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Summer is just around the corner. How do I know? Because at least once an hour, the TV reminds me that summer isn't be worth living unless I drop a size or two; or a National Tutoring Chain assures me my child's brain will turn into a blank slate over the summer. (I especially like the commercial with equations and words tumbling out of the ears of some hapless kid.
    For those of you who don't watch as much TV as I do (guilty, guilty, guilty), the first sign of summer might be The Summer Reading List. I say might because I usually find my daughter's Summer Reading List crumpled under the couch about mid-July. If your child springs forth on the last day of school, waving the SRL and demanding to go to the library right now...which is the kind of kid I was...you might want to skip on down to the Writer's Workout.
     Although I was willing to read what the school district thought every third grader should read, I usually lost my enthusiasm by book two or three. I am an omnivorous reader, and always have been. Yet, somehow, the Literary Poobahs in Curriculum Development managed to come up with twenty of the dullest books available for the grade level; Newbery winners, biographies about Important Men (always men, never women) and "classics" of dubious value. But I had to read at least one all the way through, because the first assignment on the first day of school (after the "What-I-Did-On-My-Summer-Vacation"essay) would be a book report on one of the summer list books. Not once did any teacher ask if I liked the book. The point was that words passed before my eyes at some point of those three months.
     In my child's school district, book reports have gone the way of the Walkman. Reading is "encouraged" by taking computerized multiple choice tests on Certain Books Approved by the Company Who Sells the Test Software. Certain books are assigned so many points. (I will save my opinion of this sort of thing for another day and rant, but I will tell you that I couldn't pass the test on Yankee Girl...and I wrote the book!)
    In short, up until high school, the emphasis is on plot, characters and the odd nitpicky fact. No one ever asked if we liked the book, or not until, my sophomore English teacher. That was a real loser of a year as far as required reading: Silas Marner, A Tale of Two Cities and Les Miserables (before Broadway ditched all the boring parts and added some great music.)  Where other teachers acted personally insulted when we didn't froth with delight over Evangeline or The Scarlet Letter, Miss Strain cared.  We didn't have to like a book or a character, but we better have a reason why. "Just 'cause" or "It's dumb" were not acceptable reasons. Without telling us, she introduced us to the concept of critical reading.
     Many, many years pass. I become a librarian. I read constantly, almost unconsciously. I taught myself to speed read in college, so I blew through dozens of books a month. When I finished, I sometimes had the feeling I had just wasted my time. Other books, I loved so much I had to force myself to slow down and savor every word. Yet, all the time I recommended books to readers (or not), I could not tell you why I did or did not like a book. I assumed that if I didn't like a book, it must be my fault, that I just didn't get it. After all, this writer had a book published, and I didn't.
    Many years pass and I finally get the guts to enter an MFA in Writing for Children program.  Almost the first thing we newbies are told is that we will be doing a lot of reading. . .and critiquing.  Criticism of the educational variety was something that had not crossed my mind since my days in Miss Strain's class.
    "To be a writer, you have to learn to read like a writer," we were told.
    Uh-oh.  No more read

I’ve done blog posts before on the reader report, but lately Kim and I have been discussing them more and more and trying to figure out what really makes a great reader report.

For those of you who aren’t aware, a reader report is something every single potential editor will have to do for a job interview; it’s also something interns and assistants do for their bosses, and believe it or not, it’s something all editors do almost every week for other members of their editorial staff. Whether written or verbal, a reader report gives your analysis of a book’s potential.

What I think gets confusing for some people is where your opinion comes into play in a reader report. If you sit in on an editorial meeting at a publishing company, you’ll hear a number of editors, as part of their reports, say things like, “I didn’t like this” or “I didn’t warm to the characters” or “This was absolutely fabulous. I loved it,” which can easily make you think that a reader report is all about your personal opinion. And it is and it isn’t.

Remember, these editors have likely been around for a long time, so when they say something like, “I didn’t like this book,” other editors in the room know that they are saying that based on years of editing. That not liking something means that they don’t see it as commercially viable. And that’s the point of a reader report.

