Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Yvette Marquez

Editor's note: this is the 14th in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Yvette Marquez draws culinary inspiration from her grandmother's old-world northern Mexican recipes and her mother's comforting south of the border home-style dishes. Though she writes primarily about her culinary adventures on her blog, MuyBuenoCookbook.com, she also contributes recipes to Betty Crocker and Parade.com. Her cookbook Muy Bueno: Three Generations of Authentic Mexican Flavor (Hippocrene Books), written with her sister Veronica and mother Evangelina, was published in October 2012. Besides her blog, Yvette has also been featured in Latina Magazine, and the websites of The Pioneer Woman, SAVEUR, Siempre Mujer, and Gourmet, among others. She lives in Colorado with her husband and two children. You can follow her on Twitter @muybuenocooking.

Words about food

I was a fulltime graphic designer and mother – always creative, but always working for someone else. I loved to entertain and I loved to cook for anyone who visited.

One summer my mother was visiting me and we cooked a lot of the recipes I grew up eating. Recipes my late grandma would make for us, favorite recipes my mom would make, and it inspired me to develop my own Latin-inspired recipes. I started writing down every recipe and I took lots of photos (not professional by any means). Then my 8-year-old daughter gave us the idea to write a cookbook. At first we were going to self-publish, but luckily got the nerve to send a proposal and our manuscript to a publisher. They loved our three-generation Mexican cookbook idea and especially loved the photos that were captured by my friend Jeanine who is a professional photographer.

Fast forward a couple of years later and we have a published cookbook and now I am self employed. I still love graphic design and even designed our cookbook and blog. I also am a full-time food writer for Parade Magazine and develop recipes for Betty Crocker, KitchenAid, and Clabber Girl just to name a few.

When my grandmother passed away in 2004 I was afraid her recipes would die too – thankfully my mother knew how to make every one of her recipes. And together, with my sister, we co-wrote a beautiful cookbook that not only shares recipes but the memories and stories that go along with them. It is a delicious family love story that I am so proud to leave behind for my children and future generations.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Teresa Jusino

Editor's note: this is the 12th in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Teresa Jusino is a New Yorker who  lives and writes in Los Angeles. Her pop culture criticism has been featured on websites like Tor.com, GirlGamer.com, Al Dia, ChinaShopMag.com, PinkRaygun.com, Newsarama, and PopMatters.com. 2012 saw Teresa’s work appear in two Doctor Who anthologies: Chicks Unravel Time (Mad Norwegian Press) and Outside In (ATB Publishing), and she was also published in Mad Norwegian’s Whedonistas. Her fiction has appeared in Crossed Genres, and she is currently writing a webseries based on the short film, Incredible Girl, by Celia Aurora de Blas, which is coming in 2014.

Writing as escape

I got my first, and only, detention in the eighth grade. In English class. For writing too much.

I was working on some story the way I always did in every class — furtively, with a notebook hidden underneath whatever book we were supposed to be looking at, taking passes at writing words during a lull in class discussion, or when my teacher wasn’t looking, or when someone was asking a question…

I was good at listening to what the teacher was talking about and writing short fiction at the same time. I got straight “A’s” in English. Lay off.

In any case, I was working on some story or other and one of my best friends was sitting next to me and wanted to read it. So, I passed it to her at the exact moment my teacher decided to look in our direction. Thinking we were passing trivial schoolgirl notes as opposed to the literary genius that was actually taking place, Ms. Lind gave us both detentions.

Even honor students get in trouble sometimes. Still, it’s pretty funny that the one time I did get in trouble at school was for sharing writing in English class. That’s how big a nerd I was. I wrote so much that I got in trouble for it.

But that moment captures just how important writing has always been to me. It’s not something I can stop. It’s something I’ll willingly get in trouble for, because the alternative is worse. It’s either write or go crazy. It’s either write, or die.

However, there’s a huge difference in how I approached writing before and after I made the decision to do it professionally. I’ve been a writer since I could pick up a pen, but when I was about 10 or 11, I decided that I wanted to be an actress. I was a huge fan of Beverly Hills 90210 (the original, not the stupid new one), and I loved reading articles like “A Day in the Life on the Set!” I thought to myself, That’s a job?! Hell yeah! I like pretending to be other people! I like dressing up! I wanna do that! And I did, I joined drama club in junior high, and continued in it all through high school, eventually becoming the club’s president. I went to NYU and got a BFA in Drama from the Tisch School of the Arts. I spent a good six years after college trying to make a life as an actor.

