Mona Alvarado Frazier on Writing, Winning, and Feeling Seen

 Guest Post: Mona Alvarado Frazier

 

When I wrote A Bridge Home, I didn’t imagine it would make its way to an award panel, let alone be honored 

as a co-winner of the Paterson Prize for Young Readers and the 2025 Southwest Books of the Year – YA. I 

didn’t even know it had been submitted. My publisher, Arte Público Press at the University of Houston, 

often enters titles into award consideration without notifying authors. So, learning about this recognition 

came as a surprise—one that made me pause and reflect on how far this journey has taken me.

A Bridge Home is my second YA novel, but this world of writing and publishing still feels relatively new. 

My first book, The Garden of Second Chances, was published in May 2023 and was met with unexpected 

acclaim. It received a gold medal for Best Latino-Focused YA Book and a silver medal for Most 

Inspirational. Before A Bridge Home was even released, it received a starred review from the American 

Library Association—an honor that felt like a light guiding the path ahead.

Being retired from my day job has made a significant difference in my creative process. I’m an early riser, 

and the quiet morning hours hold a special kind of magic for me. My writing day begins with a few 

stretches, a half pot of coffee, and some foamed soy milk. As I settle in with my cup, my rescue cat, 

Selena, tells me it’s time for her to go outside. Once she’s content, I carry my coffee to my bedroom, light 

a candle, and write in my pajamas. On a good day, I’ll finish three solid hours of work before stepping into 

the rest of my day. It’s a rhythm that grounds me. I feel out of sorts if I’m not writing Monday through 

Saturday.

Despite the recognition, my writing process hasn’t changed. I don’t chase trends or worry about what 

might win awards. I write what I need to say and what I wish I had read as a teen—stories about identity, 

injustice, hope, and resilience. Stories that center on and explore Mexican American/Chicana heritage. 

My audience is anyone who finds themselves in those pages, whether they’re thirteen or seventy. But I 

always begin by writing for the younger version of myself—the teen girl longing to see her world reflected 

in a book.

Working with Arte Público Press has been a gift. Though small in size, their team is mighty and 

mission-driven. I especially admire the women on the marketing team and feel fortunate to work with them.

With only about twenty books published a year, they are selective and it is competitive. The incoming 

director is Dr. Gabriela Baez, PhD, and I have had the opportunity to hear about her vision for APP’s 

future.

My next manuscript is in the hands of three literary agencies, and it’s a novel I’m excited about: a 

contemporary YA novel that blends magical realism with the Mexican healing tradition of Curanderismo.

Though my name may not be widely known among the general public in Oxnard—perhaps because local 

print media has yet to feature my press releases—my work has found its way to local librarians and fellow 

writers across Oxnard and Ventura. While the city does not have a dedicated bookstore, Heritage Coffee 

(@heritagecoffee805), in the historic Heritage Square downtown, carries my books. Being born and raised 

in Oxnard, California, is something I hold close. It’s where my roots are, and I carry that with pride. I know

my mother, family, and friends are proud of what I’ve written—and their unwavering support means 

everything to me.

Writing has become not only a way to express myself but also a way to give back—to offer stories that 

affirm, challenge, and heal. While I may be the only writer in my family for now, my daughter and I have 

talked about co-writing a novel together—one centered on a young protagonist with an “invisible” 

disability. I imagine us telling that story one day, side by side.

In the end, awards are wonderful and affirming. But what keeps me going is something more personal: 

the ritual of coffee and candles, the silence of the morning, and the hope that somewhere, a young reader 

will find themselves in the pages I’ve written and feel seen.

 

 

 

Thank you Mona for this thoughtful article. 

Mona's website is www.alvaradofrazier.com Her IG is m.alvaradofrazier. Her books can be ordered from Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, and Amazon. 

A Railroad Runs Through It

Review: Mona Alvarado Frazier. A Bridge Home. Houston: Piñata Books Arte Publico Press. 2024. ISBN: 978-1-55885-995-1

Michael Sedano

It's 1972, the Chicano Movement has found its way to a nondescript small California town named San Solano. Railroad tracks divide the town. Raza and black families struggle to make ends meet on their side of town. Seventeen year old Jacqueline Bravo attends St. Bernadette High School, on the anglo side of town. 

Jacqui's a good student whose dream is winning a scholarship to attend UCLA next year. She won't be able to apply for the scholarship if St. Bernadette's transfers Jacqui to public school because she's hundreds of dollars behind on tuition. 

