July 2011 Archives
Key West Bound!
Thanks for sticking with me, gentle readers! I've been on the road a lot this summer and working hard on Nola Novel #2--which I'm happy to say I've now drafted! Hurray! A complete first draft, finished before the back-to-school flurry begins. Whew!
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
I've also been working on editing the great essays in FAMILY TROUBLE, which is just such a terrific project. I love it. I've learned so much from the contributors. Their insights about writing memoir about family members are dynamite. So wise. I think this book of essays is going to be really useful to writers, CW teachers, and aspiring writers.
I head out soon to visit my aunt in Key West, my last remaining relative on the island. (I've written about her in the forthcoming ISLAND OF BONES.) We get to spend a week together, and my cousin, who's four days older than I am, is taking some time off to come down from Miami, too! Castro family party!
In addition to mojitos, the Kino Sandal Factory (a family tradition), and the beach, my aunt is going to take me to see family graves and other sites of importance, because she's leaving Key West this fall for retirement, and she wants to make sure as many of the grandkids as possible know our history before she leaves. Since it's become such a resort destination, Cayo Hueso (island of bones) is just too damn expensive for ordinary working people to afford to live there. My family, which has been there since the nineteenth century, will be there no more. Qué lastima.
I'm looking forward to seeing my sweet aunt, a long-time librarian at Key West High School, and my cousin, who works to ensure that female horticultural laborers in Latin America have decent workers' rights and protections. They both rock. Cool single Castro women. We're going to say coño and make flan and laugh a lot.
I haven't been to Key West since I was seventeen and spent a week with my grandmother, who's gone now, so it's kind of emotional for me. I remember taking the Greyhound there from San Antonio. It wasn't exactly the most fun spring break for a college freshman--Nanny wouldn't let me go to the beach; she was sure I'd get "corrupted by the hippies"--but it was love, you know? Family. And this will be, too.
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Cool News from All Over
Tracy Seeley, whose work I love, will be at Chapters Books & Gifts in Seward, Nebraska this Thursday at 5:30 to read from her new memoir, My Ruby Slippers: The Road Back to Kansas.
Grey Castro, whom I love completely, has begun blogging about his three-month trip to work on an organic farm and skateboard the island of Okinawa at Dirty Nails, Dirty Wheels. He's all Zen and funny, and there are photos. He can see the ocean from his little trailer.
My awesome poet-friend Naca, author of the award-winning collection Bird Eating Bird, wrote this great piece, "Eating Lorca," for Poetry. (Grey, a vegan, would not approve.)
Up next: Wendy Call's new book No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy.
Grey Castro, whom I love completely, has begun blogging about his three-month trip to work on an organic farm and skateboard the island of Okinawa at Dirty Nails, Dirty Wheels. He's all Zen and funny, and there are photos. He can see the ocean from his little trailer.
My awesome poet-friend Naca, author of the award-winning collection Bird Eating Bird, wrote this great piece, "Eating Lorca," for Poetry. (Grey, a vegan, would not approve.)
Up next: Wendy Call's new book No Word for Welcome: The Mexican Village Faces the Global Economy.
Awesomeness & Hope
Folks, I am having these gorgeous blurbs tattooed on my face.
From Lorraine López, winner of the Miguel Marmol Prize and a PEN/Faulkner finalist, author of several great books including Soy la Avon Lady and Homicide Survivors Picnic:
From Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and Shutter Island (among others) and a writer for HBO's The Wire:
In addition to being known for his work's sense of justice on behalf of the violated and vulnerable, its angry sensitivity to class issues, and its strongly rooted sense of place, Lehane is the author of six books featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, my favorite male-female investigative duo since Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles: witty, sexy, tough.
So I'm wowed and incredibly happy to have these two endorsements from writers I admire so much.
Eventually, these blurbs will show up on the back of the book, which is due out in hardcover and e-book in July 2012, but for right now, they'll be in my editor Karyn's hands when she goes into her big in-house meeting at her publisher's next week.
The point of having the blurbs ready so early is to rouse enthusiasm for the book among her fellow editors, the sales & marketing folks, etc., so the book will get the biggest push possible from the publisher.
This is because (as probably some of you have been crushed to learn, too) really big publishers bring out so many books each season that even they don't commit lots of resources to every book. As with horse-racing, or any other gamble, they put their dollars on the likely winners. So if you've got the Little Filly That Could, you have to work extra hard to make sure she gets a fighting chance out there on the track.
That's what these blurbs will help Karyn do. We hope. Fingers crossed.
From Lorraine López, winner of the Miguel Marmol Prize and a PEN/Faulkner finalist, author of several great books including Soy la Avon Lady and Homicide Survivors Picnic:
I have been reading, loving, and teaching Lorraine's work for years now, so this blurb is a huge honor.In the tradition of P.D. James, Ruth Rendell, and Lucha Corpi, Joy Castro shows how mystery can be much more than the unraveling of crimes concealed. The Desire Projects is a riveting story of trust betrayed and the struggle toward recovery, an irresistible and compelling novel aptly set in post-Katrina New Orleans.