But the writing was always there. During all my free time (and even time that wasn’t so free, as illustrated by my detention story) you would find me with a notebook and a pen, scribbling for dear life. In fifth grade, I wrote reams of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Alien Nation fan fiction, and friends would accost me during recess to read the latest “episodes.” In Junior High, I created a world of cartoon characters I called “bug people,” which eventually led to the comic strip, Cutsie-Wootsie and Friends, which told the story of Cutsie-Wootsie, her boyfriend, Hungry Boy (never w/out a hot dog in his hand to show you how hungry he was), her best friend, Maggie, and a cast of characters that lived surprisingly soap-operaesque lives for people who looked like little bugs. I drew that comic on looseleaf and passed it around to friends during French class. One of those friends STILL has them. Throughout high school, I was writing short stories and a “novel,” I submitted pieces to our literary magazine, and during my Junior and Senior years, I was the editor of the school newspaper. I was the girl who secretly cheered when teachers assigned essays, when all the other students were going “Awww, man!” In college, I was primarily there for an acting degree, but I double-majored in English Literature, because I just couldn’t let writing go.

This continued after college. I would write during auditions and play rehearsals. I would write in line for movies and museum exhibits. I would write on my commute to and from work. I would write at work the same way I did when I was at school - furtively, when I was supposed to be engaging in other things.

Writing was the best way I knew how to express myself. Despite my acting ability, I was never more clear, or more honest, than when I wrote, even when I wrote fiction, so I always sought it out and craved it.

Then I got older, and I decided to try to make writing my living.

Fiction doesn’t pay right away, so I decided to go the non-fiction route, and built a name for myself in geek pop culture journalism. For a while, I was passionate about that, as I got to write about things and people that excited me. It was thrilling, too, to chase interviews, and come up with new angles through which I could examine the sci-fi and fantasy that I loved.

But after several years of that, I was burnt out on trying to come up with new ways to talk about the same limited sphere of interests. I’d written myself into a box, and what’s worse, that writing sapped my energy from the writing I wanted to be doing.

I missed telling stories.

And yet, even now, as I work two part-time day jobs that allow me the flexible schedule I wanted so that I’d have more time to write, the writing doesn’t come as furiously as it used to. It used to be that I couldn’t contain my writing. It was how I spent all my free time. I had boxes and boxes of notebooks of things I’d written. I had several stories constantly going on at once.

Now, I wrestle with finishing one at a time.  

Writing was my way of escaping other parts of my life. Now, though, there’s less that I want to escape. When I was younger, I did a lot less participating in the world around me, and when I did I was always on the periphery, never wanting to get too involved. I was afraid, insecure. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve grown into myself, and become the kind of person that wants to experience everything. To me, it’s more important to tend to my relationships or try new things than it is to have a successful writing career. Don’t get me wrong, a successful writing career is my biggest goal - but not if it comes at the expense of the rest of my life. And maybe that means that success will come more slowly for me, if at all. But I can live with that.

Yet writing continues to be my truest, most long-lasting love. It’s just that our relationship has evolved. It’s not only the way I best express myself, but the way I best process my thoughts and feelings. For example, I’d never really thought about my writing in these terms before I was asked to write this guest post and talk about my writing. Suddenly, as I started to put words on a page, my feelings started making sense. More than talking, or drowning my sorrows in food and drink, writing is how I best understand myself and the world, which is strange considering that it used to allow me to hide from those things.

I don’t feel the physical need to write that I used to. It isn’t compulsive anymore. But perhaps that’s a good thing if it means I’m happier with the rest of my life. I have a balanced, healthy, adult relationship with both my life and my writing at the moment, and I’m very grateful.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Lisa Quinones-Fontanez

Editor's note: this is the eighth in a monthly (sometimes twice-monthly) series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

 

Lisa Quinones-Fontanez is a secretary by day, blog writer by night and Mami round the clock. When Lisa’s son, Norrin, was diagnosed with autism in May 2008, she found herself in a world she did not understand. In 2010 Lisa founded the blog AutismWonderland (www.autismwonderland.com). AutismWonderland is an award winning blog that chronicles her family journey with autism and shares local resources for children/families with special needs. In between work, blogging and advocating for Norrin, Lisa is also working on a historical fiction novel A Thousand Branches. A chapter excerpt (The Last Time of Anything) received an Honorable Mention in Glimmertrain's Family Matters October 2010 competition. You can find Lisa on Twitter (https://twitter.com/laliquin) and on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/AutismWonderland). 