Tuition, rent, bills, five people in a one-bathroom house, a father killed in Vietnam two years before, add incredible stress to the teenager's tortured life. Jacqui perseveres with maturity forced upon her by economics and by having to be big sister mother-substitute to a boy-hungry 13 year old sister (who already gets hickies) and younger twin brothers.

This is the tapestry Mona Alvarado Frazier weaves to entangle her characters in a plot that probably mirrors the lives of young adult readers whom Frazier's story will inspire and motivate to do like Jacqui does in the exciting final chapters. With Jacqui's example, kids won't fall into the traps Jacqui gets herself into. In a sense, Jacqui has no option other than sneak around and take a job behind her mother's back. Jacqui's poorly considered choice is working in a sleazy restaurant-bar. In no time, Jacqui is in over her head running drugs and collecting payments.

To her credit, Jacqui doesn't know what's going on. Catholic school girls can be sheltered from the real world, especially when mother detests the word "chicano" and warns off her eldest child from those people.

Those people are the bridge Jacqui needs to find voice, direction, and salvation. Readers will thrill at the final chapters of Frazier's 43 short chapters, 290 page, gem of a YA novel from Arte Publico's Piñata imprint.

How does a kid find success when repressive nuns clamp down on individuality, practice public shaming of kids whose families fall behind on tuition, and go into high dudgeon over feminism? Jacqui can't go it alone, but that's Jacqui's method. Readers see how wrong it all can turn out, and here's one of Alvarado Frazier's more valuable author's messages: you can't do it alone. You need help.

When Jacqui learns this lesson she awakens her entire community, Mother included, and the movimiento's message hits the streets. El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido.

I won't delve into the finer points of the novel's plot and character development because there's so much fun for readers feeling the tension build as the plot and characters wind their way to an entirely engaging and satisfying climax. It's only for Jacqui, but there's probably good news for her peers. And the community might get that bridge spanning the railroad tracks.

One significant change I'd like to see: Piñata must devote a lot more attention to editing out the novel's several apostrophe-as-plural errors. It's not a minor flaw when YA readers are soaking in a wonderful story filled with important lessons about character, desperation, honesty, academics. Ineffective editing blinds the kids to effective spelling and perpetuates inattention to detail.

Mona Alvarado Frazier clearly is hitting her stride as a writer and author of YA literature. A Bridge Home, her second novel, marks a high point in a promising future.

You can order publisher-direct at https://artepublicopress.com/browse-and-order-books/ or ask your local indie bookseller to get your copies of this $15.95 gem.

Labor (of Love) Day: Special Edition

The Things We Missed

michael sedano

Last week, La Bloga-Tuesday shared a foto essay of a pair of extraordinary events. Any community can expand its literary horizons while discovering a hidden well of poets and gente who write. Here's a link to last week's La Bloga-Tuesday. Please enjoy it, as well as these vital additions to that week's celebration of cultura, poesía, and good people all around

 Altadena Laureates: The Fotos We Missed

Altadena Library Staff, far left and far right.

Altadena Poets Laureate

front: Teresa Mae Chuc, Thelma T. Reyna

back: Nikki Winslow, Library. Hazel Clayton Harrison. Carla R. Sameth. Linda Dove. Morgan Gaskell (special guest poet). Sehba Sarwar and Lester Graves Lennon, Poets Laureate 2024-2026. Ashley Watts, Library.

The unidentified library staff member won praise from the grateful poets for her wonderful assistance in everything from moving chairs to adjusting microphones. Mi'ja, we'll get your name. Note: Ashley Watts, Assistant Library Director.

Women Who Submit: The Essay We Missed

Editor's Note: La Bloga-Tuesday last week shared portraits of the WWS writers reading their own stuff at historic Campo de Cahuenga located at the back range of the Hollywood Hills. Independent writer, Paula Arechiga, attended the reading. La Bloga is happy to share Archiga's report of the event.

CHICANA WRITERS & COMMUNITY BEARERS

By Paula Arechiga

 

Gathered near the anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium - Aug. 29, 1970. It’s going to be 54 years this Thursday. Even at 36 years of age and having been raised throughout LA my whole life, this history, this lineage, is still only a handful of facts. Cherríe Moraga, Gloria Anzaldúa, Ruben Salazar, Walk Outs, Chicano Power, Brown Berets. Maybe my mind collapses the Chicano Movement with the Chicano Moratorium. This is why events like this are so important. They help us root ourselves into our collective memory and help us orient ourselves on how we got here.

