--> I'm sapped. By election results, doctors' ignorance about strange pains that I might go half-Stephen-Hawking about, and from not having gotten really drunk in over a month.
To meet a mental-lull that hit this week, below I include short, opening passages from three manuscripts. First I'll describe them so you can check whichever might interest you. Thet're teasers, intended to lure your into reading the entire tales, whenever they're published.
Previews of what's below:
#1: Sleeping Love - is set in Mexico's ancient times, when the people of Aztlan searched for the prophecy of the eagle, nopal and serpent. It begins with an elder proto-Azteca and some kids.
#2: Fatherly, Dragonly - is a cross-genre SF/F of so many elements, I can't list them. But it starts with a Diné water monster, then a Chicano shaman, then alien lizards, then….
#3: 5-Gashes Tumbling - is set in Aztlán. A castaway mexicano mestizo and Aztec indio find a First Peoples tribe who take them in, for a time. I call it an "experimental" roller-coaster of prose. If you read SW historical novels, try it.
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| What the children would create in Anahuac |
#1: Sleeping Love
In the ancient times on the Central Continent, the day seemed to be ending as usual. But this time, dozens of boys and girls suddenly sprinted far ahead of their tribe. They stopped at the mountaintop and shaded their eyes against the late afternoon sun. Their clothes made of animal skins let some of the cold through, but their run had warmed them. What they saw steamed them. Their faces lit up and they hopped around, screaming, "Grand Ta, Grand Ta, come look at it all!"
Grand Ta's chest felt like it glowed. It did that whenever young ones wanted to share their discoveries with Ancient Him. He touched his wrinkled cheeks and smiled to smooth them out, but they could never be smooth again. Removing his rabbit-hair cloak, he dropped it by his nagual. Though only he could see it, the mountain lion-spirit had always been with him.
As he reached the children, Grand Ta wondered, Have we finally found it? They let him through so they could show him. Gigantic ahuehuetl cypress trees held up the sky over an endless, deep-green valley filled with wonders. He was so amazed, he didn't hear every child.
"See, Ta, see?" He saw armadillos fleeing into the jungle. The children saw the hunter, a spotted ozelotl jaguar, and heard its grunt-coughs. Imitating those gave them the giggles.
"Look at them!" He saw red-green-blue-feathered parrots and quetzals splotching the rainforest. Youngsters instead saw dancing pieces of rainbow, which they playfully copied.
"Just listen to those!" Scores of ozomatli monkeys swung from branch to branch and chattered in funny tongues, making the children giggle louder. Grand Ta too caught the giggles.
He thought, This place is so bewitching, they could forget their heritage and the Ancestors. I will be remembered as a good teacher only if I use this moment to strengthen their minds and hearts. When they were almost out of wind, he signaled for them to gather where he was starting a sacred circle. Adults moved aside for the children and stayed back.
The young people sat and squeezed one another's hands. They hoped there would be time to play before night fell, but they could wait a bit longer. The tribe had traveled thousands of miles and years. Searching for a prophet's vision.
Grand Ta clapped once and everyone crossed arms. Quieting, they focused on him. "We reached here because our souls are strong. But where did we come from?" He perked his eyebrows and hoped they kept all the answers close to their hearts. We'll see how close.
A plump little girl rose and moved black bangs off her face. "Lost is our land, its name was--uh--is Aztlán."
It's good she corrected herself.He asked, "And did we change?"
"Yes, but we sing that we are still Aztecas!" Her friends grinned that she had done well.
Ta clasped his hands. "Why did we survive?"
An older girl stood up. "We hold our tribe tight to us." She grasped her shoulders, then the sides of her head. "We think our own thoughts!" Her face showed, Please ask me more.
Ta's knees shook from the hard climb. But resting must wait. "How do we treat others?"
"We harm no form of life or other tribe, except if we must," the girl said firmly.
Some black-haired monkeys howled and children fidgeted, yearning to go see. Remembering the Elder's teachings, they calmed themselves. [you also will have to fidget until this is in print]
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| Non-Diné image of Diné entity |
#2: Fatherly, Dragonly
Tieholtsodi didn't always enjoy awakening in subterranean darkness; his grotto reminded him of the solitary eons during the First World, when only creatures walked the Earth.
"What, no children? They're always up and out earlier than their old dad." He imagined himself fossil-like, since his body required inspection for ageing decrepitude. Opening his three-foot-wide mouth, he flexed to limber up muscles anchored about his ovate head.
