Death of a Novel (11/24/08)

Randomly looking through my Blogger files, I found this hugely important post from 2008 that for some reason remained in DRAFT mode and was never published. Here it goes.

I know the title of this posting sounds a little dramatic, but I've just been informed by my editor at St. Martin's Press that Calligraphy of the Witch is going to be remaindered soon. The novel was released last Fall and it has, sadly, sold just over 1,500 copies. Hence, there are no plans for a paperback and that beautiful book, that story that took me over 16 years to write, will now sit on the remaindered shelves of a few bookstores and eventually will go out of print. And the worst part is, it's all my fault. Or rather, it's the fault of my academic life that got in the way of my being able to push the book the way I pushed Desert Blood, which continues to do spectacularly well and has recently been released in Spanish. The reason I was able to go on a 4-month book tour with Desert Blood is that I was on sabbatical the year the novel was published, and I had the time to travel from coast to coast, doing readings and booksignings. I had time to sit at the computer and develop a website for the novel, blog about the book tour, keep people informed about the next event. But I also had a publisher that set up the entire book tour, that arranged the flights, that reserved the hotel rooms, that got me hooked up with radio interviews and bookstores. Arte Publico Press, and specifically Marina Tristan, did all that work to help sell Desert Blood. It was no surprise, then, that the book sold out of its first run by the second month of the book tour. That it is now in its third edition, available in paperback, in Italian, and in Spanish, and that the website continues to receive over a 100 hits a day.

When Calligraphy of the Witch was sold by my new agent, Regina Brooks, to St. Martin's Press, I was ecstatic, as any Chicana author used to publishing with small presses and university presses would be. I thought it was my break-through into the mainstream publishing world, and it made sense that it would be Concepción's story that would put me on the mainstream literary map. And it might have. Had the date of the novel's release not coincided with my being appointed the new Chair of the César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. Had I been able to do even half of the readings and booksigning I did for Desert Blood. Had I had the chance to peddle the book portal to portal through cyberspace. But no, instead, I had to learn how to administrate an academic department. I had to deal with an 8-year departmental review, a retention case from hell, a site visit, a Development agenda, meetings ad nauseum, personnel cases, individual faculty issues, a graduate program proposal to rewrite and resubmit to the powers that be, as well as my own teaching to do, and somewhere in there, in my copious spare time, I had to keep working on my own research, trying to finish my anthology on the murdered women of Juárez after four years of putting it off. St. Martin's Press did little (if any) publicity for the novel, I couldn't afford a book publicist, and I had no time to schedule readings and booksignings. In fact, the only reading I did from Calligraphy of the Witch was in October 2007 at the Hudson River Valley Writer's Center in Sleepy Hollow, New York, at Sergio Troncoso's invitation (thanks for that opportunity, Sergio). The novel received a couple of good reviews, among them one by Rigoberto González that was published in the El Paso Times. But it was not reviewed in the New York Times or the Los Angeles Times. St. Martin's Press did not organize a reading for me at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, even though that event takes place at UCLA. And I didn't actually create my own website until last summer (with the help and direction of my wife, Alma López, who is so talented and knowledgeable about these things). So it doesn't surprise me that Calligraphy of the Witch is going to die on the vine, but it does make me very sad, and not a little resentful that my career as an academic has been largely responsible for the novel's death.

And since I've used the dreaded R-word (resentment, which I try to avoid like the veritable plague), I might as well indulge it full-force here, and say that I really envy those writers who have been able to prioritize their writing, who probably make a whole lot less money than I do but who have the one thing we can never make up, and without which it is impossible to produce any work of art, which is time. As Ivon Villa in Desert Blood says, "you can make up money, but you can never make up time." I know that part of my relative obscurity in the book world is that I have chosen to be an academic, I have chosen not to write about the popular themes and issues that have defined "Latina/o" literature in the mainstream literary world and instead have focused on a colonial lesbian nun, the murdered women and girls of Juárez, and a mestiza accused of witchcraft in 17th-century New England--none of these is mainstream material, but each I think makes a contribution to raising consciousness about a person or an issue that too few people in the English-speaking world know anything about. I have made these choices, and I don't regret them. But I am also paying the price of it now.