 

Miranda McCord

We were greeted by the Director of the museum, Miranda McCord who thanks us for attending and the panelists. Xochitl opens us up with a land acknowledgement and does not shy away from the truth of how this land came under US possession. The whole event is a harmonious song of remembering, facing, embracing, reclaiming. 

 

Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera is our first Chicana writer at the podium and we’re transported to the home of 5 young primas who “for the first time in never”, their spring breaks land on the same week - from her book “STORIES ALL OUR OWN”. But their plans for Disneyland, movies and adventures are changed when chicken pox infects the clan. The story of the chicken-pox covered primas puts the biggest smile on my face, it’s so wholesome, silly and familiar.

 

Annalicia Aguilar

Roberta Martinez, Mona Alvarado, Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo

Xochitl introduces the next Chicana writer, the youngest among them, Annalicia Aguilar. She reads us works from her upcoming book “Broken but Holding” and her deliveries are felt deeply. One of her pieces she reads to us is “Weapons in the Womb”, the image of pregnant dolphins self aborting when captured comes to mind. 

 

The next Chicana writer Xochitl introduces is Mona Alvardo Frazier and she reads us two sections from her 2nd book “A Bridge Home”. We’re transported to a classroom where young latine students are watching a film of the Chicano Moratorium and they’re shaken to their core at how the event ends in violence at the hands of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. I feel the anger in my body activate as a new perspective of that fateful day weaves itself into my psyche. The internal mantra goes, “Our stories are so powerful.” The next thought, “No wonder the majority of shows for us and about us get canceled - Gentefied, This Foo and Gordita Chronicles come to mind.

 

If my memory serves me correct, Tisha Marie Reichle-Aguilera comes up and introduces her Writer Wife, Xochitl who reads from her 2nd book “INCANTATION: LOVE POEMS FOR BATTLE SITES”. One of the last poems she reads to us is dedicated to the children of Gaza and all the children. There’s a heaviness in realizing while we are gathered in community, others around the world fight for their existence, their humanity.

 

Xochitl introduces the last of the Chicana writers, Roberta H. Martinez and she read us a number of shorter pieces. Before she starts though, she tells us one word “Vote” and begins to read a piece about the 4th of July. I loved the way she embodied the different voices of her pieces. 

 

Sometimes when I’m immersed in an experience, it’s hard to commit all the details to memory but what never fails me are the feelings. This gathering left me feeling  full, muy contenda, like I had just sat with tias, primas y hermanas for the last two hours and they shared their full selves with us. It felt like a returning home, to a remembering. It only strengthens my belief that more gatherings such as this need to happen. I’m grateful to a fellow community organizer who shared about this event or else I would’ve missed it and what a loss that would’ve been.

 

 

    

Plague-Time Reading, Though It Didn't Start Out Like That

Review: Gris Muñoz. Coatlicue Girl. FlowerSong Press, McAllen, TX. 2019.
ISBN 978-1-733-8092-4-5. 
Publisher update: The publisher's name and link are now as shown and here's the link.

Michael Sedano

Coatlicue Girl excites a person at the prospect of what’s inside a book that looks like this: that 2-tongued title, the graphic of a calavera-faced woman ambiguously holding a mantilla at her waist, a Zapatista visage between her breasts, a birthing sculpture at her feet, the author’s name, Gris Muñoz…then I notice those pequeñas letters saying -Poems and Stories- and I smile. Check out the Title Page to see what tickled me. The book’s formal name, its ISBN name, is Coatlicue Girl. A Bilingual Collection of Poems and Stories.

You know that old question, “How do I know it’s Chicana Literature?” Here's an example of what makes Cuatlicue Girl genuinely Chicanx Lit. Chicana Literature. Chicano Literature.

Our gente are cool on the outside, and if we need to be, todo formal and adapted to exogenous manners on the inside. Like this book shows its professional manners and appropriate behavior, an Introduction by Luis Urrea, and the author's preface, plus an epigram by ire'ne lara silva.

Coatlicue Girl actually begins on page 11, and that’s where I’d start reading, skip the preliminaries until you’ve made up your own mind by allowing the work and the author to speak for herself.