The more I wrote, the more inspired I was to keep going

I grew up in a home filled with books. My father worked in a book factory and he’d bring them home. I can still hear the crack of the cover as I opened each book for the first time; I still remember the way the pages felt as I thumbed through them.

As a girl I spent countless hours reading about people I could not identify with and neighborhoods that didn't look anything like mine. I didn't realize I was missing something.

I was twenty years old the first time I read a book written by a Latina. It was Esmeralda Santiago's When I was Puerto Rican and I read it in less than two days. Her words filled a void, I didn’t know existed. It was the book that inspired me to write, except I had no idea what I want to write about.

Writing professors encouraged me to write what I knew. And over the next few years, I wrote about the things I thought I knew, but nothing worked. I had yet to create a character that haunted my every thought.

In the winter of 2004, I took a vacation to Puerto Rico to visit my godmother. During my trip, we visited the small island of Vieques. It was there that I began to visualize character, a family, a story. I spent the next few years reading, researching, writing and revising.

I began graduate school in 2008 hoping to complete the historical fiction novel inspired by my vacation years earlier. But my son had been recently diagnosed with autism and there was little time to write. Working full time during the day, going to school at night while trying to navigate the special education system was challenging, and my novel was put on hold. I was exhausted and lost my inspiration; suddenly my characters and their world seemed incredibly far away.

I was forced into this new world that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know a single person with autism. I didn’t even know what autism was. I turned to books for comfort, for guidance, for knowledge. I found all of those things yet it still wasn’t enough.

Not a single autism book was written by a Latino or featured a Latino family like mine. I could not identify with any of the men and women sharing their stories. The women wrote about quitting their careers to stay home with their children or moving to smaller house, some even moving to another state so that they could afford services. I knew I couldn’t quit my job as a secretary and my husband couldn’t quit his job as a Fed Ex courier. Living in a two-bedroom apartment, there wasn’t much we could downgrade to, and moving out of The Bronx wasn’t an option.

Two after my son’s diagnosis, I started writing about our autism experience, my son’s progress, our concerns, frustrations and joy and the search for an appropriate school placement. And the more I wrote, the more inspired I was to keep going.

Autism isn’t openly discussed among the Latino community and I write to help other parents know they are not alone and to know that there is hope. I want to encourage parents to advocate for their kids, to know their rights so that they fight for what their kid needs. I write because I love my son and I want the world to know what our version of autism looks like. I want people to know how much my son has inspired me.

One day I will finish the historical fiction novel I started. But for now, I will continue writing about raising a son with autism because it’s the story I am compelled to write.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Julia Rios

Editor's note: this is the seventh in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

Julia Rios is a writer, editor, podcaster, and narrator. She hosts the

Outer Alliance Podcast (celebrating QUILTBAG speculative fiction), and

is one of the three fiction editors at Strange Horizons. Her fiction,

articles, interviews, and poetry have appeared in Daily Science

Fiction, Apex Magazine, Stone Telling, Jabberwocky, and several other

places. Her website is www.juliarios.com, and she's @omgjulia on Twitter.

Embracing diversity

My father came to the United States from Yucatán, Mexico when he was a teenager. My earliest memories are filled with his melodious voice, deep and still bearing an accent that marked him as different from my mother's WASP family. Though he spoke English fluently, and even got a PhD in Psychology from the University of Southern California, his English speech patterns remained slightly off. He never taught me Spanish, but I managed to absorb some of his foreign markers all the same. To this day, I sometimes use the wrong prepositions, or not quite usual English constructions when I'm tired. "Put it in the table," I'll say. "Close the lamp."

Most of the time when that happens, it amuses me, but sometimes it makes me angry, or profoundly sad. My father wanted me to be proud of my heritage. More than once in mid-September, he took me to Mexican Independence Day celebrations on Olvera Street in Los Angeles, he made sure I knew Cinco de Mayo was not "Mexican 4th of July" like many advertisers claimed, and he shared stories and food from his home with me in between our infrequent visits to his family. But for all that, the reason my father didn't teach me Spanish was because in Southern California, Latin@s abound, and unfortunately, so does racism. My father wanted me to pass for white, to assimilate, and to have the privilege accorded to people who didn't speak Spanish at home.