When I get a reader report from a potential new hire, an intern, my assistant, or even Kim, I only really care about your opinion if you’ve been around long enough to show me that you have experience behind your opinion. In other words, when Kim says she doesn’t like something, it’s going to have different weight than if an intern says it. When an intern or a potential new hire says she doesn’t like something, I need to know why, and “because I’m not comfortable with it” isn’t going to fly. I want to know whether or not you feel the book is commercially viable, whether you’re comfortable with it or not.

For example, you might not like that sex scene in the opening chapter, but do you not like it because you are uncomfortable with sex scenes or do you not like it because you don’t feel it works for the book. In other words, does it feel gratuitous and out of place to you. Again, not because you think it’s too abrupt for the book, but because you don’t feel it fits the story. To you it feels like the author slapped it in because she needed an exciting opening.

When interviewing for jobs in publishing, especially with agencies and in editorial, you will often be asked to write a reader report, and I will tell you from experience that a reader report can make or break any possibility of you getting that job. I could interview the sweetest candidate in the world, but if she writes a really awful report I will not offer the job. To me that report is the one thing that shows whether or not she has the editorial eye needed to propel her to a career in this business.

Jessica

In my blog post on Reading Day, one commenter wrote, "A good exercise for these writers would be to read critically for craft. I know we're all supposed to do that anyway, and we notice examples of good or bad writing as we read, but I mean that they should read really closely for craft. Do a paragraph-by-paragraph or sentence-by-sentence analysis as they go along. Really dissect each little bit of the writing while paying attention to the overall plot, themes, etc., even if the book at that moment isn't at a high point of tension. I think they'll be surprised how much more time and brain power it takes and maybe gain a better appreciation of what you mean by reading (even if it's not exactly the same)."

I wanted to highlight what this reader said because it is a great exercise and something I frequently recommend to my clients and other writers. If you find yourself struggling with your writing, maybe you’re having trouble developing your characters or the plot, go back and read some of your favorite books in the genre you’re writing in. The reason I suggest you reread your favorites is that you’re less likely to get caught up in the story and better able to read critically when it’s a book you already know.

As you’re reading do exactly as this commenter suggested. Dissect the book and figure out why things are working and how they’re developed. Reading critically like this can help you hone your craft. Listen, I do it. Reading critically like this helps me help my authors write better books.

Jessica

I was just about to make a comment or two on my Reading Day post when I realized that so many of the questions were so great I’d probably be better off simply writing a new post (or two).

A couple of you made the comparison of my reading day to your beta reading or revisions, and I think you hit the mark exactly. As authors you do know what it’s like to separate your reading side from your critical reading side and read with a different eye. You also know how important it is to step back and not lose yourself in the story as you’re doing so.

Someone mentioned that she once wanted to be an agent because she loved to negotiate. I love negotiating too. There’s an adrenaline rush I get whenever I get to negotiate a contract. It’s one of the best parts of the job.

Someone asked, Do you ever read a MS for "lose yourself in the book" quality and then go back an edit?

I do when I’ve offered representation on something. I first read the book to lose myself in it, and then, if the author accepts representation I’ll read it again to edit. Over the years I’ve been able to know if the book is working and if I can lose myself in it while I’m critically reading. It really comes down to how much I’m thinking and obsessing about the book when I’m not reading. If I’m dreaming about it, it’s a good book.

Jessica

Hi Everyone!

I'm thrilled to be here, sharing some thoughts with you. I'm just back from Boston, where I was honored to received an award for my latest book, Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed... and Revealed, which I co-authored with my wife, Yael Schy. (Our book was awarded the 2008 SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the category "Children's Science Picture Book."  The award is sponsored by Subaru and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and it was shared between the two authors and photographer Dwight Kuhn.) I was planning to write about the award ceremony and the four books that received the prize in different categories (see www.sbfonline/prizes) but I have decided to save that for another day, 

except to give you a glimpse of our book's cover and to share one detail about the ceremony. The sponsors of the SB&F Prize arranged to have several local children present the awards to the winning authors. The kids told the audience (and the authors) what they liked about the books. Some of them spoke with passion about questions the books had raised in their minds. To these readers, a book that raises interesting questions is a good book indeed. Then the young book reviewers shook our hands while handing us our award plaques.

