Latino Spec Fiction, April 2015

A year ago on BuzzFeed, in his article, Diversity Is Not Enough: Race, Power, Publishing, author Daniel José Older wrote: 

"When we raise the question of diversity, no one is demanding more tokens. We’re talking about systemic upheaval. Diversity is not enough. Maybe the word hasn’t been invented yet – that thing beyond diversity. We often define movements by what they’re against, but the final goal is greater than the powers it dismantles, deeper than any statistic. It’s something like equity – a commitment to harvesting a narrative language so broad it has no face, no name.

"Let’s . . . open ourselves to the truth about where we are and where we’ve been. Instead of holding tight to the same old, failed patriarchies, let’s walk a new road, speak new languages. Today, let’s imagine a literature, a literary world, that carries this struggle for equity in its very essence, so that tomorrow it can cease to be necessary, and disappear."

His good words made me wonder where Latino speculative fiction authors find themselves today. I can't gauge all aspects of our progress, but the following "feats" in the year since he wrote this make me feel positive our own efforts have pushed the diversity discourse in a more inclusive direction. Other stories have been published than what I mention below. Please add to Comments  anything that I missed.

• Tejano author David Bowles is cooking plato after plato of ferocious barbacoa. His short story Wildcat will appear in the May edition of Apex Magazine; it's a fantasy piece that takes place on the US-Mexico border in the early 20th century. His translation of the pre-Colombian Nahuatl poem A Cradlesong was just published in the journal Metamorphoses. The Smoking Mirror, his first book in the Garza Twins YA fantasy series was released last month.

From now through the summer, Bowles plans to publish reviews of at least the following Latino spec-fiction books:

Smoking Mirror Blues by Ernest Hogan; Ink by Sabrina Vourvoulias; Signal to Noise by Silvia Moreno-García; The Closet of Discarded Dreams by Rudy Ch. Garcia; The Hunted by Matt de la Peña; The Dinosaur Lords by Victor Milán; and a new collection by Jesús Treviño.

A synopsis of David's YA novel: "The 12-year-old Garza twins' lives in a small Texas town are forever changed by their mother's unexplained disappearance. Shipped off to relatives in Mexico by their grieving father, the twins soon learn that their mother is a nagual, a shapeshifter, and that they have inherited her powers. In order to rescue her, they will have to descend into the Aztec underworld and face the dangers that await them."

• Besides his hit, picture book, Last Stop on Market Street, Chicano story-maquina Matt de la Peña had a story in the anthology My True Love Gave to Me. In May, he continues the YA story of Romero's Disease, a deadly contagion ravaging Southern California, in his sequel, The Hunted.

• Canadian-Chicana Silvia Moreno-Garcia is kicking some big nalgas with her debut novel, Signal to Noise, received great reviews from The Chicago Tribune, Kirkus, io9, Publisher's Weekly, and The Guardian. The trade-mag Locus wrote: "Moreno-Garcia uses the trope in such an ingratiating way, though, and with such intriguingly conflicted characters, that it seems vibrantly new. I think it’s one of the most important fantasy debuts of the year so far."

• Daniel José Older's noir fantasy Half-Resurrection Blues has boosted his rep. His first YA fantasy, Shadowshaper, will take him even further, according to my reading. He also began developing a resource, Urban Fantasy Writers of Color: An Ongoing List.

• Chicano author Ernest Hogan newly released his sci-fi classic, Cortez on Jupiter, and has a story in the anthology, Mothership: Tales From Afrofuturism And Beyond.

• Tejano artist John Picacio issued his Lotería Grande Cards artwork that's hotter than Bowles's barbacoa. Get some before se acaban.

• Mario Acevedo's next novel featuring Felix Gomez, Rescue from Planet Pleasure, will be published by Wordfire Press. He describes his contribution as "a big, hairy story bristling with action, intergalactic adventure, skin-walkers, Hopi magic . . . all told in tumescent PervoVision." Mario also has two stories in the soon-to-be-published Nightmares Unhinged anthology.

artwork for Sabrina's tale

• Sabrina Vourvoulias--author of Ink--had a story, The Ways of Walls and Words, accepted by Tor.com. In reviewing Ink, Bowles noted: "At a time like the present, when immigrants are in such physical/political danger and law enforcement’s violation of minority rights is tragically underscored with frightening regularity, brave novels like Ink become not only a necessity, but a moral obligation."