Still, despite the fact that I know what role I played in the demise of the novel, I can't believe that Calligraphy of the Witch has sold just over 1,500 copies in a year. I wish I'd known about the phenomenon of book trailers earlier than last month, when I read about it in the current issue of Poets and Writers. As soon as I read that article, I talked it over with Alma, and she got busy putting one together for me, with the help of Chicana performance artist par excellence, Adelina Anthony. We published it on YouTube on election night, and it's a great piece in which Adelina is performing the part of Concepción's daughter, Hanna Jeremiah, at the opening of the novel while behind her flash images of the "witches" and the "Devil's book." The trailer also features my cat, Luna Azul. You can watch it anytime, just click on Calligraphy of the Witch to watch it on YouTube. Hannah Jeremiah is played by the inimitable Adelina Anthony in the trailer.

But it turns out that we were too late. A year late, to be precise. Not that a single book trailer would have substituted for a book tour or a radio interview or even a website, but it would have helped give the book a presence in cyberspace, and at least virtually, would have brought the book to people's awareness, and perhaps would have sold a few more copies.

Alas, I have to close now because one of the meetings I have to attend in my academic life today awaits. The good news is that my first year as Chair of the department rendered fabulous results. We got a glowing 8-year review report from all of your reviewers, internal and external alike, we retained that faculty member we very nearly lost to the East Coast, and I finished the rewrite of the graduate program proposal and got it submitted on time to the powers that will determine by hopefully Spring 2009 whether or not we get to have a M.A./PhD program in Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. And believe it or not, I did get my anthology on the murdered women of Juárez finished (with the good-hearted labor of my graduate research assistant, Georgina Guzmán) and it is now under contract with University of Texas Press. So not everything is bleak on my horizon. And I guess I can sell autographed first editions of Calligraphy of the Witch through my website. Still, I'm sad about the book's short shelf life. That should never have happened. And I guess the lesson here for me is that a book cannot sell itself. Writing it is only part of what a writer has to do. And you as a reader can help, too. If you're looking for a Christmas present, order Calligraphy of the Witch. Or send an email to Daniela Rapp at St. Martin's Press and urge her to get the book out in paperback so that I can have a second chance at peddling Concepción's story.

Okay, off with my writer's hat, on with my academic garb. And I'm off to another day at the office.

Teaching "Tenth Muses of Chicana Lesbian Theory"

I'm so excited to be teaching my "Tenth Muses" graduate seminar again. Haven't taught it since 2014, and it's based on the metaphor of the "décima musa," or "tenth muse" of the Americas--Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, proto-feminist intellectual foremother of Chicana feminist thought. I see all Chicana feminists and Chicana lesbian theorists as "tenth muses" who struggle against and yet thrive despite the patriarchal oppressions of their/our family, community, and society. Sor Juana's community was the convent of Santa Paula of the Order of Saint Jerome in Mexico City (now a private university called El Claustro de Sor Juana), where she was cloistered for 26 of her 46 years. For Chicana lesbian theorists, our community is academia, where we sign our vows in blood and cloister ourselves for the entirety of our careers, working ourselves to the sleepless bone as we teach, learn, advise, advocate, invent, resist, celebrate, irritate, discover, practice, experiment, study, research, grade, evaluate, perform, publish, produce, breathe, envision, embody, educate, administrate, illuminate, challenge, change. And that's just our day job. To be able to sit in a room with bright, open, curious graduate students reading and mixing it up with the work of our "tenth muses" for three hours once a week is truly a reward and a privilege.

Camp Nanowrimo 2017

It's been three years since I last updated this blog. What's the use of having a blog if I'm not going to use it for daily writing practice? I guess it's my way of holding on to that very thin filament of hope that one day I will have the time and energy to actually be able to keep a blog, just as my unwritten in journals and beautiful fountain pens remind me that, again, I'm not writing. I suppose I've gotten used to it by now; there was a time when I couldn't go more than a month without writing before I started to feel myself detaching from that sensitivity that is a writer's way of experiencing the world; and, being so detached, I would engage in self-destructive behaviors of drinking too much and being out late. Now, I completely bypass the drinking, but I'm staying up later and later, and depriving myself of crucial hours of sleep that I need in order to experience that sensitivity that in turn allows me to write. These days, I am always tired, sleepy, horribly behind in my work, always taking in new work, and pushing myself further and further away from the one thing that really anchors me to myself and my life: writing. This is why I decided to join Camp Nanowrimo again--to give myself the opportunity of sitting down at my desk to work on a piece of writing from beginning to end, despite all of the obstacles that have lately become my daily bread. My intention this year was to finish some of the stories in my almost-finished new collection of stories but because of my penchant for taking on new work, I had two deadlines this month for academic essays, and so, I have changed my writing project to essays instead of stories. The good thing is that, at least, I am making progress on the essays. In fact, I finished one already and met my first goal. Now, I have until the end of the month to work on an encyclopedia essay on La Virgen, La Malinche, and La Llorona. This is what's on my Camp Nanowrimo agenda until April 30. I am super excited that the private cabin I started has drawn people from all over, including Nuala and Donna from Cork, Ireland, to work on their own projects, and to gather under a virtual roof to provide support and encouragement to all.

