands of demonstrators, most of whom were Chicanos. Prior to that, the anti-war movement had been largely an Anglo student led struggle. The Chicano Moratorium changed that and eventually helped end an unjust war killing brown and black boys at higher statistical rates than Anglo kids. Some of the older Chicano writers of today were a part of that effort and many of their stories still need to be told.

Denver last week

In the last months, my wife and I have participated in actions to the stop the building of the Keystone XL Pipeline that will transport tar sands oil to the Gulf Coast. The dirty oil will worsen Global Heating, multiply incidents of pollution and make more of the environment toxic to all forms of life.

At a demonstration a week ago at Sen. Michael Bennet's office in Denver, I wasn't surprised to see very few Chicanos in the crowd. It was déjà-vu, pre-Chicano Moratorium, all over again.

When this primarily Anglo movement finally links up to the Chicanos and mexicanos, it will become as powerful as demonstrated in the votes for Obama in the last election. To do that, they will need to cross the ethnic fence, produce written and oral material in Spanish readable by la gente, among many other things. The time will come.

In the meantime, there is at least one Colorado Spanish-surnamed kid involved in leading this movement. His talk at the rally was inspirational, at least for this old Chicano. It gave me hope that even though few old Chicanos are involved yet, this one young man put himself forward to say some things. That he'd been studying to become a writer, but was considering dropping out of college, seemed too ironical to be ignored by a Chicano literary website, like La Bloga.

If you think the XL Pipeline will somehow be good for or Canadians or humans in general, you can read passages that I excerpted below and go to the sources to read the entire pieces.

Words from a young Chicano:

"We are here to mourn our future, but I am also here to mourn for the people already impacted by climate change and the fossil fuel industry. I am mourning for the Beaver Lake Cree Nation where industry has stolen land in order to extract the tar sands, and where people are getting more and more sick. I am mourning for the community of Manchester, the Valero refinery in Houston, where childhood cancer rates are ten times higher than the state average.

"People talk about how bad things are going to be in thirty or forty years for the privileged, but they often ignore how bad things already are for the marginalized communities.

"I keep hearing from people that my generation--I'm 22--doesn't care or that we are too complacent. I've been thinking a lot about that, and the real reason we may seem disenfranchised is because it's your job, as the past generation, to convince us to buy what you're selling. And you've failed.

"At my age it is hard to see the power structures fail and become completely obsolete, but that is the case. There is no progress within the current system. The future you have left for us is a miserable one, so I don't want to see you act happy about that. I am tired of reading reports, and scientific studies that tell me this planet may not be hospitable for me by the age of retirement. And it will be even worse for my children, and the future generations.

"That is why I am here fighting, alongside many others my own age, and younger and older. Fighting to change things, fighting to change the flawed system that I was born into, and fighting for the future." - Mark C.

Some older people took offense at some of his words that day. I wasn't one of them because taking personal offense at the truth seems petty, ignoring the decimated forest for the one tree you planted.

I was there and can attest that this young man's words had much more emotion in them that the text indicates. I detected frustration and spirit, anger and love, youthful angst and intelligent insight. It moved me at least to post this with the intention of spreading the word to stop this degradation of people, countries and planet. Below you'll see that ethnic minorities already suffer greatly, yes, Chicanos too.

People of color paying for extraction

"The Canadian oil company Transcanada will be cleared to transport bitumen, or tar sands oil, from Canada to the Gulf Coast for sale on the open market following refinement. This process is said by locals who live near refineries in Texas to be poisoning the environment of especially low-income communities of color.

"Sylvia McAdam of the Idle No More Movement of Canada told The Nation Report today that the water around Fort McMurray at the source of tar sands extraction is not only no longer fit to drink, but that 'indigenous people are not hunting around that area anymore'. She went on to say that locals can no longer use their local water to even bathe."

Go here to read the entire piece.

Native Americans and their caribou in the crosshairs

"The cultural heritage, land, ecosystems and human health of First Nation communities including the Mikisew Cree First Nation, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, Fort McMurray First Nation, Fort McKay Cree Nation, Beaver Lake Cree First Nation Chipewyan Prairie First Nation, and the Metis, are being sacrificed for oil money in what has been termed a “slow industrial genocide'.

"Infrastructure projects linked to the tar sands expansion, such as the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline and the Keystone XL pipeline, threaten First Nation communities in British Columbia, Canada and American Indian communities throughout the United States. Community resistance is growing and Indigenous peoples throughout North America have mounted substantive challenges to tar sands expansion.

