2021 Calendar:
Just putting a big shrug up here for now.
Luchador—along with a lot of great Interlude Press books—has been named one of Amazon’s Kindle Monthly Deals! For the month of November, get it for only $2.99 on Amazon and at the IP Web Store! (And the print edition’s on sale right now at Amazon, too!)
A big thank you to Karen Given at Only A Game, NPR’s weekly sports show, who hung on to my pitch about sports and romance for three years, finally getting it on the air this week. Good things are worth the wait, and I’m so grateful not only to have a chance to work on a really fun story, but also a piece that treated romance writers and readers with respect.
You can listen to it here.
The past couple of days have been an absolute blur, and I realized that I hadn’t had a chance to to post about this weekend’s Foreword INDIES Book of the Year awards. I’m so honored that Luchador got singled out by Foreword as the 2016’s best Indie Romance, and so proud of all of the Interlude Press authors who were named as finalists and winners of Foreword INDIES, Lambda Literary, and other awards this year. I think it says so much about the overall quality of the books being published by IP, and of the authors it works with.
I’m especially happy for this little book that could. It’s been an uphill fight at times for Luchador, but it is a book that is close to my heart, and I’m glad it has found its way into a few readers’ hearts, as well.
Holy smokes.
Foreword Reviews revealed its list of finalists for its annual INDIES Book of the Year awards today, and Luchador is named in three fiction categories: LGBT, Romance, and Multi-Cultural.
It's exciting for me on two levels, because Luchador is one of seven books and three of the dozen nominations for Interlude Press books. I'm so excited for authors Alysia Constantine (Sweet), Carrie Pack (In the Present Tense), Pene Henson (Into the Blue), Lynn Charles (Black Dust), Charlotte Ashe (The King & The Criminal), and Amy Stilgenbauer (Sideshow), who also received nominations.
Winners will be announced in Chicago this June at the annual convention of the American Library Association. This is not the Oscars—winners are announced during a slide show on the convention floor. There are no speeches (thank god) or statuettes. When Sotto Voce won this award (then known as "IndieFab") two years ago for LGBT fiction, I received three stickers to put on books on display at the IP booth. Eventually, we bought more.
What's the value for authors and small publishers, then? It's the ability to say that our books are recognized for their quality—which is at the heart of what Interlude Press is working to do. So thanks, Foreword. It is, as nominees say, "an honor just to be nominated".
It's that time of year.
The birds are singing. The orange trees are blossoming. The American Express bill is expanding, drooping under the girth of travel expenses.
Welcome to the start of convention and book fair season in the publishing industry. Now through fall is a virtual sprint through vetting,
It's no secret that I pull double duty at Interlude Press, and the convention season poses real challenges for me. The company comes first, and that means sacrificing some opportunities as an author and acting as a de facto assistant while others get their promo on. The schedule is tight through June, and I'll be working—either as an author or a publisher—at BookCon, ALA, RT17, the LA Times Festival of Books, YALLWEST and Emerald City Comic Con.
A breather after that, and then it starts again in fall. I'll see you at the book fairs!
In the minutes I had to spare for Twitter last night, I saw a familiar parade of New Year’s posts: of people wanting to set 2016 on fire; of authors thanking friends, readers and colleagues; of writing plans outlined; of personal goals assessed.
And in my head was that annoying little voice, telling me I was supposed to do this because that’s what authors are supposed to do.
We see these posts every year, and they tend to fall into broad categories:
The grateful: Those listing name after name of colleagues, fellow authors, readers, editors and other who brought value to their lives, with comments ranging from fine details of the contributions these people made to key smashes. They were kind, thoughtful, and occasionally sounded a bit like Academy Award acceptance speeches.
The goal-oriented: Those writing a laundry list of the books—many books, in some cases—that they planned to write in 2017. Good god, this can give a girl a complex. I’m writing a short story this year, and probably nothing else. I have ideas in the early stages of development, so it may be awhile.
The aggrieved: Those listing the things that pissed them off in 2016—and there was plenty to get cheesed off about last year. Their lists amounted to an often well-deserved “hell no,” and a vow of how they would change things in 2017.
The remorseful: Not going to lie, I didn’t see a lot of these this year.
And of course, there are the year-in-review posts. They aren’t limited to major media. Everyone has a Top Ten, whether they realize it or not. Some have a Top Hundred, which often repeat their top ten in multiple forms.
The thing is, after a while, they tend to blur together in the cacophony of year-end lists from pundits, critics, columnists and bloggers, and it reminds me why I tend to ignore that annoying little voice in my head.