Finished NaNoWriMo Today!

I am very proud to announce that I finished my 50,000 rough draft for a new book of fiction today. I called it "Calaveras in the Closet: Stories and Novellas." The exact word count was 52,945 words.

Here's the disjointed premise of the book:

All the characters I've ever created (and left behind) have banded together to form CACA, the Circle of Abandoned Characters Anonymous, a support group and 12-step program for those who need to air out their many abandonment issues, resentments, and unheard stories.

There are 10 stories and 3 novellas, although when and if I ever revise the book, I'm going to chop off 4 of the stories, as these were just grist for the writer's mill, ways to get me started with the writing process this year without actually knowing where I was going. 

Between now and next summer, I will be thinking about these stories, these characters needing to be heard, and hopefully, the elves in my brain will work their magic while I burn the midnight oil at my academic job and figure out how to turn all of this into a viable collection, my second collection of short fiction.

Get Gaspar's New Book!

Bless me, oh gods of the Royal Blogsphere, it's been more than a year since my last blog. So many vestiges of my Catholic upbringing. Maybe that's why the concept of the "bad woman" intrigues me so much, because of that heavy Catholic/Christian/Patriarchal judgment placed on a woman's head, from Lilith and Eve down to all women, particularly those of us of the lesbian and/or feminist and/or queer persuasion. In fact, that's what my new book is all about. I realized I've been writing about "bad women," or at least women who were considered "bad" in their own lifetimes or who have become the scapegoats for all the bad stuff that has befallen our culture and our raza for the last 500 years--in both my fiction and my scholarship. I'm very proud of this collection of scholarly essays. You'll find pieces on Sor Juana, on la Malinche, on Chicana feminist artists and lesbian theorists, on the murdered girls and women of Juárez, as well as a rewriting of the Coyolxauhqui myth, and an opening letter to my paisana from the border, Gloria Anzaldúa, in gratitude for her lenguas de fuego. There are also 8 color plates and 37 black and white photos. Artwork includes different images by Alma Lopez, beginning with that fabulous cover she created for the occasion of the book's publication, as well as pieces by Ester Hernández, Yreina Cervantez, Liliana Wilson, Patssi Valdez, Laura Aguilar, Deliliah Montoya, Alma Gómez-Frith, Miguel Gandert, Alfonso Cano, the "Saint Jerome" of Leonardo da Vinci, the iconic "American Progress, 1872" by John Gast, and a painting of Juana Inés by my very own mother, Teyali Falcón that she created for the publication of Sor Juana's Second Dream. I'll be doing my first book talk and signing in Albuquerque on my birthday, July 29, at BookWorks, and a month later, another event at BookWoman in Austin, Texas, if anybody's interested in coming out to support the work. A special shout-out to the University of Texas Press, and my (now retired) editor, Theresa May, for always producing such beautiful books and helping to grow the library of Chicana feminist lesbian scholarship. You can order the book directly (and at a 33% discount) through U.T. Press, or go to my website to order it through Amazon.com. If you'd like for me to come and speak about the book at your university, send me an email.

Upcoming book talks/book signings:

Bookworks Albuquerque

July 29, 6-8pm

BookWoman

Austin, TX, August 28, 7pm

Movie based on Sor Juana's Second Dream

I have been completely remiss in not posting on my blog the fantastic news that Sor Juana's Second Dream has been adapted to a screenplay. I am, in fact, the co-screenplay-writer, along with the film's director and co-producer, Rene Bueno. Here's some more info about the film, which will be a Mexican production tentatively titled "Juana de Asbaje," starring Ana de la Reguera as Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. The film will also star Bruno Bichir (of Padre Amaro fame) and Adriana Barraza (of Babel fame).  The short video from UNO-TV is in Spanish. The film will go into production in Fall 2014.