"Stories of cancer epidemics in the community of Fort Chipewyan, massive wildlife losses related to toxic contamination, environmental degradation and increased vocal resistance from impacted communities have shattered the ‘everything is fine’ myth propagated by the Canadian and Alberta governments. The Athabasca delta has been completely altered from a pristine boreal forest, clean rivers and lakes to a devastated ecosystem of deforestation, open pit mines and watershed where fish regularly exhibit tumors and birds landing on contaminated tailings ponds die instantly.

"Each barrel of oil produced from tar sands requires 2 to 6 barrels of water.

In 2007, Alberta's government approved the withdrawal of 119.5 BILLON gallons of water for tar sands extraction. 82% of this water comes from the Athabasca River. Toxic wastewater is discharged in holding or tailing ponds that leak 11 million liters of toxic waste per day into the Athabasca and seep into the ground water. This water flows northward (downstream) further into Indigenous territories. Since this toxic waste has been flowing into the river and seeping into the groundwater - rare and virulent cancers have affected many of the Indigenous Community members- and fish and game have been found with physical abnormalities and deformations and tumors in fish.

"In 2006, unexpectedly high rate of rare cancers were reported in the community of Fort Chipewyan. In 2008, Alberta Health confirmed a 30% rise in the number of cancers between 1995 -2006. However, the study lacks appropriate data and is considered a conservative estimate by many residents.

"Caribou populations have been severely impacted by tar sands extraction. The Beaver Lake Cree First Nation has experienced a 74% decline of the Cold Lake herd since 1998 and a 71% decline of the Athabasca River herd since 1996. Today, just 175–275 caribou remain. By 2025, the total population is expected to be less than 50 and locally extinct by 2040."

Go here to read the full article.

Bus Trip - CO to KXL Hearing in Nebraska

Our government is holding only one open hearing about the construction of this pipeline. In Nebraska, where attendance would obviously be limited. Buses from other states will head there with people willing to go. Check here for Colorado info.

If this pipeline is stopped, a major contributor

to Global Heating will never happen.

If it is constructed, plan on Global Heating accelerating.

Es todo,

RudyG

How to write a novel in 66 days

by RudyG

I post this hoping it might be of use to aspiring or struggling or caught-in-a-rut writers. It's not the final word or the expert's advice; it's simply one author's experience.

I just composed the final pages of a dark Young Adult fantasy novel with Chicano protagonists, villains and secondary characters. 27 chapters. 91,000 words. First draft, done.

The novel-in-MS-form is not going to a publisher or agent, yet. Nobody's going to bang on my Facebook wall for a copy. Because the story reached its end but is not complete.

Definitely weeks, possibly a couple of months--hopefully, not more--of redrafting the MS will follow. I won't list all that it needs or that I have to improve, but it's chingos. Below is how I got to this milestone where I've got a near-complete MS to work on, at all.

How to do it

It's easy if you follow this recipe, or create one more tailored for your personal tastes and lifestyle.

I. I began writing approx. Nov. 1st. That coincided with my Texas book tour of the Chicano fantasy novel The Closet of Discarded Dreams, which occurred the first two weeks of Nov.

I wrote every day. Weekends included. No matter what my schedule was. No matter whether I was in a motel or staying with family, on a plane, or between flights. I plugged my little laptop into outlets behind flight gates, sat on the floor or watched for an empty seat by an outlet.

I wrote on a Megabus between San Anto and Houston, which has outlets for every seat. I wrote on my brother's or mother's or sister's porch until the battery ran out, and then I ran an extension cord to keep going. I wrote hung-over--like now--or sober, it didn't matter.

And when I returned to Denver, I continued. Every day. For me, 5am is a good start time. Some days, the book in my head had me up at 4 or even 3:30am. That's what writing does to you when it takes over your life: your brain must follow.

II. I began each writing session by revising and editing down the new material I'd composed the day before. Always. In the flurry of creating, too much superfluous wording shows up in my writing, at least. To not let the build-up of dross get too out of hand, this daily gleaning serves me well. (Critics may say, not enough, but that's a different topic.)

III. Every day I would add new material. Sometimes, just a passage of four pages. Sometimes, a passage here and another there. Sometimes, half a chapter. Rarely, a whole chapter of approx. 10 pp.