Selves. There’s the English Coatlicue Girl, there’s the Mexican. The English speaker does most of the talking and acts all tough with titles like “Chingona.” But sabes que? She’s a sensitive soul, the little girl in church who can’t sit still, whose fears and emotions mirror personal trauma. Readers find this vulnerable girl wants not to chingar but nurture.

Selves. In "Indian Clay", her persona lives a complicated story about beauty, benign stereotypy, cryptic irony, and horror. The little girl is gulled by a benignly ignorant teacher into believing she could fashion valuable art from dirt the woman called “Indian clay.” The woman stands in front of a mirror, gulled by standards of beauty. She dons a clay mask that promises it controls wrinkles. Her white face in the mirror sets off the episode. She’s a cutter, that kind of an episode. Coatlicue Girl scissors chunks of flesh from her eyebrows, painting her face with dripping blood. And the woman remembers the girl sitting Indian style being taught that she can use clay to create beauty over many moons.

La Mexicana self, the Spanish-speaker self, has a lot of confidence and speaks in stronger voices. For instance, in “Latas,” she tells some man that he uses bodies like he opens cans and he’s still hungry. In "Fui.tu.nopal", some man is getting told-off good, he can leave because she is who she is. In Spanish.

There’s an interesting connection between the poem, “Fui. tu. nopal,” and the closing story. She says in Spanish that they told the fellow she doesn’t drink much water. It’s a metaphor there, for a woman’s needs and a man’s abilities to fulfill her. The final story offers the author’s explorations of dystopic fiction, the woman converted medically into a nopal so she doesn’t drink much water.

Unintentionally, Muñoz hits on a theme in “Sempervivum” that gives the story, and the collection, immediacy for plague-time reading beyond being such a readable enjoyable book. The character was converted when it looked like earth was running out of water and people had to adapt. The answer was turning people into xerophytes.

Beyond plague-time reading, the stories and poems of Coatlicue Girl offer a full helping of subjects contemporary readers do and talk about in their lives. The author’s reflections on single motherhood, sex and lovers, men and women partners, living with poverty, echo experiences shared by readers.

Because Coatlcue Girl arrives in collection format, readers or book groups can take a single story and delve into the resources Gris Muñoz calls upon to load her stories and poems with weight. There's a lot of "I really like this one" in the book.  "Speck (a performance poem)" is a highlight that will touch every reader's experience. 

Muñoz visualizes swirling dust motes floating in sunbeams, offering perspective of the persona as one of those dust motes settling, then a quantuum leap, someone is wiping dust off patent leather shoes. Then the Virgin Mary comes off the wall smelling of urine and frankincense and she goes off hand-in-hand with the persona finding liberation. 

FlowerSong Press is making a splash in publishing. The book itself has been manufactured to a high standard that will withstand multiple readings and hold-opens without coming apart at the seams. The cover has a plasticized coating that gives a luxurious feel to the thing itself. Here’s a link to the publisher’s ordering system to get copies for youself and friends of Gris Muñoz’ Coatlicue Girl. $16.00 plus shipping.

Note: Published as “FlowerSong Books” but now FlowerSong Press. Link. https://www.flowersongpress.com


UPDATE: You can order writer-direct at this link.

A Decade in the Life of a Chicana Author

Melinda Palacio

2010 Santa Barbara

2010: La Bloga Newbie
One of the best things about the past decade is finding my voice on La Bloga. La Bloga was the first online journal for Latino authors that I followed. This Chicana author was happy to have found a home here. It was a cold AWP conference for writers and writers programs in Denver where Manuel Ramos asked me to join. I remember being a little nervous about having something to say every Friday. The fact that I could write about anything or simply put up some photos made the decision easy. Why not? Eventually, Ramos came back to the fold and we share Fridays. This same year, Michael Sedano introduced the Festival de Flor y Canto de Atzlan reunion to USC, its archives span from 1973-2010.

2010 is also the year my first book was published. Folsom Lockdown, winner of the Kulupi Press Sense of Place award. The small chapbook represented a milestone. I visited my father in Folsom Prison the year before and over one weekend began writing the poems that would make up the chapbook. My father is now out of prison and we are less estranged than we were when I first went to visit him in 2009. The past decade has included more publications in journals and magazines and hundreds of rejections. If you want to be a writer, you need to celebrate the rejections and not let them create roadblocks to your goals.

2011
I took a trip with my sister and friend to Panama, where I met some of my father's relatives. Since I didn't grow up with my father, Panama was a place I never thought I'd visit, a mythical place that belonged to the world of my father. I'm glad my sister (whom I also did not grow up with) encouraged me to go.