• The Haunted Girl horror collection by Latina Lisa Bradley appeared last September.

• Lucha Corpi's Cactus Blood: A Gloria Damasco Mystery came out in December, again featuring her private investigator who possesses the gift of extrasensory prescience.

• Cubano-americano Joe Iriarte's short story, Weight of the World, was accepted by Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, and another story, Extra Innings, was published in Penumbra.

• Victor Milán's epic fantasy novel, The Dinosaur Lords, will debut this July. In June, he'll also have a story entitled The Seeker: A Poison in the Blood in S. M. Stirling's anthology, The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth, coming from Roc.

• Kathleen Alcalá's first published short story, Midnight at the Lariat Lounge, will be reprinted in the Weird Western anthology, and her tribute to Isak Dineson will appear in the Latino/a Rising anthology.

• Guadalupe Garcia McCall had several nonfiction poems published in The Poetry Friday Anthology for Science.

• Scheduled for August, the speculative fiction anthology, Latin@s Rising, will include at least Kathleen Alcalá, Ana Castillo, Junot Díaz, Carlos Hernandez, Ernest Hogan, Adál Maldonado, Carmen Maria Machado, Alejandro Morales, Daniel José Older, Edmundo Paz-Soldán, Alex Rivera, and Sabrina Vourvoulias.

• As mentioned above, Hollywood vaquero/writer/y-mucho-más Jesús Treviño will have a new collection published soon, entitled Return to Arroyo Grande.

• Last, and maybe least, my historical fantasy short story, How Five-Gashes-Tuumbling Chaneco Got His Nickname, will appear in the Diverse Weird Westerns anthology from WolfSinger Press.

The old-male-white-guard of speculative fiction believes that US speculative fiction is on the decline, partly from “the infestation of even the smallest American heartland towns by African, Asian, and Aztec cultures.” Aztec cultures is possibly the most shallow way of depicting Latino spec-lit. But given the list above, and others that I'm unaware of, I think it would be suavísimo if more than Aztlán became Tenochtítlan-ed. What DanielJosé termed, "systemic upheaval." Ajúa!

I'm finding it difficult to keep up with new stories by Latino spec-fiction writers. So I'll finish with, Perdóname, if I omitted anything published in the last year. I'll add more information as I receive word from anyone. So, stay tuned for mucho más.

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, uno de los "Aztec-cultured" Latino authors que también se llama Rudy Ch. Garcia

On Daniel José Older's novel, Half-Resurrection Blues

I already noted that the dude's first novel is going to burn up USican speculative literature, much like Junot Díaz's novels scorched literary fiction. Or like Raymond Chandler helped prop the pulp-bar for crime-detective fiction. Problem is, some critics have no idea what DJ wrote. I won't bet my last bottle of Don Pedro that I do, either. Daniel Olivas already did The Review of Older, but I got cosas to add.

Reviewers have called this novel: spectral noir, hard-core fantasy, genre fiction, urban fantasy, Noir, a literary .44 [magnum], mystery, suspense, supernatural thriller, ghost-detective, plus, there's also "diverse." If your hood hasn't been totally gentrified-razed of culture, and you can find a bookstore, I won't guess where you'll find this book. Except, probably on the chingón-bestseller table. Where Nora Robert's and Michael Crichton's tomes are trying to edge themselves away from DanielJosé's, to not get their white pages sullied by some street Newyorquian noir.

Check it, people--Half-Resurrection was released. One. Whole. Month. Ago. Jan. 6th. Two weeks--a mere fokkin' 14 days--later comes this announcement:

"Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose has optioned TV/film rights to Daniel José Older’s urban fantasy series Bone Street Rumba."

Sheeeet! Not just his first novel optioned, all his pinche Rumbas. A debut novelist's dream is to get 1 book optioned. But a whole series? That's no dream; that's Great Sea Mother Yemaya cradling you, mowing your detractors with her machete, and blessing your progeny with free-rides through Columbia Univ. So, someone besides me thinks Older's Rumba books are worth more than a read.

Like some hallucination, while reading Half-Resurrection Blues, it came to me to compare/contrast DanielJosé with Chandler and Junot. Chandler's dead and won't give much of a fokk anymore, and Junot may not concur, pero, así va.

He just did't get blacks.

From Chandler, mostly, The Big Sleep:

"The streets were dark with something more than night." [Walter Mosley might define this is THE writing--terse, snappy, quick-and-move-on-ly.]