The opinions and questions of children often fascinate and delight me. I get a lot of great letters from children and I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite, but one letter that stands out in my mind came from a nine-year old girl who wondered about the accuracy of various statements in my first book. I'm going to remove her name and address to protect her privacy, but we can call her by her first name, Lisa. Here is what she wrote. I apologize that the letters are small and a little hard to read. Lisa's message is summarized in the last two sentences:

In my presentations at schools, I often tell children, "Wondering is wonderful." I find it wonderful that Lisa is wondering about the statements in my book and whether or not they are true. These musings give her "mixed up feelings," which may sound uncomfortable, but she quickly goes on to reassure us that she finds these feelings magical. Her letter ends with a sentence I find truly memorable. To Lisa, the magic in books is wondering whether the "facts" are true or not! 

I wish readers of my books -- or all books -- would wonder about them the way Lisa does. Active minds read critically, questioning what they read as they blend their own experiences, knowledge and observations with the author's raw ingredients. They create a nourishing stew that is more than a bowl of information.

I have been lucky enough to see see many examples of readers extending or challenging statements in my books. The 2rd and 3rd graders of one class doubted that the average height of elementary school students was truly 4'8", as I reported in the backmatter of How Much Is a Million? I used that figure to estimate the height of a million children standing on one another's shoulders. To find out if I was right, this class set about measuring every child in their elementary school. They determined the median, the mode and the mean, and they graphed their data. Finally, they declared that the average height was only 4'4".

But they didn't quit there. They proposed several possible explanations for the discrepancy between what I had written and what they had found. For example, their school has grades from K-5. Maybe my school went up to 6th or 8th grade. If so, that could explain the difference between their answer and mine. Or, they speculated, their school might be shorter than normal... or perhaps mine was taller than normal. Or maybe I just measured a single child with a height of 4'8" and I said, "He's normal!" In a scientific paper, this section of their report would have been the "discussion" section.

I'll give just one other example of children wondering about what they have read.

In If You Made a Million, I wrote that a million dollars would be equal to "a whale's weight in quarters." A group of schoolkids wondered about that. They looked up the weight of a blue whale (60 tons) and calculated that it is the same as the weight of 10 million quarters, or 2.5 million dollars -- not one million dollars as the book said. When they wrote to me about it, I pointed out that the book did not specify a particular species of whale. And in the backmatter, where I explained the math, I showed that the weight of a million dollars in quarters is about 50,000 pounds, which is "the approximate weight of many kinds of whales, including the sperm whale." Then, as if anticipating their objection, I added that blue whales can be much heavier than that. I thought I had covered my bases and I said so (nicely) in a letter to my challengers, but they were not convinced. Here is a copy of the page that they sent back to me, bearing their comment upon the situation:

Don't you love it? I sure do. I told them they would have to take it up with the illustrator, Steven Kellogg. And I even provided his address! 

To me, the point isn't who is right and who is wrong. The point is that they wondered about something they had read in a book ... and they pursued their wonders through research and mathematics. It's magical. As nine year-old Lisa said,  "The magic of books is not knowing whether the facts are true or not."

The synthesis referred to in the title is the ability of a person to combine the primary process and secondary process of the brain. The primary process is concerned with the subconscious workings of the brain: dreams, imagery, associations. The secondary process is concerned with logical thinking or how we express our primary thinking to the outside. The "magic synthesis" is the result of an individual merging these two processes, and then creating metaphors, symbols, abstractions and a new way of seeing or thinking about the world.

According to author Silvano Arieti, creative persons and schizophrenics have a greater connection to the primary process, but, unlike the schizophrenic, the creative person is able to then process this thinking into a rational or logical form and create something new. I'm not surprised to read once again about the closeness between madness and creativity.