As an adult, this push and pull of pride vs. shame is still confusing, and I spend a lot of time thinking about who I am, which communities I belong to, and why. I realized a few years ago that as a child I loved the show I Love Lucy, because it presented a comforting family structure. There was a white mom and a Latino dad who had an accent, yelled a lot, and also liked to sing. It was very similar to my own home. When I asked my sister if she liked it, too, she was surprised and said yes, and that it was weird we'd both liked it because it wasn't a particularly new or popular show during our childhood. It should be obvious though that there's nothing weird about us wanting to see ourselves reflected in our media.

Because of that, I have been paying more attention to what I put into my fiction lately. I started out writing with default straight white viewpoint characters, because that was what I'd understood was "normal" in commercial narratives. Now not everything I write includes Latin@ content, but I've issued an open invitation for those aspects of my background to come out and play. I think about all the other people out there who long to see representations of themselves, and I take that as challenge to embrace my own diversity.

I'm not just a Latina. I'm Mexican. I'm American. I'm bisexual. I'm a feminist. I'm left-handed. I love cats. All of these things are part of me, and none of them alone make me who I am. My story "Oracle Gretel" recently appeared in PodCastle and is forthcoming in Heiresses of Russ 2013 edited by Steve Berman and Tenea D. Johnson. It features a bi protagonist and a talking cat. My story "Love and the Giant Squid" will appear in July in Pen-Ultimate: A Speculative Fiction Anthology edited by Lisa J. Cohen and Talib Hussain. It features a character who has a lot in common with my own father, though he's very much a fictional person. I don't know what the future will bring for my writing, but I do know that all of it will be in some way Latina, because it all will come from me. If I want to encourage my Latin@ peers to stretch out and embrace their full identities, whatever they may be, I guess first I must start with myself.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Silvia Moreno-Garcia

Editor's note: this is the fifth in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

 Mexican by birth, Canadian by inclination. Silvia Moreno-Garcia writes speculative fiction (from magic realism to horror). Her short stories have appeared in places such as Imaginarium 2012: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Her first collection, This Strange Way of Dying, is out this summer. She is raising funds to complete a novel, Young Blood, about vampires in Mexico City. Go to to find out more or visit http://igg.me/at/youngblood/x/166963 or her web site silviamoreno-garcia.com/.

Predisposed to lies and subterfuge

There are two sources of inspiration for my writing: my personal life and my great-grandmother. I know it sounds dull to admit that what I write about is what I see around me, but it’s true. Fragments of conversations, moments from my childhood, people I’ve met, they all filter into my stories.

My great-grandmother is the other big engine behind a lot of what I do. Born into poverty, she never learned to read beyond the second-grade level. She couldn’t write without copious mispellings. She also told stories. Stories of her childhood, of what it was like growing up in the Mexican countryside. The fantastic often mingled with reality. There were witches in the shape of fireballs cackling from the trees. There were nahuales and serpents with feathers.

Although she provided solid facts (I’m still surprised discovering that some of the things she said were very accurate, such as descriptions of life during the Mexican Revolution), she filled the cracks with fantasy.

I believed everything she said until I was a teenager, at which point the stories of ghosts and spirits just didn’t make sense.

To this day, I’m not sure who my great-grandmother was. Her story of her marriage to my great-grandfather was a tale of great love, but she failed to mention the man who had impregnated her when she was a maid working in a wealthy house. There were other omissions, fabrications, half-truths and question marks. My grandmother always complained her mother was a cold and distant woman, but great-grandmother was always warm to me, brushing my hair and telling me stories.

On the other side of the family, I also have liars and tall-tellers. My grandfather was, for lack of better words, a swindler and a cad. Also a radio announcer with a booming voice. He left his family one fine day, just vanishing into thin air with his mistress.

My father is also a liar. Also charming in his own way. Also an asshole.

I am genetically predisposed to lies and subterfuge. Rather than becoming a con artist, I prefer to tell stories.

I think every good story has a kernel of truth to it. That is what makes it beat and draws people to it. We connect with the truth and recognize it. You take that truth and swaddle it in a bunch of lies. That’s a story. A storytellers is nothing but a liar who allows you to see a fraction of her naked heart.

That’s pretty much what I am.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Sujeiry Gonzalez

Editor's note: this is the fourth in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

 Sujeiry Gonzalez is a relationship expert, coach, author, and freelance writer and editor. Get relationship advice and view coaching packages on LoveSujeiry.com.