This consistency helps me, at least, to keep the story flowing, pacing, developing.

IV. I never wondered if I'd have writer's block. I don't believe in it. I think it's a cucui created by others that may apply to them, but I strive to be an idealist and assume it won't get me.

Critics may say it shows in weaknesses of my writing, but I write the plot, the dialogue, the scenes and character development, as it comes flowing out of my head onto the keypad. IOW, I don't stop to over-think what it is that I'm doing, where the story's going or whether I've taken care of everything. The next period is when all that will be dealt with.

V. I let my imagination and hard-brain take care of questions. Where's the heroine going next, what will he find there, who's going to be in the next scene and how will things be resolved--are things I take to bed with me or file in my frontal lobes when I take a nap. Somehow, when I wake up, the psyche has taken care of enough to go into the next chapter, etc.

VI. I try to remember to rest every 1.5 hours, more or less. I go outside, check the weather and the birds, eat a small burrito, drink some orange juice and smoke a vacha. Then I go back.

I take naps. Whenever I'm tired. I don't put them off; I don't say, "Later when I finish this chapter." I answer my old body's call and give it what it needs to keep going at some more or less optimum rate.

I never work when the body or mind gets tired. I'm not being paid by the hour or punching any clock, so I'm not obligated to "just show up."

VII. I work up to some breaking point in the story. The end of a scene, chapter, etc. I try not to start something new that can't be completed in a short amount of time.

So, I'll stop my writing day anywhere after six to nine hours at the computer.

That's my story, style and approach. Writers are as different as leaves on a tree, but we're also similar. You don't have to do it like I did. You can write one page a day, and after a year, you've got a novel.

I wrote the first draft of my first published novel in 45 days. (John Nichols wrote the first draft of The Milagro Beanfield War in less time than that.) Then it took me years of revising. But, I'm better and won't need so much time this go-around.

To emphasize my opening statements, I only intended to describe elements I've used to finish a first draft in 66 days. If any of this helps, I'm very glad I helped. If none helps, I'm happy if you toss this into the Delete folder. Whatever.

If you love writing, just do it. Enjoy it. And always remember what you owe your future readers: un chingón libro, not just worth their time and money, but worth reading and passing along.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, aka author Rudy Ch. Garcia, holder of a few hundred pages of YA fantasy, to appear sometime this year on your slush pile.

Chicanonautica: Latino Writing in the Dark Ages

by Ernest Hogan

Manuel Ramos’ post, “Golden Age for Writers?” got me thinking. Rudy Ch. Garcia’s “If not the Golden Age of latino writing, no importa” made me feel that I had to say a few things about the subject. After all, I’ve had such a long and glorious career . . .

Back in the Seventies, in the wake of the Chicano Movement no one encouraged me to become a writer. Teachers, and other people in authority tried to talk me out of it; they warned me that it could lead to a life of poverty -- they were right, but I did it anyway.  The struggle has been epic.

These days I’m amazed at the subculture of support that has developed for wannabe writers. When I was starting out, it was me against the whole pinche world. Today’s aspiring writers lack that certain quixotic fighting sprit. They -- and their potential readers -- are the poorer for it.

When I started out, I didn’t make a big deal out of my ethnicity. Just getting published was hard enough. Also, I figured that it shouldn’t matter. It was the early Eighties by the time I started selling stories. Hadn’t the world advanced beyond that?

Apparently, it hadn’t.

Because of my name from my New Mexico Irish connection, folks in places like New York assumed I was a white guy.

“You’re really brave -- writing about blacks, and minorities, and stuff -- they get offended, you know!”

Not being one to try to “pass,” I let my Latinodad be known, and it turns out it was an issue. Nobody ever said it plainly, but once they realized they were dealing with a Chicano, the New Yorkers all started acting funny, uncomfortable . . . Then there was the guy who refused to shake my hand or even talk to me -- and the other one, who saw me and took off running. 

Suddenly, “the audience” had a problem with me. I shouldn’t have been surprised when nobody in New York would buy my novels -- for years. They would politely flatter me, then tell me how their readers just don’t buy my stuff. Sure, there were some who thought I was some kind of genius, but they were a “noisy minority.”

I used to take it personally, but now I see that this was the time when the New York publishers went under corporate control. Working at Borders, I saw that modern fiction consumers were programmed to buy entertainment modules produced by multinational corporations that, as one woman informed me: “will keep your mind off things when you’re waiting at the airport, but if you lose it and can’t finish it -- it doesn’t matter.”