I could legitimately see myself writing all of those New Year’s lists, of course. I’m goal-oriented, pushing myself to write new things from what I hope are new angles. I’m aggrieved, over things things both public (rating from the state of American politics and to the Dodgers’ bullpen) and very private, but years in public relations have taught me to choose my public battles carefully. It doesn’t mean you don’t take them on, you just make sure that you make them count.
I am remorseful for having judged some authors on their social media personas and even on their cover art rather than on their work. I'm going to work on changing that. Never judge a book by its cover, in every sense of the expression. And I am deeply grateful, not only to Publishers Weekly for naming Luchador one of its Best Books of 2016, but to the people who helped and supported me by reading it, and giving me reasoned, professional criticism where necessary and praise when earned.
But just because it’s what everyone else is doing doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the right move for you. That’s not in any way to mean that these posts don’t have interesting content, or that it’s not fun to see friends squee over each others’ work. It’s just that the creatives of the world shouldn’t feel obligated to do a thing simply because it is what everyone else is doing.
And while I’ve never believed in New Year’s resolutions, it forced me to realize what mine have been, and continue to be.
I promise—to my editors, to my readers, to my business partners, to my loved ones, and most importantly, to myself—to be true to who I am, and to make certain that it includes challenging myself to grow in how I see and experience the world, as well as how I represent it.
I’ve never been a writer who likes to chase trends. I don’t believe in forcing myself to be so prolific that I drive myself to a quick burnout. I write because I learn from it, and get joy from it, and I share it when I feel I have something worth sharing. And I actively remind myself not to let voices—whether they are in my head or in my timeline—get me down.
So 2017, bring it on. I may not write five books this year—or even one—but I’ll work my ass off to make sure that whatever I do is authentic.
To borrow from Harry Caray, "Holy cow!" I wrote the following column a month or two ago about the link between romantic fiction and sports. Today, it was published on The Cauldron, a blog run by Sports Illustrated. I am (almost) without words.
Miguel, aka “La Rosa,” is a veteran exótico wrestler and wrestling gym owner in Mexico City. Over time, his role in Gabriel’s life ranges from inspiration to trainer to antagonist to father figure. I try not to pick favorites from my characters, but it is hard not to with Miguel around. I love this smart, tough, loving man.
*
Though he entrusted the development of Gabriel’s technical skills to Arturo, Miguel insisted that Gabriel continue his own, unfathomable tutoring. It was classroom work, of sorts, a training of Gabriel’s mind that only Miguel could explain—but steadfastly refused to do so.
His unconventional training included handing Gabriel a list of research assignments. Study the rise of the PRI and the role of Superbarrio in the emergence of opposition politics. Watch and compare the El Santo movies of the 1960s to the El Santo movies of the 1970s. Contrast and compare American professional wrestling performance to lucha libre.
“I know who El Santo is. My dad used to watch his movies with me when I was little. But how is watching Santo vs. las Mujeres Vampiro relevant to my getting a pro license?” Gabriel asked. He spat out his words in a rapid-fire complaint.
Miguel smirked and tossed a magazine across the room. “Read this,” he said.
“Lucha Semanal?”
Miguel nodded, as if acknowledging a secret he hadn’t shared.
“A thirty-year-old magazine? I wasn’t even born yet.”
“That’s the point, college boy,” Miguel said, going back to work, smiling to himself.
Source: The New Yorker
I’m spending today sharing some background on Luchador, my new book about a young man’s search for identity in Mexico City’s lucha libre circuit, and this story from The New Yorker is a great place to start.
Written by William Finnegan (no relation), the talented writer behind last year’s on-every-top-ten-list Barbarian Days, the story focuses on the luchador Cassandro, arguably the best known of lucha lire’s exóticos. (I am still OMG’ing from Cassandro following my Twitter. I mean, I’m a fan, and I was in the audience that night at Lucha VaVoom described by Finnegan in this piece.)
Exóticos are luchadores—most of them gay—who wrestle as a sort of drag act within lucha. They wrestle mano-a-mano with the pumped-up luchadores of this macho culture, but they are also subject to derogatory taunts from the crowd, and often expected to play their characters using dated and, some argue, problematic stereotypes. They’ve also been credited with playing an important role in a Mexico’s equality movement, and drawing an enthusiastic LGBTQ audience to lucha libre. It’s a fascinating dichotomy, and an absolutely great read.
The conflict is also at the heart of Luchador. The protagonist, Gabriel, trains to join the lucha libre circuit under the mentorship of Miguel, a famed, old school exótico luchador known as La Rosa. For Gabriel, who is gay and out, it’s a chance to wrestle without stepping into the closet. But it’s also not a clean fit, and Gabriel looks to challenge the norms of what it means to be a gay luchador.