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away." [Ignoring his white-machismo, this is smooooth.]

“I don't mind your showing me your legs. They're very swell legs and it's a pleasure to make their acquaintance. I don't mind if you don't like my manners. They're pretty bad. I grieve over them during the long winter nights.”

“She lowered her lashes until they almost cuddled her cheeks and slowly raised them again, like a theatre curtain. I was to get to know that trick. That was supposed to make me roll over on my back with all four paws in the air.”

DanielJosé doesn't compare to Chandler, though he can chandler when he's in the mood. I put one pata en mi boca and state, sin miedo, that DanielJosé is deeper than Chandler. Period.

Here's some Junot [Díaz]:

“She was the kind of girlfriend God gives you young, so you'll know loss the rest of your life.” [Male authors of all colors must write about las mujeres as undiscovered territory, revealed, que no?]

“You really want to know what being an X-Man feels like? Just be a smart bookish boy of color in a contemporary U.S. ghetto. Mamma mia! Like having bat wings or a pair of tentacles growing out of your chest.”

“Dude, you don't want to be dead. Take it from me. No-pussy is bad. But dead is like no-pussy times ten.” [Mujeres as objetos, again.]

“In a better world I would have kissed her over the ice trays and that would have been the end of all our troubles. But you know exactly what kind of world we live in. It ain't no fucking Middle-earth. I just nodded my head, said, See you around, Lola, and drove home.”

“She is sixteen and her skin is the darkness before the black [better than Chandler's above?], the plum of the day’s light, her breasts like sunsets trapped beneath her skin, but for all her youth and beauty she has a sour distrusting expression that only dissolves under the weight of immense pleasure. Her dreams are spare, lack the propulsion of a mission, her ambition is without traction. Her fiercest hope? That she will find a man. What she doesn’t yet know: the cold, the backbreaking drudgery of the factorias, the loneliness of Diaspora, that she will never again live in Santo Domingo, her own heart. What else she doesn’t know: that the man next to her would end up being her husband and the father of her two children, that after two years together he would leave her, her third and final heartbreak, and she would never love again.” [Compare to Chandler's paws in the air.]

Chandler's world had "one white dude to rule them all"--Phillip Marlowe, who knew some Spanish and some mexicanos. Chandler wrote pulp, knew it, maybe sometimes regretted it, but that was how his U.S. was and how he worked it.

Junot works the other side of the alley, the immigrant dominicano better read than described, by me anyway. My point to using him is to get to unas migas of DanielJosé [from Half-Resurrection]:

DanielJosé

"I dip into a brightly lit tobacco store for some Malagueñas and a pocket-sized rum. The rum goes into my flask and one of the Malagueñas goes into my mouth. I light it, walk back out to the street, and weave through the crowds. When I move quickly, no one notices my strange gait or the long wooden cane I use to favor my right leg. I've gotten the flow down so smooth I almost glide along toward the milky darkness of Prospect Park. There's too much information here in the streets--each passing body gives up a whole symphony of smells and memories and genetics. It can help pass the time if you're bored, but tonight, I'm far from bored.

     Tonight I am hunting." [There's a gist of the plot, prosaically.]

"I make a grunty-affirmative noise. When they send me after a normal ol' fully dead ghost, it's usually to toss their translucent asses back into Hell or, when they're really acting out, slice 'em to the Deeper Death. That means they're gone-for-good gone, not just kinda-sorta gone. It takes some getting used to, yeah, but you figure, hey--they were already dead once. Not everyone comes back even as a spook, so they had that second chance and jacked it up by playing the fool. The final good-bye ain't that big a deal in that sense. But this one . . . this strange, gray-like-me man with his wild schemes and last-gasp poetics . . . his death hasn't left me since New Year's.

     Neither has his sister's perfect smile." [More about the plot.]

"The feeling follows us down the block, even lingers as a dull whisper while we trudge up the creaking steps at Mama Esther's. Then we enter the library, the only room in the entire house with any furniture, and everything's all right again. There aren't even shelves, just stacks and stacks of books from floor to ceiling. You'd think it'd be a chaotic mess, all packed in there like that, but somehow there's a harmony to it; the books seem almost suspended in midair. They're everywhere, and the room is wide and tall enough that it doesn't feel cluttered. If I don't clean my little spot in more than a week, it starts to close in on me, so how Esther keeps this utterly full room spacious is beyond me. Some ghost shit, I suppose. Either way, it's oddly comforting.