Burglary Blues

On Thursday, May 16, just as I was walking to my car, Alma called me panic-stricken because our condominium got broken into and someone stole our gold jewelry, including the heirloom pieces I'd inherited from my grandmother, and my laptop. The thief forced the front door open with a crowbar, jimmied both deadbolts, and seriously damaged the door and doorjamb. Luckily, nobody was home or hurt, although it's pretty clear to us that he was probably casing the place and waiting for it to be empty. Since Alma got home at 4 and a friend left at 1, the burglary happened in the those three hours in the middle of the day. Alma reported the incident at 4:15 but the police didn't show up here till after midnight, 12:29 to be exact. Eight hours later. Since then, I've been in a fog of insurance, police reports, locksmiths, contractors (we will need to replace the whole door not just the locks because the damage is irreparable), security systems, tracking Craig's List and Ebay just in case I see my grandmother's bracelets and St. Rita necklace, my precious fossil Ammolite ring that I'd given myself as a "rebirthday" present on a trip to Puerto Rico back in 2005--the pieces that would stand out from the more common stuff you see on those sites.

I'm not letting it sink in, though, that my MacBook Pro, stuffed to the gills with all my writings, is gone. I have old backups on Time Machine and on flash drives and CD's, but I think the last time I used Time Machine was in 2008, and although I have the most recent versions of my newest book which, thank the goddess, I'd finished putting together and sent off to the press, I don't have the latest drafts of other books, or the collections of stories, poems, chapters, I'd been working on since 2008. I don't have the latest draft of my YA novel that I was going to try to work on this summer. It's the weirdest feeling, like I'm unanchored but at the same time, sort of liberated from all that karma. Not that I wouldn't want the police to get my computer back so I could get those files back, all my pictures, and my thousands of songs (thank goodness for iPhone backups so that at least I still have some of my music and photos), but a part of me is willing to make the sacrifice, say to the Universe, okay you can have all of that, just keep us safe, let them erase the whole drive and reset the computer to factory settings so that none of my work or my personal information is out there drifting in cyberspace.

But maybe, just maybe, all of this was supposed to happen to help me open my eyes to what's really important, especially in this economy: take extra measures to protect your safety. Don't procrastinate on things like installing a home security system or backing up your computer. Listen to your Facultad when she sends up a random sense of relief when you come home one afternoon and discover you haven't been broken into; that's your wiser self, telling you, be careful, something's coming. If you're afraid of this, maybe you should listen more closely. Deja vu, perhaps.

I went to a pawn shop today but didn't find any of our stuff. We're going undercover this week, hitting the pawnshops because I feel like I'm going to find at least some of my grandmother's pieces. Don't worry. If I do see something, I'll report it to the police and let them handle it. I'm looking forward to getting our wireless security system installed tomorrow. Our front door replaced and new and better locks put in. Then I'm going to transplant my baby blue spruce tree that we used as a Christmas tree and get back in touch with our plants, our flowers, our patio.

Good Riddance Tax Day 2013

I don't know why it's always such a big production, but "doing my taxes," has become this ritualized version of self-torture that I put myself through every single year, usually two days before Tax Day. I buy an 8-pack of Diet Coke or now Coke Zero (more caffeine) for the occasion and agree to "take time out of time," which means disregard all normal routines, family obligations, eating and sleeping schedules, avoid phonecalls and emails, just to focus completely on this ritual of mind-numbing numbers and glassy-eyed confusion. With the new rules regarding same-sex married couples who live in community property states like California, it's even more of a picnic. But, I'm happy to say, Alma and I actually got our taxes done a day early. We weren't those people sliding into the airport post office at 11:58pm, although we were those people last year. We celebrated with the last of the Coke Zero and an evening of all our favorite shows: Nurse Jackie, The Borgias, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, and of course, Dark Shadows. I don't know why I don't just haul our boxes of receipts to an accountant and let someone who gets paid to do this take care of it for us. It's a vestige of control-freakism, no doubt. Or maybe, the ritualized challenge of slaying the dragon again, year after year.