Aside from the physiological similarities, I believe there is a driven quality, a momentum that is shared by both states. I have felt compelling urges when creating something new and in states of intense emotional duress. In my life, when I try to make art, I take that energy and hopefully, articulate it, infuse it with metaphor, rhythm, and a certain beauty. (Unlike when I've experienced deep emotional crisis, where the experience is more like a spiraling panic that I need to release.)

As I started work that combined movement and poetry, I found myself more and more concerned with the way the spiritual is linked to the physical, the way the word is made flesh, both literally and figuratively. How something ineffable as connection to Spirit manifests is incredibly important to me. In Creativity: The Magic Synthesis, Arieti discusses the neurological and biological aspects of creativity. The fact that “the human cortex has fifteen billion neurons” seems to account for our ability to be more creative than the other animals on earth.

A path or an “engram” is formed in some neurons when we perform a task or have an experience. It is through the engram that we are able to later recall the experience or perform the task again. “The unfolding of the human psyche may ultimately be considered as a formation and transformation of engrams (and groupings of engrams) throughout life,” says Arieti, though this is where he and I part company.

The ineffable quality of being can't be reduced to this explanation, no matter how compelling or seductive it seems to be. I say seductive, because there is a certain egotism in assuming everything can be known, dissected, reduced to quantifiable elements. And yet, I'm attracted to this kind of research, much in the same way I enjoy my own cleverness, by own ability to be witty, to craft a piece of work, to edit and shape something.

But I'd be foolish to think that I'm the ultimate source for the ideas, the inspiration. Arieti also points out that social factors play a part in a person's level of creativity. He postulates that a society which promotes creative thinking through its educational systems and then controls it via rewards in the work force, will ensure the engrams that get traced will be more likely to facilitate innovative thinking on a collective level. I do feel a certain level of agreement here, although it's a staggering comment on the isolation of the scientific ivory tower that Arieti can write this treatise with no reference whatsoever to the way social forces shape how people learn, and what, in fact, is taught to whom .

Those critical flaws aside, Creativity offers a detailed overview and some cogent theorizing on some of current research on creativity, and does take into account the wide variable of unpredictability when dealing with the human mind. I can hardly wait to see the results of the engrams that were etched into my neurons as a result of this reading.

ISBN-10: 0465014437 ISBN-13: 978-0465014439

I recently posted an article about a piece of speculative fiction, Solstice. It's a novel that's sharp-edged, haunting and has some kick ass-heroines. The following is a conversation with
Ulises Silva, its author, and the founder of an independent press, Tragical Mirth Publishing.

(If you missed my piece, you can read it here.)


1. Tell me about the genesis of Tragical Mirth Publishing. Do you see yourself as a niche publisher? If so, what do you feel are the strengths of that? The downside?

Tragical Mirth Publishing is the independent publishing house I established in order to self-publish Solstice in 2007. I took the dreaded self-publishing route primarily for creative control.

After all, one of the earlier comments I got on an earlier draft of Solstice was that the characters’ names (i.e., Itztli, Jai Lin) were too difficult and different for most audiences, and that I should change them. I think that’s what I feared the most about going through a traditional publisher—that they’d want to change the characters’ ethnicities and names in order to make them more commercially appealing. That would have defeated the purpose of writing this story. So I took the chance and created Tragical Mirth to self-publish, and it’s a gamble that’s surprisingly paid off. Despite it being a self-published book, Solstice received positive reviews in Booklist, Library Journal, SciFiNow magazine, and now here at La Bloga. I see TMP as a niche publisher in the sense that I want to focus on giving authors of color an entry into the crowded literary marketplace. While I’mnot yet ready to publish other writers, I do hope to eventually start working with authors of color and let them tell the stories they want to tell.

