Happy… New Year? (Or: how is it already February?)
Hello all! I definitely planned to send out a newsletter in January, but you know that whole “best laid plans” proverb? Yeah, having a baby is definitely a humbling force in my formerly-very-well-planned-out life. January kicked off with a visit to the ER (shout out to Seattle Children’s, the calmest and quickest ER experience I’ve ever had! We are totally fine, by the way, and I have now studied x-rays of my child’s legs and discovered that babies are made of rubber) and I never really felt like I got my footing or hit a work groove this month, but that’s okay. I still (miraculously?) ended up getting a fair bit done!
But first: some updates!
In January, I was utterly thrilled to reveal the UK cover for VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE, and damn, is she striking.
The paperback of VAMPIRES OF EL NORTE will be hitting British shelves in October. I cannot wait to get my paws on my author copies and see this cover in the flesh. I guess I’ll have to do a giveaway for my newsletter subscribers this year, because you can’t get the UK covers here in the US and they’re just so stunning! I doff my hat to cover designer Katie Klimowicz. I hope she designs all of my UK covers now and forever and ever. What a wizard she is.
Events
In March, I’ll be headed to sunny Arizona for the Tucson Festival of Books! I'm absolutely thrilled to be going to my first book festival, but especially to get some Vitamin D. (I’m headed to Southern California tomorrow for the same reason--the sun, that is, not a book festival--and guess what? They’ve having historically wet weather. DEEP SIGH.)
I also wanted to highlight that the auction supporting the non-profit Latinx Kidlit Book Festival is now live! I was delighted to discover that someone outright bought my offering of a 30-min chat about writing and publishing within hours of the auction going live, but there are so many other goodies to bid on!
Listening
Lately, I’ve been listening to tons of Juanes. I’ve loved his music for the last *checks notes* twenty years. (Oh. Oh my. I am old.) I’m going to his concert here in Seattle on Valentine’s Day and I’m SO excited. His new song "Nacimos Solos" for the new Zorro series soundtrack is a banger.
Reading
Generally, it’s tough for me to read when I’m in the midst of drafting; this season of my creative life is no different. It’s hard to look at something that has been lovingly revised 11-15 times, copyedited, proofread, and beautifully typeset when your own book is… *gestures vaguely, even lovingly, at the chaos of spreadsheet outlines and notebook scrawl and zero drafts Let’s say "still growing." But I have been eagerly diving back into romance, via my friends’ books ISABEL AND THE ROGUE (by Liana de la Rosa, who picked a great title, obviously), RAIDERS OF THE LOST HEART (by Jo Segura, a must-read for lovers of Indiana Jones and the movie The Lost City), and THE ORNITHOLOGIST'S FIELD GUIDE TO LOVE (by India Holton, the reigning benevolent goddess of banter). RAIDERS is out now, but I apologize that the other two won’t be out until this summer!
However! Today is also a Tuesday, which in U.S. publishing translates to book release day! I’m so thrilled that Ali Hazelwood’s paranormal BRIDE is hitting shelves, as are A LOVE SONG FOR RICKI WILDE (I just started it and know it will devour me whole, just like SEVEN DAYS IN JUNE devoured me), and the short story anthology RELIT: 16 LATINX REMIXES OF CLASSIC STORIES.
Works in Progress Update
As I mentioned above, I never felt as if I hit my work stride in January. My husband was on paternity leave all of last fall and now we’re both back at work. I think the rhythm we’re in will take some tweaking to perfect over the next few months. I'm certainly getting things done, but compared to my pre-baby rabid pace, I feel as if I should/could be getting more done. I don’t know if that’s a healthy impulse or not. All I know is that I feel creatively on fire and am positively bursting with stories to tell!
Next month, this portion of my newsletter will be veiled in Deep Secrecy (*makes vague noises about “subscriber only content” despite absolutely loathing the word “content”*). But to kick off my first newsletter of the year, I'm nixing the paywall and showing you all an excerpt from something that I've been working on.
Your subscribing to this newsletter for $3/mo will help me get more of those stories to you, dear reader, and sooner. We're talking excerpts from eventually-to-be-published work, yes, but also original pieces, lovingly crafted just for you.
Now, on with the show!
In January, I finished a short story for a very exciting anthology (8k words!), wrote no fewer than four flash fiction pieces (!!), wrote a further two rough drafts of flash fiction pieces, picked up my next horror novel and added about 13,000 words to it, and then also received and discussed revision notes from my editor on a yet-unannounced novel in progress. When I write it all out like that, it's actually quite a lot, isn't it? I guess this accountability exercise is good for something!
And now, without further ado, that which will be later paywalled: an exclusive glimpse into what I have been working on over the last few months.
(My heart is beating so fast. Ahhh! Here goes nothing!)
Tonight is one of those nights where moonlight streams reckless through the cracked peaks of the cordillera, spilling like a kicked bucket of milk into the valley below. It’s so bright on my skin that I think it should feel cool. That it should have weight to it. That I could catch it, when I turn my palms skyward. But it falls through my fingers, weightless, silken. Faithless as a handful of water.