     Esther's floating in her usual spot right in the center of the room. That's where the head is anyway. Beneath that great girthy smile, her wide body stretches out into invisibility in a way that lets you know she's got the whole house tucked within those fat ghostly folds. "Boys." She nods at us; the warmth of that smile is a sunbath after the grimness of the ngk." [To learn about the ngk, read the book; they're more than "imps."]

Maybe all that my selections prove is that I'm horible at examples. But if you want easy quippy, go pulpy Chandler. If you want Junot, go Junot. But if you want refreshing, street-smooth, page-flowing noir and Latino spec--ungenred--go DanielJosé.

Publisher's synopsis of Half-Resurrected: "Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents—an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind—until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death.

     "One inbetweener is a sorcerer. He’s summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits, and they’re spreading through the city like a plague. They’ve already taken out some of NY Council of the Dead’s finest, leaving Carlos desperate to stop their master before he opens up the entrada to the Underworld—which would destroy the balance between the living and the dead.

     "But in uncovering this man’s identity, Carlos confronts the truth of his own life—and death."

Quién sabe whether DanielJosé wrote this synopsis, but it leaves me flojo-limp. A plot synopsis goes weak, not providing the reader much hint of the powerful writing within. On a better day, minus a hangover, when I was young-sharp, I'd'a shot higher. But maybe that's just me. Decide whether to purchase the book, by a read of half a random page; the sucker flows más suave than Carlos glides through las calles de la Nueva.

Las embras who couldn't get past Yunior's mujeriego to read Oscar Wao, can enjoy Carlos, however gray his half-deadness, which incidentally doesn't reek of morbidity. There's love, of a different kind because it's of a different world. Yemaya's.

The man paved the way for our spanglishes.

Here's una cosa I wonder about DanielJosé's work that Junot carried to the penultimate: the novel's boriqua Spanish is light, however great the sabor--sporadic, casi. Junot blew the lid off the exclusionary Anglo-English-ceiling with a major body-slam [yeah, so sue me for metaphorical mix] that USican audiences are ready for bestsellers profuse with nuestra lengua (or at least can pretend to be, entering gentry bistros with Oscar Wao tucked in their man-purse). I'd prefer more lengua boriqua from DanielJosé. Maybe he was testing the literary waters. Maybe that's simplemente his voice, at the moment. Yo no sé, but I'll ask.

DON'T buy or shoplift Half-Resurrection expecting Yvonne Navarro-horror. DanielJosé doesn't try to gore your groin or twang your things-under-the-bed neuroses. He shoots for lifting our sorry-ass, neglected literary intellects to invented realms of noir experience. Think--Yunior the immigrant wandering through women to find no truths, brutalized by colonialist reality, except in Carlos's case, supernatural navigation is what-we-do, and do fairly well. To plug myself, my Chicano protagonist got bounced around the walls of his alternate-world, trying to escape. Carlos is sophisticated enough to chill in his mundo and fulfill his mission. It's a wild, enjoyable, funk-ride to get there. I recommend you take it. Later, you might be lucky enough to see it on-screen.

This pic is an Anika Noni-reminder

One note about that. The film, the TV series, the whatever, might become the next blockbuster, but it will fail like a blind, Carlos-crippled m-f-er the further it meanders from DanielJosé's prose. Sure his dialogue rules, and, not that I know jack about movie directing, but por favor, Anika Noni, consider employing an off-screen narrator, a la Anthony Mendez of Jane the Virgin. En serio, Esa, that's where the art breathes.

A last great lesson I learned from my read of Half-Resurrection pertains to the mierda about genre. How especially Latino authors bitch and moan and wonder more where their work will be slotted. Chuck that. This novels tells me, "Dump the rules, slaughter the bookstores' shelves-by-genre and publishers' imprint guidelines. Write your art. Speak yourself. Give your readers what you want. Let the accolades fall as far from you as they care to. Then again, you might just be more than noticed, and then get hit with a goddamn-the-dude's-unfairly-lucky TV/movie option.

Best author profile ever

Not that I compare--yet--to DanielJosé, but Latin Post features an author profile on me that I believe you might enjoy, un montón, however strange some of the revelations. I'd appreciate your leaving comments there to justify my existence on its pages. With enough readers doing so, I might be asked for a return engagement. Gracias.