Thanks for the trailer, CS Scholte! Luchador is available Thursday!
"A young gay man in Mexico City is enthralled by a cross-dressing exótico wrestler on the lucha libre circuit and begins to pursue his own wrestling career in this very modern story of love and passionate vocation. Finnegan works in rich threads of Mexican history, queer culture and community, and questions of being out or closeted in a time and place poised on the brink of acceptance."
It’s been a chaotic day and I’m only now getting a chance to sit down (with a cold beer and the World Series) and try to get my thoughts together on the events of the day.
This morning, Publishers Weekly included Luchador on its “Best Books of 2016″ list.
It’s no small feat to be reviewed by PW, especially for a small press like Interlude. The magazine reviews about 9,000 books each year out of the reported 100,000 or so it receives as submissions. Of those, about 1,000 receive a Starred Review. The Best Books list is narrowed again, 150 books in all this year (including 50 children’s and young adult books) from biographies to children’s and young adult titles. Six books from the romance genre made the cut this year. One of them was by Nora Roberts. Nora Roberts.
One was Luchador, and I don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or shout. I was physically shaking when I got the news.
Here’s what they had to say about Luchador:
A young gay man in Mexico City is enthralled by a cross-dressing exótico wrestler on the lucha libre circuit and begins to pursue his own wrestling career in this very modern story of love and passionate vocation. Finnegan works in rich threads of Mexican history, queer culture and community, and questions of being out or closeted in a time and place poised on the brink of acceptance.
Hardly anyone has heard of it, and fewer romance readers are likely to be quickly drawn to a book set in the world of lucha libre, so I am deeply, deeply grateful for PW’s recognition.
But I’m grateful for a lot more than that. This is a good time to say thanks to the IP team which helped get Luchador from manuscript to book. To Annie Harper, who tolerated three years worth of me questioning whether I had a book or not, and to CB Messer, who is not only a ridiculously talented art director, but a great sounding board, as well. And to the colleagues and advance readers who reviewed Luchador in one form or another—for story, cultural sensitivity, Spanish language use, lucha libre culture and general coherence. Thanks, one and all.
This book is a labor of love. If your knowledge of lucha is based solely on Nacho Libre, there is so, so much more to it. Luchadores are not clowns. They are athletes, performers, and in some cases, agents of social change.
I don’t know whether Luchador will find its audience. It’s not exactly conventional. It’s a quirky little book and sometimes I feel solitary in my love of it. But PW just gave it a chance, and a whole lot of eyeballs. And for that, I am deeply grateful.
Now through November 17th, enter to win a print edition of Luchador on Goodreads. Open to US readers only, but we'll also have a Rafflecopter giveaway of five eBook editions available worldwide!
If you stopped by Google yesterday, you saw that the Google Doodle was a stylized luchador’s mask. But it’s not just any mask. It’s the mask of El Santo, The Saint, the legendary técnico whose career spanned both the ring and the screen, and who was famously buried wearing his iconic silver mask.
Today would have been Rodolfo Guzmán Huerta’s 99th birthday, but most people didn’t know him by that name. To fans of the genre, he was simply, El Santo.
El Santo is the classic técnico, the hero in lucha libre’s morality plays of good versus evil. His wrestling days spanned nearly five decades, and he was famously paired both against and with the Blue Demon in the ring, on film, and in comic books.
But El Santo ultimately became much more than a wrestler or a movie star. He became a folk hero and a symbol of justice, facing down powerful villain.
And his presence is felt to this day. His mask, along with that of The Blue Demon, are the classic imagery of historic lucha libre. His image can be found in memes, on beverage bottles, even on fabric (Yes, I just bought this skirt.) If you’re lucky enough to be in Los Angeles and catch a Lucha Va Voom burlesque show, El Santo’s image is omnipresent, with video clips running on screens before and between acts.
To some, El Santo’s image has become the source of kitsch, but El Santo remains the barometer upon which great técnicos are measured, and his influence runs through my new book, Luchador:
Gabriel spent weeks working with Miguel fine-tuning his character, his look, his costumes. He shadowed Miguel. He accompanied him to the wrestling suppliers, to the designer’s studio, to the fabric shop.
In the car, they would talk of strategy and of show, of the masters of lucha libra, and why they were so beloved decades after their careers had ended. El Santo’s path may have led him from the ring to B-grade movies, but he was still beloved by fans as lucha libre’s greatest técnico long after the day when he was buried wearing his silver mask.
It takes something special, Miguel would remind him: a character story that resonates with fans, a style unlike other luchadores. People needed something, or someone, to cheer for.