Writing as therapy

Writing is my therapy. Instead of giving thousands of dollars to a therapist to dissect my innermost fears, I lay them out on the page. This is why my writing is so raw and honest. This is why many readers of Love Trips: A Collection of Relationship Stumbles — my first published book where I reveal my relationship woes — ask me in awe, "How can you share so much?"

I do put it all out there. Read a few pages of Love Trips and you’ll learn about the bad sex that I've had, that I've willingly participated in drunk dialing sessions, and that I have severe abandonment issues stemming from my philandering, Dominican papi.

Yet, I don't ever feel exposed.

I write as if I were writing in a journal, as if the words and stories I create are just for me. I write without guilt or shame because I am not guilt-ridden or ashamed of the many mistakes that I have made and repeated. I write with candidness, openness, and humor because I am candid, open, and humorous.

My writing is an extension of me.

And so I utilize my voice, my experiences, my imagination, and my personality in my work.

It is what makes my writing mine.

It's not brain surgery. I don't have a magical writing process that leads me to create entertaining and well-received content. Although, I do have a knack for remembering the annoying details of every man I've ever dated. I am also very skilled in the art of introspection, which allows me to reflect when writing. Being introspective means that I can search within for ideas. That I can educate readers on all things relating to love, relationships, and self-awareness. Or as I often say, to be "self-first."

Much like myself, my writing has developed. Although writing is still my therapy, it has become much more than an escape from a shrink's leather couch. My purpose has evolved. My inspiration now stems from a desire to heal...others. I write to help women, if only to save them a world of heartache and thousands of dollars.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Lorraine C. Ladish

Editor's note: this is the second in monthly series of guest blog posts in which emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

  
Lorraine C. Ladish is the editor in chief of VivaFifty.com, an online publication for Latina moms. She is the mother of two young daughters and lives in Sarasota, Fla. with her blended family. Fully bilingual and bicultural, she has written 15 books of non-fiction (in Spanish) and two novels (in Spanish and English). Click here to go to her Amazon listings. Follow her on Twitter @lorrainecladish.

It started with books

I still remember the smell of ink of my grandfather’s printing press. The press spat out leaf after leaf of paper with printed words. The mechanical noise was comforting. It had a pattern to it. My sister and I would help collate the pages after they had been guillotined. Covers were glued on. They then became books. That happened on Saturdays. I must have been around six or seven years old.

My grandfather wrote. He wrote all the time. Longhand. On pieces of paper he would sometimes lose. He wrote wherever he was. He wrote poetry and read it to me. My father wrote too. He wrote on notebooks, using precise penmanship. He wrote with a fountain pen. At ten years old, so did I.

One of my schoolteachers once asked me for an autographed copy of one of my dad’s books. I gave her the book. She asked me whether it was autographed. I said yes. I didn’t know what autographed meant. She looked at the pages and told me the book wasn’t autographed. I took it back home to my father. He signed the book. I promised myself that from then on I would always ask what a word meant. I also realized it was important to autograph a book. One’s own book.

At 12, books were my best friends. I was shy. Very. I preferred books to people. Saturday mornings, it was the printing press, but the evenings were spent at the bookstore. We had more books than toys.

I thought everyone spent their free time reading and writing. My family did. Eventually I realized other people had other interests. But I continued reading and writing.

At 29, after years of writing just for myself in journals, I felt I had to do something important before I turned 30. I wrote a book. I managed to get it published. Don’t ask me how. But it happened.

Readers wrote to me. I felt like I´d done something of value. It felt good, so I wrote more books. All I wanted was to be a writer, a published writer. Yes, I could write in my journal, I could write for me … but I also wanted to do it for others.

My first book was non-fiction. My second book was too. My publisher didn’t want me to switch to fiction. It wouldn’t sell as well. I wrote more non-fiction. And I liked it.

I wrote novels too. Some were rejected. Thankfully. Eventually, two were published. Others were not. Thankfully too.

I continued writing … in my journal, in books, magazines. I even taught writing. Well, not really. I taught losing the fear of writing. Well, again, not really. I challenged people to lose the fear of writing. Some have gone on to publish books. They write e-mails letting me know of their accomplishments. I feel happy for them … and for me.

I had kids, and they have more books than toys. They see me write. They write too. I ended up publishing seventeen books. It sounds like a lot, but it feels like nothing. I need to write more. Like I need to drink water.