Palabras:  How Blogger & Author Rudy Ch. Garcia's Life Experiences Helped Form His Identity as Chicano Writer

Next This year, en Havana

Whoever reads this and owns a yacht, meet me in Matamoros and I'll bring the Negra Modelos and we'll head to La Isla, before all the turistas invade. Me tengo que ir, este año. Or, a lo menos, before me muero. ITM, if you're in AridZona next week, La Bloga's amigo Tom Miller is one of the panelists. Miller knows more about Cuba than anyone but Fidel. Wishing I could be in either locale:

Es todo, hoy,

RudyG, a.k.a., part-time cheerleader for Half-Resurrection, in case you missed that,

and Chicano fantasy author Rudy Ch. Garcia who creates equally strange worlds

Latino writers, workshops, books, art, anthology, calls for stories

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Matt de la Peña YA workshop. Quiñones, the journalist. Picacio's Lotería artwork. Kick-ass Latino noir. Will Big Book include Latino spec authors? PoC Time-travel anthology.

Matt de la Peña. YA & children's books author

I'll soon review Matt de la Peña's The Living, a plot-driven YA thriller that was total, Bam! Bam! Bam! If I were younger, I would've read Living in one night. Matt's one of the few spec-authors who feature Chicano protagonists in their books. In the meantime, here's a note from Matt about a Sept. workshop that will quickly fill up.

Advanced Writer Weekend Workshop:

Digging Deep: Exploring Narrative and Character Depth

with novelists Matt de la Peña and Margo Rabb

Sept. 24-27, 2015

Matt de la Peña is the author of six critically-acclaimed young adult novels (including Mexican WhiteBoy, The Living and The Hunted) and two award-winning picture books (A Nations Hope and Last Stop on Market Street).

A long weekend of lectures, craft exercises, and workshop in Austin, Texas. Matt's workshop is entitled: The Magic of Narrative Balance: Showing Patience and Restraint in Writing for Children and Young Adults.

"In this workshop we will discuss the author/reader relationship and reader psychology and the function of the narrator in novel writing. How and when do we back off and allow the characters to drive scenes and conversations? When do we the thrust the narrator forward? We will break it down using examples a wide range of published work."

If interested, you should apply today.

Sam Quiñones, journalist, novelist and ??

Primo journalist and chignón novelist Sam Quiñones wouldn't call himself a hero. It's such a cheap term now--used to describe over 1.6 million armed, U.S. employees--I won't call him that. But for years this Chicano has investigated, interviewed and written about Border issues that get Mexican journalists disappeared or assassinated. So, you pick the term you feel describes him. Quiñones recently sent us this about his article: Boxer Enriquez, the Mexican Mafia, LAPD – What’s the problem?

"There’s been a dust-up recently over a meeting that LAPD investigators held with Rene “Boxer” Enriquez, a former influential member of the Mexican Mafia prison gang, in which he explained to them the inner workings of his former crime pals.

"Why would you not want a former Mexican Mafia member to be educating police brass on the workings of one of the most influential, and little-known, institutions in Southern California life today? I’ve interviewed Boxer Enriquez extensively. That’s what he does, and, an articulate fellow, he does it pretty well. He’s co-author of the book, The Black Hand.

"Far from being a 'giant waste,' this seems to me to be essential work. The Mexican Mafia is Southern California’s first regional organized crime syndicate, one of the most important institutions in Southern California, particularly in communities with large Latino populations and gang problems." [Read the entire article here.]

"Also, the new Tell Your True Tale; East Los Angeles book is out, the product of a workshop I did with a great group of eight new writers. Their stories are again fantastic — about Albert Einstein in East L.A.; a Czech 'almost blind' boy growing up in a Communist boarding home; a young man going to Tijuana to help a deported friend return; a woman on her deathbed remembering the last time she saw her kids; and a girl on her way to Mexico, a child bride. Check it out, on sale at Amazon.com for only $5.38 hardcopy or $2.99 as an ebook.

"My next Tell Your True Tale workshop begins Saturday, Jan. 31, at 10:30 a.m. at the East Los Angeles Public Library, in the Chicano Resource Center. I hope to soon expand them, with the county library's support, to Compton, South L.A. and elsewhere."

John Picacio, spec-lit artista

Two weeks ago, I wrote about a "taste of what is happening in the world of Latino speculative writers." The opportunities for Latino spec continue, like from Chicano artist John Picacio, a San Anto, Tex. homie who went spec-viral.