Later in 2011, my first full-length book was published. Thanks to my connection to La Bloga's Daniel Olivas, who published a short story of mine in 2008 in Latinos in Lotusland, Arizona State University published my novel, Ocotillo Dreams, also found a literary home at ASU's Bilingual Press. Although the novel about immigration in Arizona is fiction, it was certainly a dream come true to see my book in print by a University Press.

2012
I was on a publishing roll the beginning of the decade. Tía Chucha Press published my first full-length poetry book. Earlier in 2007, when I was a PEN USA Emerging Voices fellow, I had the pleasure of getting to know Luis J. Rodriguez. I was more than thrilled when he accepted my manuscript for How Fire Is a Story, Waiting. Ocotillo Dreams was still in play as it won a PEN Oakland Josefine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature and the Mariposa Award for Best First Book at the International Latino Book Awards. I also had the pleasure of going to Cuba.

2013
I was happy to mentor students at the University of Arkansas in Monticello through their online MFA Program. Working with students online certainly had its challenges. I much prefer a one-on-one interaction, but I'd like to do more. Students have a way of teaching their instructors and mentors new skills. In 2013, How Fire Is a Story, Waiting was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Poetry Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize.

2014
The main thing I remember about 2014 is breaking my leg. If you ever get the urge to run down three flights of stairs carrying a heavy bag of books in each hand and wearing mule shoes with no straps, don't do it. The thought of the four months I spent in bed and that lighting pain moment of realizing my foot was facing the wrong direction sends shivers down my spine. Thank you Southern Orthopedic Specialists in New Orleans for putting me back together. I'm lucky I can walk, run, jump, and dance again. A positive attitude saved me from myself. It's easy to become depressed when your life is upended. I continued to read, write, and enter work for contests and publication. A poem that I wrote about my broken leg made it into the Coiled Serpents Anthology and I was a finalist in the Rita Dove Poetry Award and the Faulkner Wisdom Competition.

2015
With my recovery complete, I was free to jump back into writing and speaking. What I remember most about that year is having a poem chosen by the Academy of American Poets, the Praying Tree. In 2014, I broke my leg and in 2015 the house broke and we had some flooding that led to a long remodel. Sometimes it's hard to shake off an unfortunate streak, but at least the proverbial silver lining came in form of fixing up the house to how I would design it. Thieves also broke into the house that year, but only stole Steve's jars of quarters and one strand of pearls.

2016
One of the worst years was the year my grandmother died. I spent a month taking care of her before she decided that she had had enough of this earth. I remember very little else. I started and abandoned several projects. I didn't know it at the time, but eventually I would create something from the tragedy in the form of the poem, What the Birds Know, and a song, Bird Forgiveness for the project that would eventually become a book. Grief is never easy. When my mother died in 1994, I thought I wouldn't be long for this earth myself. Yet, I have survived my mother and grandmother, as most people do.

2017
A year after my grandmother's death, Steve surprised me with a trip to Tahiti. Tahiti has always been at the top of my bucket list and I fell in love with the place and the people. The Spring trip brought so much joy and a welcome reunion with our car. A month before the trip, our Honda Green Element was stolen from the driveway. Steve and I gave up on ever getting the car back. While we were at LAX, about to take off for Tahiti, a call came in from a towing garage saying that they had found and towed the car. Lucky for us, we were able to retrieve it when we returned from our trip.

2018 was the year Steve and I celebrated ten years of marriage. I also became obsessed with playing guitar. In November, Steve bought me a Martin guitar for my birthday. Music also helps me roll with the punches and all those rejection slips. For every publication, fellowship and grant application, dozens of rejection notes follow, not to mention the ones that don't bother to let you know you didn't make the cut. Thanks to Andrea Watson at 3 Taos Press who published my poetry book Bird Forgiveness. This is the book that has its own theme song. I've since written a few more songs, but the Bird Forgiveness  theme song will forever have a special place as being my first song. Steve told me I should write songs because I'm a poet. I didn't believe I had the ability to write a song until the melody popped into my head. Another highlight was our trip to Ireland; there's so much more to say about all the places I was fortunate enough to visit this past decade, including the banana festival in Kentucky and Memphis on the way back.