“And I can do that as a rudo?” Gabriel asked.
“You can do that as anyone. You just need to be compelling.”
An unconventional romance wrestles, at times literally, with issues of identity and belonging. —KIRKUS REVIEWS
Read More
I was in Mexico City last summer, doing research for the book and taking a much-needed break, when I stumbled upon the golden wings of Marin’s Alas de la Ciudad outside the Museum of Anthropology on the Paseo de la Reforma. Like a lot of the tourists, I stopped and posed between them for a picture, then stepped back and watched for awhile, letting the scene sink in. Now it’s a moment in the book, and sets the stage for the conclusion of El Ángel Exótico’s story.
While looking up photos of the sculpture today (no, you don’t want to see my selfie), I stumbled upon a news story from a couple of months back: LA Mayor Accepts “Wings of the City” Sculptures from Mexico. The wings are coming to the City of Angels—permanently.
*
Luchador will be published by Interlude Press in November.
I spent a good part of last night packing supplies to be sent to Orlando for the American Library Association convention at the end of the month—books, promotional items, rainbow flags, buttons that say "Y'all Means All".
The ALA convention is scheduled to be a big moment for Interlude Press, my publisher and a company I am devoted to. Our books feature LGBTQ characters. Our writers, editors, artists and readers reflect a spectrum of identity, and the company, though small, has dedicated itself to raising funds for LGBTQ causes. And until this morning, "Orlando" meant good things to come, the promotion of a campaign with a positive and hopeful message, and the work to support it: press releases, presentations, graphics, the works.
And this morning, I woke up to the news of the unconscionable mass shooting in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, targeting the LGBTQ community—the worst mass shooting in US history, a horrific hate crime. And then the news that a man was arrested here in Los Angeles this morning, on his way to LA Pride from Indiana, carrying weapons and possible explosives.
Whether or not the tragedy in Orlando and the apparent aborted attack in Los Angeles are connected to each other or to international terrorism remain to be seen, but both show how insanely easy it is to get weapons, including high powered semi-automatic weapons, in this country. The gunman in Orlando apparently purchased his AR15 assault rifle just recently.
Where does it end? When do legislators finally stand up to the NRA's cash flow and take a stand against the mass shootings that have become all too common in our country?
I still have books and buttons and boxes strewn across my kitchen island, destined for Orlando. It breaks my heart to look at them right now, but I'm going to buckle down and pack those boxes today, and load them not just with supplies, but with hope.
I've been holding this one in for awhile, but anyone paying attention on Tumblr or Twitter probably could have pieced it together: the trip to Mexico City, the photos of the Angel of Independence statue, and all that lucha libre.
Luchador is officially announced now, and it's a bit of a break from where Interlude Press started, because romance is not the driving theme of this book. This is Gabriel's story, a coming of age piece about a young enmascarado in search of identity while wearing a mask.
Each week, Gabriel Romero’s drive to Sunday mass takes him past “El Ángel,” the golden statue at the heart of Mexico City that haunts his memories and inspires his future. Spurred by the memory of his parents, Gabriel is drawn to the secretive world of lucha libre, where wrestling, performance art and big business collide.
Under the conflicting mentorships of one of lucha libre’s famed gay exótico wrestlers and an ambitious young luchador whose star is on the rise, Gabriel must choose between traditions which ground him but may limit his future, and the lure of sex and success that may compromise his independence. Surrounded by a makeshift family of wrestlers, Gabriel charts a course to balance ambition, sexuality and faith to find the future that may have been destined for him since childhood.
It's easy to call it coming of age fiction, but it wasn't until I was done writing it that I realized I'd written a story about finding family and being true to yourself.
And Lycra. Lots of Lycra.
It is book fair and convention season, and with #RT16 behind us, I have two more signings coming up in the near future.
This Sunday (May 1), I'll be at the Asheville Zine Fest in Asheville, NC. Yes, that's right, North Carolina. Interlude Press wrote up a great post about why it is standing behind its commitments in the state, and we'll not only be selling and signing our books, but we're also going to be working hard to raise some funds for Equality North Carolina, a group fighting the good fight against HB2.
And on Sunday, June 5, I'll be signing copies of Sotto Voce (and maybe talking a little about Luchador) at The Ripped Bodice in Culver City, CA. WHOOHOO! If you haven't been to the Ripped Bodice yet, it's a one-of-a-kind book store that's kind of mecca for readers of romantic fiction. I'll be there with Christopher Rice and IP's own C.B. Lee in celebration of Pride Month. The Ripped Bodice is an awesome store, and this is a great chance to check it out and get some books signed! I hope to see you there.