That is now changing, thank Tezcatlipoca.

I just kept on writing, and sending stuff out, and getting published now and then by small presses and various weird venues. I like to say that I keep one foot in the underground so I’ll have a place to stand.

So I didn’t get rich. I’d starve without a day job. But I’ve had a career. My novels and short fiction have earned me a reputation, so these days, I usually get published as the result of an editor getting in touch with me.

Things are better in the 21st century. And it’s not just my stubbornness and the fact that I'm not afraid of poverty -- the interconnected social and technological revolutions are a big factor.

Before I plugged into the social media, a lot of people thought I was dead. It was lonely in the old days. You could publish something, then nobody would notice, and you could disappear. Now you can hang in there, like a guerrilla in the interwebs. 

So it ain’t as bad as it was. Though I often think that if my writing brought in more actual money, this age would seem a lot more golden. Then I remember that the Aztecs didn’t value gold the way Western Civilization does. They though it was pretty, but it was the excrement of the gods.

Ernest Hogan had been called a “precusor of modern Chicano spec lit,” “Vintage Gonzo Chicano SF,” and  “a mad, Mexican Hunter S. Thompson,” among other things.

My first book-editor experience

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

You're at a writers' conference and you finally get to ask your question--what was it like working with your first editor?--and the panelists give you some minutes and maybe a good story or joke and then they go on because there's lots of others like you and lots more questions. Below I relate more of the details you wish others had given.

I just finished four days on the first round of editor's mark-ups of my debut novel The Closet of Discarded Dreams. First came the dread, the dread of neophyte novelist anxious about what the editor will find! My description would be belied by Neil Gaiman, so I'll let him talk:

"The first problem of any kind of even limited success [RG-like first novels] is the unshakable conviction that you are getting away with something, and that any moment now they will discover you. It's Imposter Syndrome, something my wife Amanda christened the Fraud Police.

Neil Gaiman

Imposter Syndrome induced by the Fraud Police, in my case, my first editor, who maybe carries her own titanium clipboard, razor-edged. Would she bust me for mediocre prose, cardboard characters and MIA plot points? Would she run to the BIG editor and threaten to resign if I wasn't reassigned to someone younger who hadn't earned their clipboard, yet?

In the real world, you can get busted by your story's editor. Earlier this year, one of my short stories came back ALL marked up, changed, critiqued, and probably had clipboard indentations that I didn't notice. At the end was a long note that described how many of the editor's hours and hours my weak writing had cost. I followed each of his notations and spent my hours and hours on rewrites, and to this date don't know if it will be published. So there.

Back to this editor-experience. I'm a fairly thick-skinned writer, given that it's gotten wrinkly, desiccated and flab-uloso, so the editor's comments, suggestions and questions don't bother much. There's chingos of them, but, really, I expected more, and worse. Like something the Fraud Police might say, like "This book sucks." But not this time.

When I was less experienced, and thinner-skinned, so many ideas from someone else about MY writing would probably have raised the hairs on the back of my neck, gotten me to pull my feet up onto the chair in dread, or maybe made me rise off the chair to pace the whole patio, exclaiming, "That's not how I wrote it!" But I have more experience now--especially the experience of countless form-rejection letters that didn't provide opportunities to improve my prose.

That's exactly the point of editing, no? I didn't write it that way and somebody else who's providing a different perspective is telling me maybe I should have written it differently. They're also giving me one last chance to change, improve it.

So I spent hours in four days running my editor's gauntlet. Could I make it? I went thru and took care of the easy stuff, mostly punctuation and realizing things like, "Oh, that's not what that word means, exactly?"

In the next round I dealt with more significant edit remarks in the realm of, "Think about changing this word/phrase/sentence/paragraph because . . ." I've heard other authors talk about having a good editor, or their editor catching errors that the author didn't. I get to realize what that means and I go with the flow. Mostly.

Then I'm done, but only with my editor's eagle-eye catches. I have one saving round yet to tackle: what did the editor, and me before that, miss that somebody should have caught? To salvage my POWER, CONTROL, PERSONAL WORTH and prove to the world that this is MY stuff. This sounds somewhat like a passage from The Closet of Discarded Dreams hero's suffering. It actually wasn't that melodramatic, but a bit of that sensation was there. And of course I do find stuff. And work into the late night, patio lights fixated on me, but my vision blurring from the moonlight, my wizard-brain and writer-soul in the flow 'cause this is what writers do, until it's . . . all . . . fixed. I gotta quit my day job! Oh, that's right--I don't have one!