Drawing on spirit-power, he appealed to the super ascendants. "Blessed Holies, grant me more light." No answer. "As usual, they're as responsive as a sacred mountain." He shot out one of his five tentacles and nabbed a blue catfish busy chasing trout. Crunch, crunch!
Old as a mountain himself, Tieholtsodi was wise enough to know the Blessed Holies rarely responded. "What's the point of having goddesses who won't lift a finger to help?" And the next best idea for relieving the darkness--a shaman? "Like people on the reservation say, there's never a good one around when--"
Stretching tentacles made him feel younger. He'd been a great-looking, water dragon, at the onset of the Third World when humans appeared. "Now I'm like a fat octopus with squashed head and fewer tentacles. Oh, and how the amber skin fades." He scraped tiny pill clams latched to his hide, seeking a nest. "So much of me fades. If my Diné worshippers saw me now, they'd laugh their little red nalgas off."
Feeling into the dimness, he traced cavern walls. Not much had really changed in the millennia since he'd claimed the haven for his family. "They better return soon. Can't venture far and risk detection by men. Or alien beasts."
#
Both little creatures had been warned not to venture far from home, but today the world was filled with new wonders, sounds and smells. What's a kid supposed to do?
Stronger than usual, an underwater current carried them for miles, banging them against rocks, dragging them through deep, smooth silt as if the lake wanted to play-wrestle. Just like Daddy!Colorful, flashing lights appeared in the distance, but no matter how hard and fast they swam, they couldn't catch up. Smell tasty, little fishes! Waters tasted of burnt trout, to fill their achy bellies. Might be a present from Blessed Holies! The odor lured them toward the mystery.
#
Commander Brondel had to cackle. "At least from this new, salt dome, our castaway troops can venture into canyons above, their forays unbeknownst to Earth dwellers. To those we let live, anyway."
He switched off a hologram of the flowchart he fine-tuned each morning. "Father, not everyone's ready to see the culmination of our dream." A small hologram displayed Father's image--stark against gunmetal gray walls--in officer's uniform, a fine figure of his species, tyrannosaurus-like but with shorter tale and thicker forearms. The image had adorned his limestone casket.
Brondel straightened his pale-green tunic, scraped claws over the olive-tinted scales of his hand. He pumped a fist-salute toward the image and chanted his regular pledge, "Father, you'll soon be proud. Our day approaches." Breathing deep through croc-like nostrils, he added something new, "I can almost smell it." He grimaced. Oil-sodden walls smelled of the raw fuel humans had extracted. The filtration system's air scrubbers constantly hummed, never sparing Brondel's nostrils.
After relocating to their first quarters under dry land, Brondel had used his Council, advisory position to loosen restrictions about surface ventures. He'd advocated, "A four-foot taller, superior reptilian species--two hundred pounds heavier, with twice the intelligence and technology of homo sapiens--shouldn't be denied fresh air!" He received applause, and laughter.
Brondel rechecked the holoscreens were functioning, and that his ten-foot-wide, rock-milled desk appeared orderly. He brushed lint off his tunic, prepped for his second-in-command's report. "That everything's going as planned. Father always said face-to-face is the only way to be sure." He rubbed his belly, anticipating good news. Including about the little monsters.
#
Rising too quickly, Tieholtsodi scraped spikes running down his back against the ten-foot ceiling. "Gagh! Serves me right. Should've taken us to the open seas where we could've found a big, bright cavern with scrumptious starfish and plump octopi. What was I thinking!"
Necessity, not thought, had landed him here. Over eons, the Four Winds dried up the Great Inland Sea. As it receded, it left the Colorado River to gouge the rolling hills and desert plains dotted with juniper and piñon. Tieholtsodi and his siblings had taken refuge deep in the humans' Lake Powell.
He brushed his body's rough bristles and sniffed under tentacles. "I should head mid-lake to rid myself of bottom-rot smell from the filthy waters. So few places left for a decent bath. I'll find one after my babies return.
"Of course,"--his eyes widened--"first they'll want to play Pile-on-Daddy." Pretending interest in something else, his children would suddenly jump and knock him down, then pummel him with their little bodies.
He chuckled and checked his blue talons for splits that might cut the children. "Should've been born with suction cups, like the octopus." He withdrew talons and spikes, like when hugging his young. "Ah, if fatherhood was my only duty. But no! That would've been too easy. I had to be a monster dragon. A tailless, wingless, flameless one. Fire-breathing would've been nice. Like Estranged Dragons have, sort of."