I want them to see TMP as an alternative to the big publishers that seem naturally inclined toward labeling anything written by us as Urban Fiction or what have you. I think that focus on letting writers of colors tell the kinds of stories they want to tell is our greatest strength. Hopefully, down the line, TMP will be a very viable publisher with a full roster of good and promising writers of color. The downside, of course, is that TMP is an independent publisher, and not currently set up to publish anything. And, assuming I can ever get to the point where I can publish other people’s works, writers will still need to temper their expectations. I doubt we’ll ever be about giving someone a $10,000 advance and promise to get their book into every top review magazine and best-selling list. But if a writer is willing to work with us and be willing to take some of the risks with us, then hopefully we can accomplish something special. And considering the unexpected success of Solstice, I truly believe we can achieve anything.

2. Your novel is a piece of speculative fiction. How does that sync up with popular ideas of 'Latino/Chicano' fiction?

A lot of ‘Latino/Chicano’ fiction is based on telling stories from our historically marginalized point of view. We tell stories that, while familiar to Latinos, might seem alien to most everyone else. They’re stories about growing up as hyphenated Americans, about Latino/Chicano political activism, about all our experiences on the fringes of mainstream American consciousness.

They’re about telling the stories no one else can or cares to tell. Solstice, although grounded in speculative fiction, is deeply influenced by this aspect of Latino/Chicano writing. The notion that Scribes can use the English written word to literally manipulate reality is based on my belief that mainstream media has the power to invent our reality and historical awareness (or, in some cases, efface it altogether).

So it’s no coincidence that the Editors tasked with watching over these Scribes are all people of color, people who operate in the shadows and whose native languages serve as a defense against Scribes. Solstice’s protagonist, Io, is a Mexican-Japanese anti-heroine. She’s the best of The Editors, but she moonlights as a vigilante, and her mantra is that only cruelty can destroy cruelty.

But she’s haunted by the loss in her life, including the loss of her parents and her own normalcy. She carries a reminder of this loss with her—a copy of Sandra Cisneros’ The House on Mango Street given to her by her mother as a reminder of “where she came from.” Although her character is adrift at the start of the story—caught between two distinct ethnic identities, occupying the fringes of common law, trapped in the purgatory that is her own aimless vigilantism—it’s her mother’s book that keeps her oriented, even if she doesn’t know it.

And, of course, there’s Nadie, the novel’s antagonist. She’s the Scribe who decides that humanity is irreparably corrupt and destructive and must therefore be exterminated. But she wants the world to know why it’s being destroyed, which is why she sets out to tell a story—in her own unique way—that recounts history’s many unpunished crimes, including the horrors of colonialism. It’s one of the book’s ironies that this young girl whose name means "no one" is the one who brings these crimes to light and issues her final judgment.

3. In Solstice, you create a world similar to Dick's Blade Runner. Talk about that as a landscape for your characters, and the decision to pit Scribes and Editors against each other as the central theme.

The story is set in an alternate near future where the U.S.’ power and influence have eroded following three catastrophic military ventures (there are vague references throughout to Iraq, Iran, and Taiwan). I wanted the story’s landscape to present an uncanny glimpse into a foreseeable future, where government corruption has gone unchecked thanks to stolen elections, interest groups, and widespread apathy. Part of this landscape, of course, are Scribes, people with the power to make whatever story they write come true. Scribes are meant to reflect the notion that the written word, in the hands of certain people, can create reality. We see it in history books, of course. How many of us have heard that it was Mexico that provoked the war of 1846 -- a war Americans call the Mexican War and that Mexicans call La Invasion Norteamericana?

But consider this also: If we think on the ways mainstream media helped the current administration launch its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and how they invented for all of us the reality of Iraq’s nuclear stockpiles and willingness to use them against us, then we can see that the written word really does have power. It’s no coincidence that I make references throughout to a Scribe named Don Poinsettia, a Scribe Io takes down with the help of a Chinese Scribe, Xiu Mei Xiang. Poinsettia is a Murdoch/Rove figure who’s used his powers and his MIX media empire for personal gain.