I became an editor … and yet I couldn’t stop writing. I couldn’t stop communicating. I wrote more books, I wrote blog posts, I wrote e mails.
I write. But I also run, draw, dance, speak, love and live. Because yes, I’m a writer, but most of all I’m a communicator.

And I’m OK with that.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers talk about their work - Jessica Olivarez-Mazone

This is the first in what I hope to be a semi-regular series of guest blog posts wherein emerging Latina writers talk about their work, their process and what inspires them.

I decided to start this "Nuestras Voces, Our Voices" series because if it is hard for Latinos to be heard among the voices of mainstream writers, it is doubly hard for Latinas. You might be tempted to think we are mute.

Part of it has to do with our upbringing. which more often than not tells us we should be self-effacing and modest. So we swallow our stories.

Sometimes we choose to go silent because our Latino hermanos take up all the air in the room. "At least they're getting heard," is what we say to ourselves then. "After them, it'll be our turn."

But it never seems to be.

Our stories —and those of our mothers and grandmothers — have mostly been heard in the company of other women: around the kitchen table, as we are making tortillas or tamales together, or when we are sharing a tequilazo or a cerveza on a night out with our comadres. Or whispered from ear to ear, mother to daughter and friend to friend.

And it turns out we have an astonishing set of voices. Voices resonant with joy, shadowed by harrowing experience, mysterious like a flare of light over unknown features. Proud, amazing, Latina writer voices.

I know, I've heard those whispers.

So I'm flexing my prerogative as an older Latina writer — you know the type, bossy and loudly insistent —to help as many people as I can reach hear the beautiful voices of my younger hermanas.

Think of the "Nuestras Voces, Our Voices" series as an incantation from the smoky depths of the cocina or cantina. You haven't heard these words before, and what they call up ... well, it's our magic.

Nuestras Voces, Our Voices: Emerging Latina writers

Jessica Olivarez-Mazone

 Jessica Olivarez-Mazone is a South Texas emerging writer, mom, former teacher and grad student, who is raising two bicultural children, embarking on a real food journey, and crafting. She blogs at Tejana made (http://tejanamade.wordpress.com/); follow her on Twitter @tejana_made. 

La Lechusa: Why I blend folklore with contemporary fiction

I found a book among the dusty shelves of my rural school, a relatively obscure book titled Stories that must not Die by Juan Sauvgea. Inside those pages was a cultural legacy that held all the different leyendas and cuentos that had been around South Texas communities for decades.

I embarked on a literary journey soon after reading that one book. I became obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe and his poem, “The Raven.” That one poem with the devious raven scoffing at Poe was reminiscent, to me at least, of the whisperings of the oral legend, “Lechusa”

Even that one word “Lechusa” sounds just as ominous as “Nevermore”

Lechusas somehow gained the ability to shapeshift from human women to giant owls. Everywhere across South Texas, oral stories were spun about these huge birds. Each variation discussed how they tormented but never how they gained the ability to shapeshift.

Every time I found a “scary story” book about the leyendas of my youth it was always just a retelling. It was the same thing, a generic one-sided look at these amazing characters.

I began to experiment with re-writing these oral legends and creating an environment for them that was modern. I rewrote them all: the Llorona, the Cucuy, El Guapo Extranjero, Bailando con un Fantasma. But the one that struck a chord with me was always the Lechusa.

The Lechusa , a powerful female entity, was only trying to keep her own sense of balance while actively finding ways to strike fear in the very culture who cast her aside. It was more than just a witch who could shapeshift: she was often just as cruel as the owl inside her.

I wanted very much for my main character and the Lechusa to have that deep protagonist and antagonist arc.

What would cause the Lechusa to steal children and harass others?

Could she be summoned?

I wanted to know the why behind the tales. I also didn’t just want to make it modern but I wanted to create an entirely different world filled with people that had powers (curanderas) fighting against the Lechusa.

It became an obsession really, creating these two characters, one a young girl and the other the Lechusa. I always knew that whenever I wrote about my characters I would set them in the only place that I knew.

South Texas.

Texas is full of towns isolated from each other. I wanted to bring that sense of isolation to these stories. It is still a place where the dark haunts us. These stories are whispered even after all these years, manifesting the dark we hold within ourselves.

Sometimes, I feel it is the essence of a culture dying.

It isn’t enough to just tell the story but to reinvent it.