Dangling tentacles into the cold current, he hoped to lure one of the last, great fishes, that added spice to eternal life. His tentacles sensed manmade chemicals and the lake's rising temperature and falling volume. "Eventually, it'll snuff out larger fishes, like the red people prophesized." For a hundred years, he'd worried about the lake dying. "Someday, we'll escape to the open seas, even if I must dig us a way out. Hopefully, those aren't desecrated."
He nabbed at teeth latching onto his tentacle. "What?" Pulling in the catch, he exchanged bared fangs with a five-foot alligator gar thrashing to escape. "The children will be pleased! Haven't seen a meaty one your size in hundreds of moons. From where--" Something was wrong. The great catch had been too quick and easy.
He thought, Is this gar, bait? Someone send it, thinking I'm a stupid monster? Not native believers who respected him, or any "civilized" humans who thought he was myth. "That only leaves the Estranged Dragons."
If he'd gorged on the gar, he would've missed the far-off squeals. "My babies!" He bashed the fish against the wall and flung it aside. He flattened himself manta-ray-like, tentacles to the Four Directions, and one upward for Centering. He focused, probing for the youngsters' auras. "Found them!" Sighing in relief, he radiated an eddy that rolled a boulder onto the gar.
Still, more was wrong. "They aren't inthe lake! They entered a river, miles away. Blessed Holies, why'd they stray-- Have to get to them, before they're spotted or--"
#
When the two young ones reached a river delta, they sensed strong the tasty morsels and funny lights. We're so close!Daddy might be mad later, but they were just little babies, as he always called them. What could it hurt? [find out, when it's in print]
#3: 5-Gashes Tumbling
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| What Chaneco tumbled down |
Your Lordship, I attest that in Anno Domini 1599, Tomás Chaneco--unjustly conscripted out of the capitol of Méjico to become the expedition's cook--and I, as cook's helper, found ourselves lost and abandoned in the northern deserts of Nueva España. Since our skills were limited to shamanism and journalism, respectively, our leader, the Conquistador Don Juan de Oñate, promoted us to Lead Scouts the year in which we reached what that Oñate christened, Santa Fe de Nuevo México,which we peones quickly shortened to, Santa Fe. The pendejo Oñate enjoyed naming things more than he relished charging windmills, unto the hinterlands, providing his men ample opportunities to, among other pastimes, infect native women with the pox, much as the otherwise useless priests also spread Catholicism.
Shaman that he was, Chaneco excelled at turning water into wine, and I, at turning wine into news, but our scouting skills lacked mucho, causing us to become separated from Oñate's rabble. "But, good riddance to bad basura," Chaneco said, to which I concurred, especially after menso Oñate had the feet cut off of every adult male in the Acoma Pueblo and enslaved its women for indecencies, which your Lordship knows of. At the last, from what we heard, Oñate galloped off in search of the Quivira city of gold the indios had made up to rid themselves of him. I admit I prayed he'd encounter los Apaches en Téjas.
Your Lordship, rather than backtracking--not one of our fortes--and following that fool's errand, or heading south where we predicted we'd face charges of desertion, Chaneco and I trekked north where turquoise, much revered by our Mexica kin, and tribes renowned for their fantastic legends--such as, of monsters--were said to reside, hoping los indios there would treat us better than others had received and that the monsters were as genuine as Quivira.
Months later, by a tributary of the great river the Lilliputian-brain Oñate had imaginatively named Colorado--from its red color--los indios Havasupai granted us temporary sanctuary in Supai village. We two mestizos, luckily browner than we were facially hirsute, greatly learned from the somewhat shorter People of the Blue-Green Waters, until our eventual kidnapping by monsters of our own making that, hopefully, never terminates in a sentencing, your Lordship.
On one of Supai's delightfully cool mornings of however many more remained of Tomás Chaneco's "nagging" longevity--he claimed he was close to two hundred--he chose, for whatever reason, to scale the fifty-five-degree incline above the twin Supai Sisters' alamo-yeso cabin. There, beneath the cascadas of Hualapai Falls, soaking in its travertine pools, the tribal elders had blessed the peach pits we gifted them and regularly joked about our worth as lost explorers, or recounted tales about los espiritus who frolicked in the pools after midnight. Or they deliberated over the dinosaurio petroglyphs inscribed in sorcerer's blood--not those along the big cañones that Spanish priests would later condemn as "Abominations!", but others higher up the narrow arroyos where elders assured us even the espiritus de las cascadas dared not venture. [you can venture there when this reaches print]
# # #
In the last year and a half, I completed a YA alternate-world fantasy with two teen Chicano protagonists (boy and girl); a children's indigenous mexicano fantasy retell; one lengthy, SF/F mexicano-indigene-Chicano short story; a SF time-travel story into Denver's past; a short, mexicano-indigene fantasy; and a YA fantasy novella. They're all in agents' and editors' slush piles, their fates, to be determined. From this peak you've gotten, of course, let me know your opinions, suggestions or criticisms about any of them. Y gracias por eso.