Al final, I sent off the revisions yesterday. Await her final verdict. Hope it's close. Close to perfect is what some might wish for. I just want close to finished. Not because it's too boring or tiresome or demanding of a process. Because it's no different than raising a son or daughter, or a lot like putting the last layer of shellac on a carpentry project. I need to say Finis and let the work stand on its own two or four legs, as the case may be. A writer's passion is to write--not linger and lounge and homestead a work--and then move on to new writing.

At this point, initial reaction from the editor is very positive. I'll get finals back from her tomorrow. Then, in some days, BIG editor will go over it. And the last round will begin. That's what I get for writing a novel, no? For wanting el mundo to see it. Qué no? Plus, at least so far, it was a much less agonizing experience than I would have imagined.

Then I'll be ready for: What new thing should I start writing? So I can get edited, again. Esperamos. . .

Es todo, hoy,
RudyG

Rudy Ch. Garcia's alternate-world epic recounts a Chicano's experience going through worse than his first editor, but maybe not as bruto as your own as a latino in Gringolandia. The Closet of Discarded Dreams will be released Sept. 1 But read this before you buy it.

Do not buy this book, yet

rambling update on debut novel by Rudy Ch. Garcia

My head's spinning, there's not enough time, I don't know where to look next. Welcome to the wonderful world of first-time published novelist getting ready for the BIG day.

You can read about my debut novel here and about some of my prep work here.

Like I said, my head's spinning. I want everything to be perfect, timely, on time, and as much of a success as it can be. At the same time, not everything is in my control. Luckily, I have friends, acquaintances and contacts who know more than me.

Manuel Ramos, author of several novels, authors and poetesses Lisa Alvarado and Melinda Palacio are just some helping me navigate this episode in my lit life that comes only once. First novel. Debut. Book signings with audiences who will read the bared revelations of this writer. Scary? Nerve-wracking? No, I've got too much prep work that's muscling in on all my time and not allowing for that much true feelings.

Again, luckily, I've also got supporters and friends and family who're helping me with setting up a book tour, speaking, interviewing engagements. I couldn't do it alone, otherwise.

For those of you who anticipate your first book-length MS getting published, I can't tell you how it will affect you. For me, it's mostly a blur.

When I tell someone new about the book, they go, "I bet you're feeling great." It goes in una oreja and out the other. I know I should be feeling that, maybe I will be when I stand in front of my first audience to conduct a reading. Vamos a ver.

I've had to research the Internet, blogs, publications, and contacts and found surprising things. For instance, I'm going to attempt to focus people's buying the book. For the first month of Sept., I'm aiming for the Denver bestseller list. Why?

Because bookstores in other parts of the country, book reviewers of major publications and media gente look at such numbers. If The Closet of Discarded Dreams can make the Top 5 for one week in Denver, it will get noticed, possibly, nationally. It might get reviewed. I might be interviewed. Etc. You can help me accomplish this.

So, that's why I entitled this post the way I did. Don't buy, don't pre-order, don't go for it until you hear where and when. It's a small window, making a bestseller list. Even harder with a first novel.

I hope to do my first reading at Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver, just as soon as I can get books shipped from the publisher. After this first critical period, I will be encouraging people to order from them or whatever independent bookstore you prefer. Just not yet.

Then I'll hit Austin-San Anto-Houston. Then, Phoenix/So. Calif. Then, who knows where else in late Sept. and Oct. Hopefully, I'll get to meet La Bloga readers, since I haven't been out much of the Denver Metro area in years. Would love to hear what you all think of our Chicano lit blog. I expect to be surprised.

And even better, I hope to share some of my prose with many of you.

tatiana de la tierra

Hasta septiembre y octubre,

RudyG

P.S.: If you're at Su Teatro's Pachanga tonight in Denver, you can bid on one of the limited (of 25), autographed, numbered (#10) and monogrammed copies of the novel. It's to raise funds for the Teatro, so bid high. Delivery sometime in Sept.

Also, if you haven't yet, check out Rene's post and mine on recently deceased bloguera tatiana de la tierra. And check out tomorrow's, Sunday's tribute. 