Online Radio Interview with KUHA in Houston

Check out my "Arte Publico Author of the Month" online radio interview with Eric Landau of KUHA, 91.7 Classical Radio, Houston. Thanks for a great conversation, Eric!

http://www.classical917.org/articles/1363004392-Classical-91.7-Arte-Publico-Author-of-the-Month-Alicia-Gaspar-de-Alba.html

AWP in Boston

At Logan Airport waiting for our flight back to LA after a very stimulating AWP that was one part informational, one part nostalgic, and at times just plain eerie. I used to live in Boston in the latter half of the 1980s and Copley Square, Boylston Street, the whole Back Bay Area was my old neighborhood. Back then I walked almost daily, long walks down Newbury or Marlborough Streets, between my apartment on The Fenway and the Public Garden, with side trips to Beacon Hill or the Public Library, where I was doing research on the witch trials for the book that would become Calligraphy of the Witch.

I kept feeling the magnetic pull of the Boston Common, and the yearning to be outside meandering through the streets. I wanted to show my darling Alma the gazebo in the Common where I stood when I wrote the poem, "Listening to My Bones" the time five pigeons landed on my arm and a squirrel for some reason scurried up my back and stood on my head for a few seconds. I wanted her to see  the Old South Church, the grand entrance of the Library, my T Stop off the Green Line, my favorite bookstore (the Trident,  of course, which I'm happy to say us still in business) but my plans were foiled by the snowstorm. A huge snowstorm fell over the Eastern seaboard on the first day of the conference, and we awoke to one of those silver-white days where the snow flurries from daybreak to dusk and the only light comes from the mounting snowbanks on the ground. No walking that day, so we stayed put inside the Hynes Convention center and attended all the sessions we could, though it was crazy how many sessions had been scheduled at the same time and really how little we could take in. Still we learned about picture books and illustrated novels and heard some excellent short fiction and poetry. It was heartening to see how many literary journals are still in business and
still publishing poetry. How many new poetry books there were, how many poets still plying their trade, how many new formats there are to publish poetry and short fiction.  We were especially impressed with the new journal called Hoot, which bills itself a mini-review of work that is no longer than 150 words, published on postcards. We loved that format and saw immediately how we could adapt it for our Codex Nepantla project.

Perhaps the most inspiring part of the conference was Jeanette Winterson's keynote presentation and reading from her memoir on Friday afternoon to a packed auditorium. It seemed like all 11,000 of the AWP attendees were at her reading, which was so much more than a reading, but also a philosophical contemplation of the writer's life, her family foibles, her experience as an adopted child, and at one point she apologized for having transformed the reading into a revival meeting. She was so funny, and her memoir so very good, authentic and honest. Unfortunately, the line of folks wanting to buy her book wrapped around the balustrade and they ran out just as I was getting there. I wasn't able to bring home her signature in a book but Jeanette did get to take home the beautiful watercolor drawing Alma was making of her while she spoke, with Winterson's hilarious phrase, "... Contemplating the horrors of heterosexuality..." on it.

But the streets' beckoning would not relent, and luckily Saturday turned out to be a clear day, the sky a pristine blue and the snow dazzling white in the sunlight. Off to the Common we went, setting off on Boylston Street and making stops along the way for Alma to film me with her bloggie for a short video she wants to put together for me to help give Calligraphy of the Witch more exposure. She loved the old buildings, the friendliness of the Boston folks, the food (mostly pub food) we ate. She really loved that the writers at the conference seemed very down to earth, and that they seemed genuinely excited about sharing their work and their ideas. At one point she said that hanging out with writers was like being around artists, only with words.

Reading & Book Signing on Dec. 9

To celebrate the paperback release of Calligraphy of the Witch I will be doing a reading & book signing at ChimMaya Art Gallery (5283 E. Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles CA 90022) on December 9 from 2-4pm. One of the things I most like about the paperback (other than my darling wife's cover, of course) is the way Marina, Gabi, and Nick at Arte Publico Press made the influence of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, on the book and on the main character's life, front and center. The story could be described as Sor Juana meets the Salem witch trials, although it's her assistant Concepción who embodies the poetry and philosophy of la décima Musa in New England. This is the flyer that Alma created for the event. Note the nifty code box that can be scanned by a phone or Ipad and it will take you directly to my website. So cool.