The suggestion is that he single-handedly brought about the U.S.’ downfall. I actually plan a prequel to Solstice that will focus on him and Io’s attempt to hunt him down. She’s the top Editor, after all. Editors are, in essence, a representation of post-colonial theory. So much of what Latinos and other writers of color do is write the stories that colonial and mainstream texts have skipped or effaced. I wanted the Editors—all people of color whose native languages serve as a defense against a Scribe’s powers—to represent that ongoing struggle.

4. Solstice is populated by strong female characters, outside the 'norm.' Can you share what motivated you and what you hope you engender in the reader with that choice?

It really began with my mother, a strong Mexican woman who never backs down from any fight, and who always taught me to respect women’s rights and equalities.

From a very early age, she let me see the inherent ludicrousness of the machismo that was (and perhaps still is) rampant in Mexico and Latin America. I remember seeing Aliens for the first time, and seeing the Ripley and Vazquez characters in action, and being totally awestruck by them.

I think that was the first time that I saw a female character that kicked butt with the best male characters, and the first time I started to ask myself why we didn’t see more characters like them in movies. We’ve all seen male action heroes, but not nearly enough female ones, at least not many that weren’t just Barbies with guns (e.g., Lara Croft). I’ve always believed that, as a writer, you should embrace the control the written word offers you. As writers, we can tell whatever stories we want with whatever characters we want. That’s why, when it came time to start writing my stories, I always featured a strong female lead, because those were the kinds that I always appreciated the most.

With Solstice, I saw an opportunity to create Io, a heroine who’s very strong, very independent, and not just a sexualized, hot-blooded LatinAsian woman bowing down to stereotypes. I wanted her to have real layers, real depth, and real flaws. And despite her troubled beginning (she really is a monster at first), I wanted readers to sympathize with her plight, and appreciate her eventual redemption. Maybe more importantly, I wanted people to read her and the rest of the characters, and say to themselves, “why aren’t there more characters like these in books and film?” I wanted to give Latino/a and Asian audiences a set of strong central characters they could appreciate and even embrace. And I wanted to show other audiences that a Latina/Asian woman could have other roles than the ones people are used to seeing them in.

5. What are the themes you find yourself returning to? What's their significance personally and creatively.

Creatively, I’m fascinated with end-of-the-world scenarios, maybe too much for my own good. I guess, growing up in the 80s and thinking that the Emergency Broadcast Network was going to come on at any moment, I thought the end of the world could really happen. So I migrated to these kinds of stories. I was always fascinated with the human response to apocalypse, and especially how the media would react and spin stories if an end-of-the-world scenario began to unfold. That’s why there are many instances in Solstice where Io and her companions are listening to the radio or watching TV; they’re forced to watch the horrors of Nadie’s actions through the filters of network news and talk shows. Personally, I’m just as adamant about writing stories featuring people that look and act like us. Growing up, I didn’t see a whole lot of Latino/a protagonists that were strong or three-dimensional or even law-abiding.

So it’s important to me, as a Latino writer, to create characters we can relate to. Because I genuinely feel that our people, especially our younger audiences, still don’t have a whole lot of positive portrayals in mainstream media to inspire them. There aren’t enough characters like us out there that make us think we can be heroes or awe-inspiring or even strong. I’m just one person, but I make it a point to always feature strong, central Latino/a characters in all my fiction. With Solstice, it’s Io.

With my next novel, Inventing Vazquez, it’s a Chicana named Liliana Vazquez. With my next speculative fiction novel, The Mourning Syndrome, it’ll be a Chicana writer named Clara Solis. That will always be my goal: to have real characters that we, as Latino/as, can readily identify with, and maybe even be inspired by.

6. Share with Bloga readers where you hope to take them with Inventing Vazquez.

From the writer that brought you Solstice, a dark, apocalyptic novel, comes…a light-hearted comedic satire. That’s going to be a nightmare to try and market, but… In any event, Inventing Vazquez is my new novel (with a release date sometime late 2008 or early 2009) that takes
on an issue very important to me: the (mis)portrayal of Latino/as in American cinema. Like I said before, I don’t think our people have a lot of positive examples to look up to in film. Most of the time, we’re portrayed as gang members, or domestic servants, or crime victims. And even when films do cast Latino/as, half the time they play non-Latino roles. It’s like America Ferrerra said in Ugly Betty: "Mexicans don’t have action heroes. All we have is a fast little rodent."