From Dennis Lehane, author of Mystic River, Gone Baby Gone, and Shutter Island (among others) and a writer for HBO's The Wire:
Gentle readers: what Joy Castro did next, when this blurb came in, was to go drink champagne until she was fizzy and dizzy. (And it is the beginning of a series. I drafted chapter 7 of the sequel this morning.)The Desire Projects is a terrific mystery set in post-Katrina New Orleans. But it's more than just a mystery; it's a heartfelt examination of a second America--poor but undaunted--that was swept under the rug but refuses to stay there. If this is the beginning of a series, I can't wait to see what Joy Castro does next.
In addition to being known for his work's sense of justice on behalf of the violated and vulnerable, its angry sensitivity to class issues, and its strongly rooted sense of place, Lehane is the author of six books featuring Patrick Kenzie and Angie Gennaro, my favorite male-female investigative duo since Hammett's Nick and Nora Charles: witty, sexy, tough.
So I'm wowed and incredibly happy to have these two endorsements from writers I admire so much.
Eventually, these blurbs will show up on the back of the book, which is due out in hardcover and e-book in July 2012, but for right now, they'll be in my editor Karyn's hands when she goes into her big in-house meeting at her publisher's next week.
The point of having the blurbs ready so early is to rouse enthusiasm for the book among her fellow editors, the sales & marketing folks, etc., so the book will get the biggest push possible from the publisher.
This is because (as probably some of you have been crushed to learn, too) really big publishers bring out so many books each season that even they don't commit lots of resources to every book. As with horse-racing, or any other gamble, they put their dollars on the likely winners. So if you've got the Little Filly That Could, you have to work extra hard to make sure she gets a fighting chance out there on the track.
That's what these blurbs will help Karyn do. We hope. Fingers crossed.
Summer
Ah, summer!
Because what could be more fun, after all, than filling out an author design form for one book (letting the press know what kinds of images, colors, and mood you prefer), editing another, receiving a blurb from a MAJOR BIG DEAL KILLER writer for a third (I wanna have his words tattooed on my face), and working on the draft of a fourth?
Just another Friday in summer. Ahhhh. When to be middle-aged was very heaven.
The Handsome Husband came home late one night this week, fairly drained and tired, as you might imagine, pobrecito, and then this morning, we were up at five a.m. to take Grey to the airport. He'll be flying until tomorrow night, because he's heading for the subtropical island of Okinawa for a three-month stint of working on an organic farm. (Did you know Okinawa is a full thousand miles south of Tokyo? I did not.)
Grey's a vegan (as you might have heard me moan on here before, though I'm now mostly committed, too), and he's very into his food politics. We raised him vegetarian, and the Handsome Husband was working in a health food store when we started dating, so I guess it was unavoidable.
But honestly, from an environmental perspective as well as an anti-cruelty one, I'm all for it: the two best things you can do, as an individual, for the fate of the planet and to help alleviate global warming are to eat a vegan diet and not reproduce. A special shout-out to my vegan and/or child-free friends!
I'll step down off my soapbox now to confide my fear that I'd suffer some massive mourning when Grey left, as I have before. (I have sobbed to the airport parking lady as I paid my way out of the lot. No joke.) The HH and I usually walk around like sad zombies for at least a day or two.
But no.
Gentle reader, Grey had not yet left the airspace of the Great Plains by the time we'd lugged all my stuff back into my study, which has been serving as his room these last six months. (Yes, I confess: the claims of art were routed by those of familia. What can I say? It happens. A room of one's own is the ideal.)
I vacuumed and burned copal and opened the window. The summer air blew in.
And reader, I've been cackling like a madwoman who just got her attic back.
Because what could be more fun, after all, than filling out an author design form for one book (letting the press know what kinds of images, colors, and mood you prefer), editing another, receiving a blurb from a MAJOR BIG DEAL KILLER writer for a third (I wanna have his words tattooed on my face), and working on the draft of a fourth?
Just another Friday in summer. Ahhhh. When to be middle-aged was very heaven.
The Handsome Husband came home late one night this week, fairly drained and tired, as you might imagine, pobrecito, and then this morning, we were up at five a.m. to take Grey to the airport. He'll be flying until tomorrow night, because he's heading for the subtropical island of Okinawa for a three-month stint of working on an organic farm. (Did you know Okinawa is a full thousand miles south of Tokyo? I did not.)
Grey's a vegan (as you might have heard me moan on here before, though I'm now mostly committed, too), and he's very into his food politics. We raised him vegetarian, and the Handsome Husband was working in a health food store when we started dating, so I guess it was unavoidable.
But honestly, from an environmental perspective as well as an anti-cruelty one, I'm all for it: the two best things you can do, as an individual, for the fate of the planet and to help alleviate global warming are to eat a vegan diet and not reproduce. A special shout-out to my vegan and/or child-free friends!
I'll step down off my soapbox now to confide my fear that I'd suffer some massive mourning when Grey left, as I have before. (I have sobbed to the airport parking lady as I paid my way out of the lot. No joke.) The HH and I usually walk around like sad zombies for at least a day or two.
But no.
Gentle reader, Grey had not yet left the airspace of the Great Plains by the time we'd lugged all my stuff back into my study, which has been serving as his room these last six months. (Yes, I confess: the claims of art were routed by those of familia. What can I say? It happens. A room of one's own is the ideal.)
I vacuumed and burned copal and opened the window. The summer air blew in.
And reader, I've been cackling like a madwoman who just got her attic back.
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