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Blogging has taken a back seat these past few weeks, but now I’m back at my desk and ready to talk about what I’ve been doing. Firstly, I spent a week in Melbourne where I caught up with some long-lost rellies, caught trams and, most significantly, attended the CBCA National Conference. What a wonderful event this was. This is the fourth time I’ve attended the CBCA conference, and while each

I don't need you to be me. I woke up thinking that. (Blame it on weird dreams.)

There is always much discussion about "otherness" in children's literature. Do readers need to see themselves in the books they read? Is the reason fiction works because you hook yourself into the main character's psyche and go along for the ride? And if you can't make that initial leap, then is the reading experience doomed from the start?

But what makes you leap into the story? Do you think: Oh! that character's just like me! I would do that! Or is it the opposite: why on earth would a character think that? Do that? Say that?

Or are there degrees of "otherness" that come into play? I know I get impatient with characters who worry about things that I think are trivial. But I don't mind a bit if they do things I would never do, like shave my head.

I don't need you to be me. But I need me to be able to be you for just a little while. Is that the answer?

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.

Ulises Silva is an emerging Latino author whose fusion of academia, mainstream influences, and vivid storytelling present a fresh entry and perspective into the genre of speculative fiction.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Silva’s dissertation work focused on science fiction and its retelling of American colonialism, including the westward expansion and its war against Native America. In particular, Silva studied the ways in which mainstream science fiction re-imagined American history by inverting historical roles and political ideals—retelling the story of exploration and expansion as an inherently benevolent venture.

As a fan and student of science/speculative fiction and its ability to re-imagine historical and contemporary realities, Silva was influenced by the literary works of H.G. Wells, Orson Scott Card, and Philip K. Dick. Authors of color, including Sandra Cisneros, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lucha Corpi, and Américo Paredes, have influenced Silva’s multicultural narrative approach.

Cinematic influences, such as George A. Romero’s Living Dead films, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later, which extrapolate the struggle of the human psyche under extreme and cataclysmic ordeals, played an equally large part in Silva’s writing. He is fascinated by what he calls the “psychology of apocalypse,” specifically the roles, actions, and decisions of characters in apocalyptic, end-of-the world scenarios. Indeed, the central question posited by his new novel, Solstice—“What would you do if you knew the world would end next week?”—looks to engage readers with the possibilities of such a scenario.

Taken together, Silva’s academic, literary, and cinematic influences produce a brand of fiction that tells gripping stories from historically marginalized points of view. (In Solstice, for example, the main protagonist is a Mexican-Japanese woman.) Silva delves deep into the fractured psyches of his beleaguered characters to uncover broader questions of race, gender, and the conceptualization of recorded history.

Gente, take a look at at a description of this novel and you'll be hooked.

Words are murder.

Scribes have a gift. Whatever they write comes true. Misfortune. Theft. Even murder. Editors—covert specialists operating beyond the law—watch over them. Among the Editors, Io is the best, and the most ruthless. But on her way to her next assignment, something happens. Her phone rings—along with every other phone on the planet.

What would you do if you knew the world would end next week?

A single phone call to the world’s population asks this question. The same message appears on walls, TV screens, even flesh. Confusion erupt into chaos. Violence spreads like wildfire. Io discovers a Scribe named Nadie sent the message. But the message is only the beginning.

The final winter solstice.

In two weeks, on the day of the winter solstice, Nadie promises a final judgment. Battling a world spiraling into mass hysteria and her own dark past, Io must race to stop Nadie. But as the world is engulfed in a series of supernatural catastrophes, Io uncovers a shocking possibility: Is Nadie writing humanity’s extermination? And is Nadie linked to her past?

ISBN: 978-0-9794513-0-0

Lisa Alvarado

Okay--this has nothing to do with Children's Literature. But I'm so happy, I have to share. Rose is coming back!

It's not a secret that I like science fiction, or speculative fiction, as some prefer to call it. I posted a picture of me at a college SF party, I blogged about Connie Willis for Tell An Author You Care Day, and I titled a post using a Star Trek/Shakespeare reference. (Shakespeare was the greatest SF writer of his time, by the way.)

So I'm thrilled that Sam Riddleburger has declared John Christopher Week at his blog. And John Christopher (aka Sam Youd) himself has made an appearance in the comments! If you devoured The Tripods trilogy as a kid, like I did, you know that the imagery of his books haunts you, years later. Honestly, I want to re-read these books so badly now that Sam has reminded me of them, but I'm a tiny bit scared of the nightmares. Maybe I'll start with The Sword of the Spirits trilogy instead, since I haven't read them. At least they'll be new nightmares.

Here are some other SF books that I loved as a kid:

The Enchantress From the Stars, The Far Side of Evil, and This Star Shall Abide, all by Sylvia Louise Engdahl. I've been meaning to blog about these books forever, but I need a kick in the pants. First of all, I need to re-read them to see if my memories are correct. Second, I need to find someone else who read them as a kid, someone who will get all excited with me and remember what it was like to read a story of a GIRL who was a space explorer.

The Day of the Drones by Mary Alice Lightner. The hype on the 1969 cover reads "an incredible adventure in the radioactive ruins of the world where whites live like insects and blacks are the elite." I'm sure I had no idea at the time that I was reading something that radical. I just remember it as a great adventure story. And again, there's a GIRL on the front.

I wish I could remember more, beyond the obvious like A Wrinkle in Time or anything by Ray Bradbury, but most of the rest that I loved were fantasy, like The Borrowers or Half Magic or the Earthsea books, rather than science fiction.

I did run across this fabulous site where an expert will help you with a faulty memory: It's called All Experts, and in the category of Science Fiction books, there are some great questions (and answers.) I love this one:

"I was wondering if you could tell me the various methods used in Science Fiction to raise the dead..."

I have been so looking forward to this book; pretty much since I closed the cover of its predecessor, Larklight. As soon as this made its way through Tech Services I grabbed it. And, I'm pleased to say, I have not been disappointed! The Victorian intergalactic adventures of Art, his ever so proper sister Myrtle, their 2,000,000 year old mother, and the space pilot-cum-British-spy Jack Havistock continue as they do their duty for Queen and Country. 'Science Fiction' is one of those terms that has fallen out of favor, particularly among the biggest fans of the genre. The replacement term, 'speculative fiction' is a fantastic substitute in this case, because both Larklight and Starcross are speculating on an epic scale. With one simple premise--alchemists never could turn base materials into gold, but they did develop warp technology--and one far-reaching backdrop (Queen Victoria's British Empire,) author Philip Reeve has created a series of adventure stories with the sensibility of M.T. Anderson and the bustles of Anthony Trollope. Give us more, kind sir!