The Writing Life (do I have one?)

First, my short story Picarón was accepted to appear in the second San Miguel anthology.  The first one was called Solamente en San Miguel, and nobody can tell me how many copies sold.  Nonetheless I a happy to be a part of the second.  Editors asked that I translate all words in Spanish, and that was all.  Publish date...to be announced. 

Next, an essay I wrote about my 15-year old daughter being psychic will be published on the Huffington Post some time soon.  It will appear in Rebecca Walker´s blog.  I, along with all other contributors to Rebecca´s anthology, One Big Happy Family, was invited to guest blog about anything having to do with our families.  My essay in the anthology is about being part of a bicultural family.  My essay on her blog talks about how Carla can see auras and feel dead people.  It´s called My Indigo Girl. 

Third, I got a rejection letter for my memoir today from some agent who obviously does too much crack.

Then, I met with my retired Simon and Schuster editor pal, Fred when he was here in February with his lovely and talented-writer wife, Kathy.  I worked up the nerve to ask him to read the entire manuscript and he read it in 24 hours and met me at Starbucks the next morning.  "I could see this being a movie," he said.  "It´s fine.  All you have to do is cut the first 65 pages."  

So I did.  I cut the section that talked about my early life with my basketball coach dad.  My precious words!  Slash.  It did make the memoir much better.  I dropped in a little bit of the info, mostly in the first chapter, and the memoir did not suffer at all the loss of my early life.

Finally, I uploaded my new version onto Authonomy, a Harper Collins site for unpublished books.  It´s been there for about two weeks, and it´s pretty exhausting to keep up.  You have to read and back other people´s books and hope they back yours.  There´s about 5000 books on the site, and the sorry thing takes over your life!  Yet, it´s mesmerizing to get coments and see your book rise through the ranks.  Right now I´m at about 1000 and hoping for three digits!!  It´s a sick addiction.  I think I need a help group. 

Life in San Miguel today

Today, driving to Celaya, I got the first glimpse of jacarandas, the purple-flowering trees that make half the population of San Miguel run for their Claritin. The jacarandas herald spring in San Miguel de Allende, and they are appearing 2 to 3 weeks late this year because of the intense cold we´ve had.  (Quit harrumphing, all you Canadians.)

The girls have a two week stretch of vacation ahead of them (or is it 3?  The school wasn´t clear.)  So this morning, in celebration of being relaxed, we went to Las Cazuelas in Escobedo for breakfast.  For 40 pesos at Las Cazuelos (less than 4 US dollars), you get to cruise the buffet table offering chiles rellenos, eggs in chile, mole, rice, frijoles, guacamole, bifstek, meatballs and homemade tortillas (see the muchachas making them in the photo) among various other offerings.  While we ate, a band played outside.

In our sala (living room) we have a ceramic all-star wrestler called Mystico.  He has a silver mask and a slot in his shoulder.  In this alcancia (bank) we are, as a family, throwing all of our extra change and bills to be able to go to the beach at the end of April when Carlos finishes college. We call him Mr. Money.

Alright already

I´ve been certain that google had taken away this blog´s ability to receive comments and then, lo, I got one.
So I´ll quit all my whining and get back to writing.  Very soon. Bye for now!

Shy Barbara Kingsolver

At a Q and A session at the San Miguel Writers Conference yesterday, Barbara Kingsolver said she is the last person in the world who wanted to be famous.  About fame, she said, "I´m sort of afraid of it.  I´m a shy person.  I do not like being on television." 

Kingsolver said that she grew up in Eastern Kentucky where people told stories but frowned upon talking about oneself.   "She´s parading herself around," Kentuckians would comment about anyone who anyone who wished to call attention to herself.  "Imagine how being in front of a public feels to me," Kingsolver noted.  "When I go on book tour," Kingsolver said, "I think, I´m evangelizing for literature."

In the photo is Jody Feagan, founder of the San Miguel Writers Conference, author Barbara Kingsolver and me at a Welcome to San Miguel cocktail party on Friday. 

Barbara Kingsolver Talk

"Novels being in a million different places," said Barbara Kingsolver tonight in a keynote address to some 800 people at the San Miguel Writers Conference. Moi, being one of them. Here are some more of the things she said after declaring that Mexico was her favorite country on earth.

- "The novel beings the way a forest begins. One acorn drops in the mud and begins to grow. Then one falls in a stream. Then a mesquite seed drops."
- "All I can do is pay atteniton to what is growing,"

- After talking about all the growth sprouting from the seeds that fall, Kingsolver said, "I will manage this forest. I will make it what I want."

- About literature, she said, "I believe we should expect from literature an immense complexity."

- "It should be a timeless place where we should experience magnifigance."

- "The Lacuna is the most difficult book I have ever written."
- "The Lacuna. I attempted to explore every meaning of that beautiful word. The Lacuna. It can be a tunnel through rock or bone or time."

Then, I must admit , I had to leave to pick up my kids from the equestrian center where they ride. Otherwise I´d be reporting more. But what I heard was great!

San Miguel Writers Conference

OK, here I am back to writing about writing, although the 2010 San Miguel Writers Conference is big news in town. The word I´ve heard is that more than 600 people have bought tickets to hear Barbara Kingsolver´s address on Friday night. That´s conference-goers and community members.

I myself will be attending all the lectures and workshops that my schedule teaching school and working in our business, Jasmine Day Spa, allow. Next week, I assistant-teach the Teen Writers Workshop with Betsy James. We´ve got 20 teens signed up and will be focusing on science fiction and fantasy this year.

I will be sure NOT to miss my appointments with two, yes, praise be, two agents. One will look at my memoir, to which I still hold the rights even though it´s up on Amazon. The other, an agent for children´s and young adult books, will critique my fledgling Young Adult manuscript. I get 10 minutes with each!

The New Me!

Writing about writing is often fun but I´ve found that what I really want to write about these days is my home town of San Miguel de Allende, in the central highlands of beautiful Mexico. San Miguel is, in Feburary, 2010 still talking about the snow that fell on the town and shone brilliantly on the Picacho Mountains for a full 24 hours before it disappeared, inspiring hordes of town residents to climb the mountain that January 15 to actually touch the cold, white phenomena.

Presently, San Miguel is spiffing up the highways feeding into the town in anticipation of the 2010 bicentenial celebration which will peak around Independence Day in September. On other fronts, the town is settling into being a World Heritage Site, and formalizing plans to bring back the San Miguelada, a wildly popular running of the bulls type of event that was cancelled as being too undignified for a World Heritage Site city. Town fathers have moved the event to a wider street that is a few blocks away from the historically valuable downtown architecture for this coming September. Past events brought in lots of tourist income, from national and foreign visitors, and businesses thrived, so you can imagine local restaurants and business owners are joyous to see its return.

So, that´s today´s report. I´ll be writing about writing AND about San Miguel now, and thus have changed the title of the blog to Sue in San Miguel and I´ve changed my photo to one of me hanging around the horse barn, Centro Ecuestre Canales, where myself and my kids ride horses. And I remain your Latina-wannabe author, reporting on all things local and literary. Or if not all things, at least those things that jazz my world!