So Inventing Vazquez is my little critique of the whole industry. (As an aside, even the title of the book is in reference to the Vazquez character from Aliens. Yes, the same one I mentioned earlier. I eventually learned that the actress wasn’t even Latina; it was a non-Latina actress with brown contact lenses, bronzed skin, and a fake accent. I was so discouraged, because for so long, I’d really liked that character and what I thought she represented.)

The story centers around Liliana Vazquez, a mousy Chicana who’s hired by a major film studio to serve as a “Hispanic Sensitivity Issues Consultant” following the widespread outrage among Latino/as over a recent film. She’s hired to read scripts and alert the studio if she thinks it’s going to offend Latino/a viewers, but she comes to realize that the position is a token one. She, like the Asian Sensitivity Issues Consultant and the Arab Sensitivity Issues Consultant (a Sikh man), is just a PR gimmick.

And although she starts off as soft-spoken and mousy (she’s ashamed of her voice because it’s so girly despite her being 29), she has to find her voice—literally and figuratively. The story is about her finding a way to make her voice heard among people who don’t want to hear it. It’s a comedic satire, so I hope to make audiences laugh. But I also hope to get people to think about the issues I raise. Because although the films mentioned in the book are loosely based on real-life films (e.g., “Empire of Blood” instead of “Apocalypto”), some of them should resonate with the audience (i.e., “yeah, I can see them making a movie like that”) despite being so off-the-wall silly (like one film, “Latin Lover,” about a guy that gets women to fall for him when he bites into a magical habañero pepper).

7. Where would you like to see Tragical Mirth in ten years? Where would you like to see yourself?

Ideally, I’d like Tragical Mirth Publishing to have a full roster of writers of color, and a full line of good books that tell good stories about us. And I’d like to be able to work with writers, and give them the kind of encouragement and feedback they’ll need to keep writing. Because I genuinely believe that people of color, especially Latino/as, need to write more, and we need to start creating the kinds of stories and characters that mainstream media won’t. So hopefully, with enough lucky bounces and maybe some more commercial success with Solstice and my future novels, I can work toward this.

As for myself, writing is what I love, so I plan to keep writing. I always said that to simply publish Solstice and present it to my family as mygift to them (because nothing says “I love you, mom, dad, and brother” like a novel about the end of the world) was my only goal; anything after that would be gravy. So I’m just enjoying the ride, and embracing the joy that is writing fiction. Hopefully, in 10 years, I will have published a few more: Inventing Vazquez, The Mourning Syndrome, a sequel to Solstice, and maybe one or two more. And I genuinely hope that, by then, the kinds of characters I like to feature won’t be ‘outside the norm’ anymore.

8. Tell us something not in the official bio.

Some things that may or may not be true about me:

• I stay up until 2 a.m. every night writing, drawing, or watching horror films. This despite the fact that I have to be at work at 8:30 a.m. I started my writing ‘career’ in earnest with an Anime fanfic entitled, Nightmares in the Apocalypse, which was so horrid and badly written but nonetheless made me somewhat popular among a small group of teenage readers.
• I can make a mean guacamole.
• I write music on the side, and play bass guitar, electric guitar, and drums. All at once. Really.
• I’ve been in a punk band, am currently in a blues band, and am now trying to form an indie rock band.
• I draw pictures of my main characters to get a sense of who they are and what they look like. And all these pictures are done in Anime style.
• I don’t do windows.
• Having grown up in NYC, I naturally root for the Detroit Tigers, the Arizona Cardinals, the Miami Dolphins, and the Buffalo Sabres.
• I hate powdered laundry detergent.
• Having grown up in NYC, the city I most want to live in is San Francisco, or Chicago, or Toronto. Which is why I’m in Michigan.
• Being Mexican-American, naturally, my favorite kind of music is indie rock and Japanese rock.
• I was actually a terrible grad student, probably because I spent all my time writing instead of studying.
• Being Mexican-American, my favorite film of all time, naturally, is Lost in Translation.