The end of 2019 was last week. This is the year I think I've finally finished my next novel. Only an acceptance of publication will tell me that it is indeed finished. A wise person said that books are never finished only abandoned. Sometimes your editor takes the manuscript from your critical hands. I'm still looking for such an editor. I've written more poems, songs, and stories.

Meeting students who see themselves in my writing and who thank me for sharing my work is one of the most rewarding experiences. It fuels me during those dry spells of rejections. Recently, I've had the pleasure of also sharing my music along with my poetry and fiction. Here's to the next decade, and thanks to my online ukulele teacher for asking about my accomplishments in the last decade. Did I mention I started learning the ukulele online? I'm also taking singing lessons. There's so much more that happened this past decade, but my computer is running out of juice and I'm on the road, my eyes beg for sleep. Cheers and happy new year. Know your voice and vote count.

2019 Monterey 

How To Be Your Own P.R. Machine

Melinda Palacio

Photo by Anthony Posey

Sometimes writers wonder if their pages will make their way into a bound book for sale. If you're working at it every day, chances are your moment in the sun will come. When it does, be prepared. It's better to err on an optimistic side and start early than to be scrambling days, months, or heaven forbid, years after your book is old news. Here are ten tips to help you give your book a fighting chance in today's market.

1. Start a tour travel fund. Buy one less fancy food item at the grocery store and skip the extra pair of shoes that would match that one odd-colored dress in your closet. Whatever it is you occasionally splurge on, save it. Even if you sign books in town where friends and family live, you still need to get there and you will  incur more travel costs than you might think. Also not all venues will offer you honorariums and cover your travel expenses. You could choose to only settle for venues that will fund your book tour, but chances are there's one town where you aunt lives that has a great audience who always buys books and the events coordinator will make a good case for you doing the event without additional compensation to you.

2. Prepare a professional biography. Your bio should be in the same folder as your photo. Most likely, places will ask for your bio and photo. Keep a folder handy in your computer and in your email ready to go for moments when you are away from your desk, but have access to your phone or tablet. Prepare 3 versions of your professional biography, a short-short (50-words or less), a medium 150 word-bio, and a full page, listing important places you've been published in, books, and awards. The longer bio can also include details about your day job, home location, and hobbies. Keep information about your cute pets and children to a minimum.

3. Have a good photo ready. The minute you feel happy with your hair, your outfit, your acne-free face, take a photo. A selfie will do in a pinch, but professional hi-res photo will be even better. While on your book tour, newspapers and the local venue hosting you will want a photograph of your  head (head shot) to promote your event.

4. Prepare a one-liner or tag line for your book. Bookstores need help selling your book. For my upcoming book, Bird Forgiveness, I came up with : ecopoetry about diversity, love, and how migration transforms the expectations of what Latinx poetry should look like. Be creative, but true to your book.

5. Prepare excerpts of your work for your presentations and book signings. Reading your own work well will help sell books. Practice your poems or a short chapter or scene from your book. Memorize most of it. Engage the audience. Look up and don't stare at your pages the entire time. La Bloga's Michael Sedano is an excellent reading and performance coach.

6. You Tube-it. An extension of your reading preparation and a handy tool to show potential venues is your You Tube performance. Prepare your scene, poem, or book trailer and put it up on You Tube. Tell your friends. You can connect these videos to your website and social media pages.

7. The videos bring me to my next suggestion: a website, get one, make one, fake one. If the idea of making and maintaining a website causes night sweats and teeth grinding, it might be a good idea to hire someone to produce an easy to update website. A website is a static place where you can park information, articles, reviews, and tell people where they might see you on your book tour.

8. Reviews. Start thinking of places or people who might review your book. This must be done before the book comes out. If you wait too long, your new book will be old news and reviewers would have moved on to the next shiny new book. It's great if Terrance Hayes from the New York Times introduces one of your poems; the reviewers might come to you. But if he doesn't see your work, you and your publisher will have your work cut out for you.

9. Teamwork. Bookstores can selective about who will make it worth their while to keep the shop and staff beyond closing time. If you want to present your book in a town you've never been to, team up with local author. Chances are the local author will have a good relationship with their independent bookstore or with their city's colleges and universities. This is a great way for someone who is starting and for a more experienced author to help each other out. Thanks to Catherine Ryan Hyde, we have this beautiful expression, Pay It Forward.