Calligraphy of the Witch Book Trailer

After four years of Calligraphy of the Witch being out of print, the paperback edition has just been released by Arte Público Press. I'm so happy the book is available again. When the hardback first edition was released by St. Martin's Press in the Fall of 2007, I had just started Chairing the César Chávez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. Administrative work completely absorbed all of my time and energy for three years, and I wasn't able to do the book justice, unlike the success I had with Desert Blood, which I was able to promote widely. Now, Arte Público Press has released the paperback edition of Calligraphy of the Witch, sporting a brand new cover designed by my darling wife, Alma Lopez. Alma is also responsible for this gorgeous book trailer. You can order the book through my website: www.aliciagaspardealba.net, or wherever books are sold. The new cover features performer/musician Lysa Flores as the main character, Concepción Benavídez. Special thanks to Adelina Anthony for performing the part of Concepción's daughter, Hanna Jeremiah, in the book trailer.

Pooling thoughts at the end of my spring sabbatical

Im sitting in my mom's kitchen in El Paso this Friday morning looking out at the contrast between dry desert and the blue pool in the backyard, abandoned most of the time but still glittering the same bright clear blue as the west Texas sky. I'm remembering all the different parties we've had in this backyard, most memorably my 40th piñata party over a decade ago, and even further back, my goodbye party as I prepared to leave El Paso after 27 years and two lifetimes here, to embark on the adventure of PhD school at the U of Iowa (where I only last 9 months). At the time all I had in terms of publishing credits were a few poems and short prose pieces, and the dream of one day being a published author of novels and other booksg gleamed as bright and pristine as this backyard pool. Today I have ten published books, and I sit here contemplating how to balance the completion of two more: my next academic book and the YA novel I've been working on since I finished NaNoWriMo in 2010. It is the end of my spring quarter sabbatical at UCLA which means I have only three months of writing time left before I have to find my Profe hat and start preparing for the new academic year and our first cohort of PhD students in the Chavez Department. I could never have imagined this busy and productive life back in 1985, even with my BA and MA in hand. My life then was like that pool, clear and wide open.

11/11/11

Sold my first book on PayPal! Thank you Allison in Louisiana for purchasing a hardback first edition copy of Sor Juana's Second Dream from my website. I think this bodes well for a triple 11 day. I'm also selling first editions of the totally out of print and hard to find Calligraphy of the Witch. Click here to read the great review AnneMarie Perez posted on Aztlan Reads: http://www.aztlanreads.com/2011/08/27/calligraphy-of-the-witch/
Be sure to click on the link at the bottom of the review to see the trailer that my darling Alma made.

No NaNoWriMo this year

I can't believe it's more than a year since I've updated my blog and that's after a year of not teaching. I did finish NaNoWriMo last year for the first time and produced my first YA novel that I'm actually pretty proud of. This year instead of launching into a brand new story I'm going to rerevise Drag King Debutante even though I am teaching a huge intro course of nearly 400 students and writing two new research essays. But did promise my agent she'd get the book in January. So that's what I'll be working on for the next 2.5 months. and learning to play on my iPad.

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo 2010

Over twenty years ago, when I lived in Boston, committed to living the writer's life, though stuck in a 9-5 job at a braille press (yes, I learned to read braille, but with my eyes rather than my fingers), I learned the most valuable lesson of my working life: that time is a non-renewable commodity. That I might be able to make up money, but I would never be able to make up time. Thus began my very conscious effort to use whatever time I had to write in the most productive way possible. I think this has been the secret to my productivity, that I no longer take time for granted, that I know each passing day is a day I will never get back, each hour an hour I could have moved forward on my writing. For three years, between 2007-2010, I wasn't able to move forward in my writing very much because I was serving as Chair of the Cesar Chavez Department of Chicana/o Studies at UCLA. Not that I wasn't productive, and I took advantage of the time I did have to write three new research articles and edit two new anthologies, and I did actually manage to eke out a brand new short story for an anthology on YA mystery fiction. But there were all these ideas for a new novel swirling around in the back of my brain, haunting and taunting me on a daily basis, that I did not have time to sit down and flesh out in my journal. Usually, they would needle under my eyelids while I was undergoing an acupuncture treatment, although occasionally, they also danced on my dashboard while I sat in L.A. traffic on the 405. It was these brilliant (I thought) but amorphous ideas that I attempted to channel into a NaNoWriMo novel in 2008 and again in 2009. But I never got very far, not even halfway through the 50K challenge, and still, I was content to have been able to write anything at all. This year, I have a sabbatical and that means I finally have time to sit down and really listen to and voyeurize those story-ideas that have been haunting me for three years. Of course, October is a great month to be haunted, and November, with its cooler weather, its occasional gray skies, its gothic possibilities, lends itself well to daily summoning at the computer. And so, I have resolved that this year, 2010, I will finish the 50K challenge, and out of it will emerge a very raw, very rough draft of a YA novel that is at this very moment sitting in lotus at the top of my head.