It’s on nights like this that the dark folk of this valley emerge from their dens to gorge themselves on the full moon’s light. They are el pueblo, both the folk and the place: impish duendes skittering like desert mice, lean tlacamichin fish men slinking up from the muscular river. Nahuales in the forms of their spirit animals—coyotes, wolves, cougars—race the wind from the desert until they reach the cordillera. Delicate tlahuelpuchis rise from their beds in the villages where they pass as mortal women, black silk hair pouring languorous over shoulders, their dry lips cracked and throbbing to be slaked by fresh blood. Witches shake off their skins and toss them aside like negligee, eager to expose their pale silver bones to the moonlight. They leap into the air and fly, cackling at the rush of cold that whistles through their ribs, ready to revel with abandon until moonset.
And this is where they gather: el Otro Mundo. Here, where the air smells of snowmelt and pine and the distant sulfur of grumbling volcanoes. Here, the world is both here and not, a place that even the fog skirts for fear of what could nip its heels in the dark. A place that took everything I had ever wanted and sent it spilling out of my grasp.
It is on nights like these that I am reminded why I am trapped here. And not just because my mistress snatches my braid and gives it a sharp yank.
“Eva! You’ll get drunk on the moon if you keep staring at it like that,” she snaps. Dulce is a hag, her hanks of gray hair bound in a greasy crown of braids, her face pinched and wrinkled and as sour as her name is sweet. She has a chicken’s claws where she should have soles and toes; she scratches the dirt of her hurt, an irritated gesture directed at me.
I turn away from the moon and return to her hut to do her bidding.
I have no other choice.
I thought I knew what I was doing when I first met her. I thought I was brave to whistle into the night, to summon a witch and demand her help. I thought I understood what I was doing when I opened my mouth at Dulce’s command to give her her payment.
Then she plucked my soul from my tongue as easily and with as much distaste as an errant hair.
I did not know how lovely a soul would be: as white as a dove, its hide smooth and gleaming in the firelight. It was the last pale breath of a sunset, that fragile moment before the purple eclipse of night.
Then Dulce tightened her fist around it, I learned how its loss could leave me breathless.
But even that was nothing compared to the loss of what I had used my soul to bargain for.
“There’s no time to waste,” Dulce says now, shoving a basket of corn into my arms. “To the kitchen to make offerings. The old gods are coming to hold tribunal.”
“What’s that?” I ask. Full moons are for revels, for reeling music and sloshing blood in fine goblets and clawed feet stamping the dirt. For as long as I have been in el Otro Mundo, the old gods have minded their own affairs and not interfered with el pueblo.
“Tribunal,” Dulce sneers, “is none of your business.”
Her dismissiveness sends a prickling flush of rebellion over my skin.
I absolutely want to make it my business now.
“Stay here and have that corn ground before I come back,” Dulce says. “A duende owes me his left hand. It will season the enchiladas nicely.”
I grind corn until she’s out of earshot. I cast a furtive look to either side of the hut as I rise to leave. Then I gather my skirts and race through the pines toward the sound of drumbeats.
#
I descend into the valley from Dulce’s hut in the pine-thick foothills; the trees grow so closely here that the moon’s rays are scarce and weak, but I could find the way with my eyes closed. After years of captivity, my bare feet know each twist of root and scatter of rocks from a hundred escape attempts, a hundred failures.
I follow the spicy smoke of piñon wood burning. It cuts through the cold night like a beacon and leads me directly to where I want to be: the bonfire. Its red glow falls on the shimmering skin of the gathered pueblo. I slink between nahuales who appear as strapping young men and linger next to a group of skeletal crossroads women, their curses fluttering around them like ragged cloaks. Everyone’s eyes are fixed on one place; everyone’s attention is taut as a hangman’s rope, waiting and breathless.
Four shapes come into the light of the bonfire.
The old gods have arrived.
I only know them by name: River, Storm, Desert, and Darkness, whom mortals have long called el Diablo. Never in my time in el Otro Mundo have they deigned to appear before el pueblo as flesh and blood beings, but I can guess exactly who each god is.
River flows into the light, lithe and muscular, her blue skin glimmering as she loosens the dark sarape around her shoulders. Storm, her consort, is ever at her shoulder: a dark gray man with a tempest on his furrowed brow, his voice is the rumble of distant thunder as he whispers in River’s ear. Desert draws closest to the fire, holding her pale palms to its warmth. Her lean, wiry body shivers, sending her tumbleweed hair falling over her bony back as she complains in a wind-bent, hissing voice to her kin about keeping their damp away from her.
El Diablo is the last to arrive, so subtle I almost miss him. He’s a long shadow caught in the corner of the eye: a tall man in workmanlike dark chivarras with a hat drawn low over his brow. A vaquero, by the look of him. The only thing that catches the light as he steps toward the others are his silver spurs.
“You’re always late,” Desert sneers at him, shivering again as she draws her own sarape around lean, tawny shoulders.
“I’m always here,” he replies. His voice is deep, both smooth and creased, the texture of worn leather.
Desert scowls. “Cryptic bastard,” she mutters. “Can we get this over with?”
El Diablo casts a look around the gathered pueblo: at tlahuelpuchis and duendes, fish-men and skeletons. Nahuales and crossroads women.
And me.
That's all for now, folks! I can't wait to show you more of this particular piece when the time comes. Moreover, I can't wait to show you new stuff.
I've been sitting on so many secrets over the last few months (and weeks... and days, even!). I can't wait to share those with you, too.
You'll hear from me soon!
All the best,
Isabel xxxx