Sí es todo, hoy,

RudyG

Pensamientos about Chicano writers

by Rudy Ch. Garcia

With exceptions, being a writer is one of the loneliest occupations anyone can undertake.

Hours, days and years go into producing stories or articles, with the prospect of success maybe as far as decades away. I don't know what the statistics are on how many people take up writing and later discard it, but it wouldn't be surprising to hear it had some staggering number of those who give up on it.

I'm one who left writing for decades, but then returned for more decades of lonesome work. Writing alone is inherent to the occupation. The solitary feelings come from not seeing your works out in the world and being read by others.

Of necessity then, writers' goals include getting their works published, but given how infrequent this may happen, that can't be the immediate goal. Maybe writers have a lot in common with gamblers who hope to win The Big One. Both types can have distant hopes that they maintain through their daily passion or addiction to the "game."

. . . . . .

Aspiring writers who latch onto publishing as an immediate goal can transform into frustrated artists who yell at their kids and wives, see fault in others' writing, and eventually drop the whole idea, especially if publishing of their work doesn't soon appear.

That's how one of the most common questions from non-writing people, "Why haven't you published it yet?" can get under the skin of writers. If only my friends and family knew how difficult getting published was, they'd never ask this question.

In that sense, aspiring writers have a lot in common with artists who draw, paint or scupt; they're both hoping to be discovered; in the writer's case, preferably by a publisher with hard-copy imprints, not just E-published works.

. . . . . .

Being a Chicano writer in a Blanco-dominated market adds to the solitary feelings that are intensified from a publisher's rejection letter. One can't help wondering, sometimes, if a Blanco writers gets as many rejections. Assumedly, they do.

. . . . . .

When the field of work is narrowed further to fantasy and science fiction, the chances of getting your work published narrow even further. After all, as everyone knows, Chicanos don't read much fantasy and it's assumed they read even less sci-fi. When you write such short stories or novels with Chicano characters, your appeal to a publisher is further limited, because publishers may think that a Chicano sci-fi character could only work as a minor character, except in a case like Avatar where Neytiri is photoshopped into an indigenous role or Michelle Rodriguez plays human Trudy Chacon.

Publishers, like movie directors, worry that a Chicano or minority character might not appeal to the majority Blanco audience. And then, or course, they know that Chicanos don't read sci-fi, so there's no audience appeal there, either. At least that's the assumption.

Then along comes someone like Junot Diaz with his The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, disproving all the assumptions, winning literary prizes hand-over-fist, and becoming a big best seller. Diaz's characters Oscar de Leon or Yunior de Las Casas who turns out to be the narrator, are Dominican-national characters who decidedly appealed to the Blanco audience. [Curiously, among other things, Oscar is obsessed with sci-fi and fantasy novels.]

Bless Me, Última by Rudy Anaya is considered the best-selling Chicano novel and has sold less than 200,00 copies in the four decades since its release. Oscar Wao sold a quarter of a million in 2009, alone. Both figures speak to aspiring writers, some of whom would cut off their left index finger to achieve one tenth of those numbers.

When an aspiring writer gives up on new stories, revising other stories or submitting works to publishers, he likewise has given up where Rudy Anaya and Junot Diaz persisted. Rudy and Junot's world is the same lonely writing world that every aspiring writer resides in; theirs becomes not so lonely when they leave their desk or computer and venture outside to hear what others think of their work. Otherwise, it's the same.

. . . . . .

No matter the nationality, the genre, the decade or the success, writing is essentially what it always has been. Lewis Carroll was driven to write his outrageous fantasy novel about Alice. Back in the 1860s, he must have seemed out of place to publishers because twenty years later it wasn't even considered a popular children's story.

On the other end of the spectrum, Ernest Hogan's Cortez on Jupiter (1990), called a minor sci-fi masterpiece by some, was never marketed to success and disappeared for decades. His Chicano Pablo Cortez character became a casualty of the East Coast publishing mire. (It is now available as en E-book here.)

Writers write. If they give up on it, they go into the past-tense, even if they have hard-copy laurels to rest on. Write, rewrite, revise, edit, submit, send out, get rejections, repeat the cycles. And every once in a while, letters that read, "Your work has been accepted."

. . . . . .

That's our world. It's not for everyone. Only for those who can thrive in its lonesome environs. Not worrying about immediate publication. Writing for the passion. In some cases, the recognition will come.

Es todo, hoy RudyG