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG, a.k.a. the Chicano spec author, Rudy Ch. Garcia, on his way to vote again, in case this week was simply a mirage
by RudyG
You've only got 3 shopping days left and it's almost too late to do anything except run out to the corner Walgreen's and buy something that fulfills your obligation, but will be so lame that everyone will know you ran out to Walgreen's at the last minute. Here's what you can do to make it look like you at least tried and you also get to blame something else (like the post office) for not having a physical present for unwrapping.
1. The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a Chicano fantasy novel in paperback
If you're in the Denver Metro area, the first offering is a copy of my book delivered either to you or the recipient. Bargain price of $15 and I'll pay for deliver, autographed. It also comes with a set of Closet drink coasters and a bookmark. Order quick and you can have it by Xmas.
Outside the Denver area, I will pay postage, but it won't get there until after Xmas. In the meantime, you could print out the book cover, stick it in an envelope with a nice note and blame its late arrival on the post office. For all locations, I'll throw in some minimal gift-wrapping. I'll add a personalized note on the title page at no cost.
Nov.-Dec. 2012 issue, with my story El Viaje de Clarisa
If you need a present for an elementary school-aged kid who's bilingual, order a copy of my children's fable in Spanish about a little girl ant whose life is one struggle after another.
About $5 with postage. Contact them for details. It won't arrive in time for Xmas, but you can print out a copy of this cover and claim that it was just released, which is why it's late.
3. The Closet of Discarded Dreams, a Chicano fantasy novel, the EBook format
This one you can get in time for Xmas, if your recipient has or will receive an electronic reader. Plus, it's 25% off, or cheap at $4.47. It will make you look hi-tech savvy and trendy a la chicanada at the same time.
Go here, and at check out, enter coupon code 12PE9NGO4MDS for 25% off your ebook order. Formats available: epub (Nook compatible), pdf, mobi (Kindle compatible), lit (Microsoft Reader), and pdb (Palm).
The code is good until 12-31-2012.
4. Crossing the Path of Tellers anthology, with my SW fantasy story Memorabilia
Been looking for that perfect cheap book from Romania? This is it! It's $7.90, eligible for free shipping from Amazon. I haven't read the other stories, but Memorabilia tells the story of a mexicano shaman whose springcleaning of his cabin ends up in a battle with a Navajo water monster and an almost clean adobe. Print out this cover, stick it in the envelope, etc.
Obviously, you could also order other works by La Bloga's authors, of which there are many worthy as presents. In each case, order something, print out the cover, and look a little sheepish--when the envelope is torn open around the Xmas tree--because there's just paper inside. Or you could hold yourself proud that you're better than your brother who's giving everybody something from Walgreen's.
Support the Chicano classic Bless Me, Última
If you haven't read Manuel Ramos's article on the upcoming film version of Rudy Anaya's classic novel, go here. As Ramos says, we need to support Chicano lit in all its forms, especially when it's about to hit the Big Screen!
I can't find info on a release date, so anyone with info, please add that to Comments below.
Tomando / tokeando any holiday season
This is probably your last worry this time of year, but it might be the first thing--besides avoiding Walgreen's--Not to get a DUI, a contemporary American hysteria that Chicanos too suffer from. Below are excerpts from a Lewis Lapham article, Why the War on Drugs Is a War on Human Nature that's worth a read.
Since I'm of the belief that DUI-paranoia is greatly responsible for the death of affordable live music that once blared in our neighborhoods, I present this for informational purposes only. Celebrating American-style historically has not been tea-drinking time. So, if Walgreen's doesn't have everything you need, there's still time to make another stop. Take these words as you will.
"Martin Luther, early father of the Protestant Reformation, in 1530 exhorts the faithful to 'drink, and right freely,' because it is the devil who tells them not to. 'One must always do what Satan forbids. What other cause do you think that I have for drinking so much strong drink, talking so freely, and making merry so often, except that I wish to mock and harass the devil who is wont to mock and harass me.' ”
"The French poet Charles Baudelaire, prodigal son of the Industrial Revolution, is less careful with his time. 'One should always be drunk. That’s the great thing, the only question. Drunk with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you please.' ”
"The founders of the republic in Philadelphia in 1787 were in the habit of consuming prodigious quantities of liquor as an expression of their faith in their fellow men--pots of ale or cider at midday, two or more bottles of claret at dinner followed by an amiable passing around the table of the Madeira."