10. Last, as Juan Felipe Herrera would say, gather your tortillas. Make sure your contacts are all in one database. If you're anything like me, you have cards and pieces of paper, and scattered thank you notes, but you have neglected to transcribe those emails and contacts into one single database.. I've noticed that more organized people ask folks to enter their contact information into a phone or tablet. In hindsight, I wish I would have done that. For now, if you haven't heard from me, but I've promised to let you know about my latest literary endeavors, it's because I've lost your card and have yet to enter it into my computer.

The more prepared you are, the easier all this PR or public relations or getting the word out about your book will be. Keep the faith. Your day will come and when it does, your book deserves a more organized you. Do as I say and not as I do is  the old yarn. After the last three books, Folsom Lockdown, Ocotillo Dreams and How Fire Is a Story, Waiting, I should have learned. 

A Chicano novelist and his literary works – David Bowles

One characteristic of mainstream Anglo-American literature is separation of literary works vs genre works. Literary is considered superior, more scholarly and artistic, while genre--also called speculative lit, including sci-fi, fantasy, horror and more--is considered something less. Think of it in terms of an Anglo vs POC parallel.

Certain authors and their works have superseded the arbitrary separation belittling speculative literature, like the English author, Neil Gaiman. While Chicano and Latino authors have been producing literature that belies biases against speculative lit, today La Bloga focuses on tejano David Bowles.

The American Library Association recently selected Bowles's YA novel, The Smoking Mirror, as a 2016 Pura Belpré Honor Book.* The award recognizes writing that “best portrays, affirms, and celebrates the Latino cultural experience in an outstanding work of literature for children and youth.” The committee stated: “Bowles creates an action-packed story based on Aztec and Mayan mythology while capturing the realities of life in contemporary South Texas and Mexico.”

Note that his book was not honored in a sci-fi or fantasy category; the Belpré was given for "an outstanding work of literature." Period. People who choose not to read or get this book for their kids because it's not "mainstream," are missing the point of the Belpré award--"Outstanding literature."

Carol Garza character

Bowles's works go beyond this award-winning book. He writes reviews for the establishment press, writes books of poetry, translations of Náhuatl, history, folklore, research and other prose. You can read some of this below or on his website, but the point is that a speculative lit book was penned by a scholar whose literary credentials are wide-encompassing and growing.

Even if you're a Chicano who never liked genre lit, your kids are going to see Hunger Games, The Martian, Harry Potter movies and possibly reading the same. Consider getting them copies of the Garza Twins books, and other books by Chicano and Latino authors that have heroes as brown as them, as Chicano as them, as literarily worthy as the Anglo authors of the films mentioned.

The other twin, Johnny

Synopsis of The Smoking Mirror: "Carol and Johnny Garza are 12-year-old twins whose 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." (Garza Twins • Book One)

Synopsis of A Kingdom Beneath the Waves: The Garza family’s Christmas vacation in Mexico is cut short by the appearance of Pingo, one of the elfish tzapame. The news is grim: a rogue prince from an ancient undersea kingdom is seeking the Shadow Stone, a device he will use to flood the world and wipe out humanity. Now Carol and Johnny must join a group of merfolk and travel into the deepest chasms of the Pacific Ocean to stop the prince and his monstrous army with their savage magic. (Garza Twins • Book Two)

Other books by Bowles:

Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley (The History Press, Sept. 2016)

Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas (2015)

The Smoking Mirror (March 2015)

Strange Texas Tales That Never Die, Volumes 1-4 (2014)

Creature Feature: 13 Frightening Folktales of the Rio Grande Valley (2013)

Flower, Song, Dance: Aztec and Mayan Poetry (2013)—winner of the Soeurette Diehl Fraser Award for Best Translation

Mexican Bestiary (2012)—with Noé Vela.

About David Bowles: "A product of an ethnically diverse family with Latino roots, I have lived most of my life in the Río Grande Valley of south Texas, where I teach at the University of Texas. Recipient of awards from the American Library Association, Texas Institute of Letters and Texas Associated Press, I have written several books.

"Additionally, my work has been published in venues including Rattle, Strange Horizons, Apex Magazine, Metamorphoses, Translation Review, Concho River Review, Huizache, Axolotl, The Thing Itself, Eye to the Telescope and James Gunn’s Ad Astra."

For more info on the author and his works: http://davidbowles.us/category/books/author/

PS: it's also David's birthday today, FYI.

* Belpré recipients are selected by a committee of the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC), a division of the American Library Association, and the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-speaking (REFORMA).