Spending much time checking out the Internet, sifting through all the chaff could make you senile. So, when we started La Bloga we intended it not only to focus on Chicano literary themes, but also to strive for higher standards than a typical blog, by our "passionate" (see Laínez's post from yesterday) understanding of cultural distinctions. As example of the type of site we didn't want, one recently came to our attention and warrants comment, given its topic.

On 12/15/06 Manuel Ramos's post introduced Rudolfo Anaya's The First Tortilla: A Bilingual Story. The blurb quoted publisher UNM Press: "She [Jade] has made the first tortilla." It also mentions a Mountain Spirit and talking hummingbirds. Sounds like a fantasy, folktale or leyenda, right?

In our 7/18/07 review of The First Tortilla, Bloguista Gina MarySol Ruiz wrote: "Rudolfo Anaya has written a magical and lovely folktale about the origins of that favorite of us mexicanos/Chicanos, the delicious tortilla." Note her use of "folktale" and "the origins of the tortilla."

When the editors of Guanabee read our review, they remarked: "Finally, a role model for young Mexican girls that doesn’t ask them to sell out so damn hard… but make tortillas instead?" While their first remark may or may not be commendable, it is the "make tortillas instead" that begs literary interpretation.

That anyone, Latino-oriented or otherwise, could misconstrue a folktale about the first tortilla as somehow advocating that contemporary, young Mexican girls should make tortillas instead of aspiring to other (unnamed) activities, indicates either a low level of vocabulary or deliberate misinterpretation.

Using Guanabee logic, we'd expect their editors to review Little Red Hen and the Grains of Wheat and vilify its author(s) for advocating that young females take up bread making instead of other (unnamed) activities. Or perhaps they think the authors of another old story, about Adam and Eve, didn't want 21st century females eating apples.

A folktale about the distant past or a fantasy world, with talking hummingbirds or hens (or serpents), should not be interpreted as providing lessons or role models, solely based on the plot. Guanabee editors seemed to understand part of that. It's the part they didn't that separates Guanabee from La Bloga.

If we read further into the post: "Bless Me, Ultima, the novel that taught us Mexicans/vomiting can be literary motifs", one wonders what they consider to be rational critique. Characterizing Anaya's recognized classic in this fashion seems like a shallow way to artificially create controversy. In their own words, "Guanabee is commentary on media, pop culture and entertainment, spicy coverage for the Latino in you."

Now, I don't know about you, but the Latino in me prefers that spicy coverage not approach the abyss of Fox-TV standards of verity. Guanabee is a commercially supported site, filled with "ads by Google" and other business interests, including Fox (by chance?), so perhaps the "spicy" in Guanabee is simply intended to generate more hits-per-month to support their bottom line. That it generated my hit, indicates outrageous deviations from common sense can make money. This is another aspect where La Bloga separates from other Internet sites in that we deliberately avoid commercial interests.

Comments to the Guanabee post likewise reflect more grasping at straw men and low-level bursts of supposedly smart remarks like, "The highly-anticipated sequel to [The First Tortilla] will have Jade pushing Qdoba burritos in central Los Angeles. . ." That my post may generate more Guanabee hits is only unfortunate in that at times you need to know what a bad tortilla tastes like to better appreciate homemade ones. While we know La Bloga's "cooking" doesn't always reach what we strive for, be assured we won't go commercial on you and forsake the literary for the North American corporate dollar.

Man! I've had some rough editors and art directors before, but something like this would probably make me shrivel up and die... were it not coming from such a big talent. This is a link to a critique by veteran comics artist Alex Toth (who died last year) on the Johnny Quest pencils and layouts of the very talented Steve Rude. Very harsh, but very accurate. Plenty of good points that we all need to be reminded of when it comes to illustrating scenes and visually telling stories. (link)