Making a Killing: Femicide, Free Trade, and La Frontera

It seems eerily appropriate that my edited book on the murdered women of Juárez is going to be published in November 2010, the centennial anniversary of the Mexican Revolution. How did Juárez go from being a seedbed of revolutionary thinking in 1910 to a killing field of women and girls and a cesspool of narco slaughter one hundred years later? Maybe Porfirio Díaz was right: poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States. But it's more than the crimes of proximity that have affected my hometown (because the El Paso/Juárez border, el Chamizal, to be exact, is literally the place where I was born). It's all of the ways in which this portal to the promised land has been poisoned, exploited, and coerced into losing its soul to Big Business and Big Brother. The deaths--particularly the femicides, which Making a Killing is all about--are the detritus of all this spoilage. The greed at the root of this spoilage is nothing new; it marbled the heart of Porfirio Díaz as much as it worms through the guts of any current-day politician, north or south of the border, whose only interest is to profit at anyone's expense, that is, to "make a killing." Unlike my previous mystery novel on the subject (Desert Blood: The Juárez Murders), this book is a collection of 13 scholarly essays and testimonios that focus exclusively on analyzing this continuous heinous crime wave of gendered violence on the El Paso/Juárez border, and the different forms of activism that have arisen over the last 17 years. Click on the thumbnail picture to see the book's table of contents and introductory essay.

The Sabbatical Begins

And now, finally, after a month of house renovations, family visits, and a Vegas birthday vacation filled with bowling and blackjack, my sabbatical after a three-year term as department chair officially begins. As a "broche de oro" to close my chairship, I got the news that UC Systemwide had officially approved our department's M.A./Ph.D. proposal, and this was a fantabulous way to step down, although I know we all have our work cut out for us to get the graduate program off the ground. Still, as Elena our department's long-time administrative specialist said, I helped launch the new future of our department and I feel damn good about it. As to what my sabbatical brings, here's what I'm hoping for: much-needed rest and perhaps even the end of my stress-induced fibromyalgia; more exercise and walks on the beach; completion of a new academic book manuscript; beginning a new novel, and I'm playing with the idea of a YA book; and lots of bowling. Got a personalized bowling ball for my birthday, some spiffy bowling shoes, and a very professional-looking bowling bag to carry it all in (and with my Vegas blackjack winnings, I got Alma the same, and she helped upgrade our bags to rollers with her roulette winnings) and we are looking into lesbian bowling in Los Angeles. I think we found something at Lucky Strike Lanes in Hollywood. And we continue to look to the stars for signs of one named Azul.

Sex y Corazon Symposium @ UCLA

On Friday, February 12, 2010 the César E. Chávez Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Chair Alicia Gaspar de Alba will be hosting a one-day symposium that looks back over the last fifteen years of Chicana/o Studies and examines how Chicana/o queer and feminist scholars have changed the field.

This historical symposium will gather over twenty-five Chicana and Chicano scholars and practitioners whose work intersects race, class, gender and sexuality paradigms within both traditional and interdisciplinary fields. Speakers will also speak to how their scholarship and activism utilizes love as a political strategy for social change.

The symposium is free and open to the public.

Online registration required at http://sites.google.com/site/sexycorazon2010/.

Seating is limited so register today.

"Love has no gender..."

It makes me very proud to have had two of our wedding pictures selected for this Courage Campaign "igualdad" advertisement. The pictures, especially the one showing "the kiss" part of our ceremony, always puts a little knot in my throat as I remember what an incredibly beautiful day that was, and how perfect everything was from the passion roses to the clear color of the Pacific Ocean, to the way Captain Chuck's white uniform and Alma's Veracruzana dress and the black embroidery of the Virgen de Guadalupe on my white guayabera all stood out against the colorful Mexican dresses of our flower girls, ring bearers, and madrinas. It's almost our one-year anniversary and I can still relive every moment of that perfect day in which our families and closest friends came together to celebrate and honor our love and union. It's a bittersweet memory, however, when just a few months later the retrograde people of this State overturned the right to marry for gays and lesbians. What I love about these Courage Campaign ads, in English and Spanish, is that they put that right into the context of other civil rights struggles which have been won through the unity of open hearts and minds. As Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz once said, "love has no gender, love is our very soul."