Picacio won the Hugo Award for Best Professional Artist in 2012 and 2013 for his illustration in science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His accolades include the World Fantasy Award, the Locus Award, five Chesley Awards, and two International Horror Guild Awards, all in the Artist category. I have his Calavera poster in my living room and wish I could cover my rincón with the others, like the Sirena below. Here's news from Juan:

Many people have requested that I make my Loteria Grande cards available for online sale -- and to produce new ones. I worked until the last day of 2014 to produce new artwork and cards -- and that last push has now paid off because they're now available! Supplies are limited.        

Here's purchase details for The Loteria Grande Once Set of eleven cards, only available until Wed., Feb. 4th. I'll be actively posting on my new blog, the Lone Boy website, and here's the first post with more details on today's product announcement.

In Loteria We Trust,

John Picacio

Daniel José Older, NY Latino spec author

For years, Daniel José Older has been rising in the spec-fiction world, getting  stories published in Strange Horizons, Flash Fiction, Crossed Genres, and The Innsmouth Free Press, even though others have ignored him. Whatever kind of Latino he is, the dude's first novel is going to burn up U.S. spec literature, much like Junot Díaz scorched "literary" fiction with his novels.

I mentioned him two weeks ago and am now halfway through his Half-Resurrection Blues, the first in his Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series. I can already say: You. Should. Read. It. It's more than horror or noir. More than spec mystery. And definitely Latino. I don't how he performs in public, but if he shows up in Colo., I'll be there. His first novel is one page after another of 21st Century prose, and not regular "horror." I'll leave the rest for later, but here's a note from the writer that Publishers Weekly hailed as a “rising star of the genre, striking and original.”

"I'm so excited to announce the release of my first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues, about a half-dead hitman in Brooklyn trying to uncover the secret behind his mysterious life and death. Order it here." You can read about him.

How many Latino stories by us will The Big Book of Science Fiction contain?

Best-Book lists and anthologies of "the best" repeatedly come out with few or zero Latino authors. All we can do on our end, besides write great stories, is jump on opportunities that appear. Whether the gate-keepers let us in is of course another story. But here's an invitation from Jeff VanderMeer and Ann VanderMeer. They are editing The Big Book of Science Fiction for Vintage and are soliciting suggestions until the end of March for a massive anthology of more than 500,000 words, scheduled for 2016 publication.

"The Big Book of Science Fiction will contain short stories originally published during the period 1900 to 2000, any work of fiction under 10,000 words. Works under 6,000 words will have the best chance. We define “science fiction” very broadly, from realistic hard SF all the way to surreal material with a science fiction flavor. This includes what might be called “science fiction myths.” However, we do not define SF as including traditional stories about ghosts, zombies, werewolves, vampires, unicorns, etc.

"We are very interested in international SF originally written in English and in existing translations of international SF originally published in a language other than English. We will commission a limited number of new translations and would love recommendations if you read in a language other than English and have encountered a mind-blowing story. We have translator resources in place already."

If you're a Latino who's written such stories, get the word out to your fans. Latinos' stories will not make the cut if the readers do not suggest any. Check out the details.

PoC Time Travel anthology

La Bloga received a request to spread this news:

Co-editor, Heidi Durrow (NYT best-selling author of The Girl Who Fell From the Sky) and I are putting together an anthology about Time Travel. Have you ever wanted to time travel? It sounds fun, unless you're from an under-represented community and then it might be not only NOT fun, but downright dangerous. Imagine being Japanese American during World War II, mixed during slavery or in the Jim Crow South, or LGBTQ, well, at any point in our history.

We are looking for writers to submit proposals for short stories (5–10 thousand words) featuring a character from an under-represented community, traveling to some time period before this one. And that's where you come in. We were hoping you could help spread the word to all of your writers and contacts. Please send proposals or questions to: Time.Traveling.4.All.of.Us ALA gmail.com. Deadline for proposals is Feb. 14, 2015. Details on the flyer.

Sincerely,

Koji Steven Sakai [Koji’s debut novel, Romeo & Juliet Vs. Zombies, will be released by the fantasy imprint of Zharme Publishing Press in 2015.

Alfredo Vea – un chisme

An Internet rumor going around regarding spec genres: "I just read a manuscript by Alfredo Vea that's going to blow the roof off that subject when Oklahoma University Press publishes the novel."

Es todo, hoy, but debe ser suficiente,

RudyG, not a rising Chicano spec author, apparently more like, floating