"The lyrics of the Star-Spangled Banner were fitted to the melody of an eighteenth-century British tavern song."
"Alcohol’s job is to replace creation with an illusion that is barren. 'The words a man speaks in the night of drunkenness fade like the darkness itself at the coming of day.' ”
"The policies of zero tolerance equip local and federal law-enforcement with increasingly autocratic powers of coercion and surveillance (the right to invade anybody’s privacy, bend the rules of evidence, search barns, stop motorists, inspect bank records, tap phones) and spread the stain of moral pestilence to ever larger numbers of people assumed to be infected with reefer madness -- anarchists and cheap Chinese labor at the turn of the twentieth century, known homosexuals and suspected Communists in the 1920s, hippies and anti-Vietnam War protestors in the 1960s, nowadays young black men sentenced to long-term imprisonment for possession of a few grams of short-term disembodiment."
Feliz, Merry, Próspero, Happy, y Suerte,
RudyG (sent from my IPhone, camped out in front of Walgreen's waiting for it to open
by Rudy Ch. GarciaEver have one of those mornings when you realize--what? That you shouldn't have done something last night. That you don't remember what you did. That you don't know where the chingaus you are or how you got wherever the chingada you are. And maybe you're even scared to turn around? Well, that's how my fantasy novel The Closet of Discarded Dreams begins. Then everything gets worse.
Today I'll probably receive the first copies of the book. It might be like all the Xmases ever, all combined into the opening of one gift, from a publisher, but nevertheless as latent with emotion as anything I probably ever received from Santa.
In a week, on Sept. 16th at Su Teatro's Denver Civic Theater I will do the premier reading and wonder and wonder how it will be received. In preparation for that and to commemorate holding a copy in my hands in a few hours, below is part of the first chapter, the opening to the novel. In the Denver Metro area, I'd encourage people to request the book from Tattered Cover Bookstore, since it only became available to stores in the last couple of days.
If you like what you read here and want to read more, spread the word, twitter and friend and like away to your networks, family and co-workers. Given logistical problems of not getting the book earlier, I assume it won't make the Colorado bestseller list. We'll just have to see.
When I opened my eyes I immediately realized I wasn’t in my bedroom, or in anyone else’s for that matter. From about twenty feet up, a seemingly endless ceiling overshadowed me, sparkling all star-like. It reminded me of a colossal version of an old Westside San Anto bowling-alley-turned-Mexican-dance hall, except no salsa blared here, nor did any banda play. Drunk like a borracho on a titanic waterbed, I floundered atop a never-ending loose collection of gear, goods, and possessions amassed in all directions.
My muscles not responding well, I must’ve looked like a stupid action figure in some messy kid’s closet. The ocean of stuff glutted my vision, overwhelming my mind. These sensations and images flashed through me like a dream—no, a nightmare—yet I felt conscious. In which case, what was all this chingadera and where in Gringolandia had I landed?
As I struggled to sit up, on my left I toppled over the heavy gold pieces of a nine-foot-square chessboard—of ebony and ivory? On the other side I squished an opened box of chocolates that reeked of liqueur. I wiped my hand on the mink coat lying there and smelled my palm—definitely Amaretto and Kahlua. Strange since I’d never had a sense of smell in a dream. I wiped the stuff off on my jeans and shook my head to try to get straight. Then I gave myself a cachetada hard enough to sting my cheek, and rubbed and stretched it. Nada of the surroundings changed. No, this felt nothing like a dream.
Facing me, as well as to my right, the distant horizon shimmered. I’d somehow awoken in a humongously long box, unfathomable miles across in two directions. Everywhere between me and the distance, piles of goods rose like a consumer society’s ultimate graveyard, leaving but ten feet of suffocating space overhead.
Now I felt like a forsaken knick-knack in some hoarding giant’s garage, stacked almost ceiling-high. In my mind, the stunted headroom choked off the horizontal boundlessness, threatened to crush me with claustrophobia. I wanted to puke, heave hard and bad, but forced it back down and swallowed. The nausea went away.
I followed the twinkling, pale ceiling to where it ran into a more exposed, orange wall behind me and a yellow one to the left. My eyes and brain couldn’t accept that the planes met at right angles, like this enclosure might be hexagonal or something. I shook my head again and squinted but the angles fluctuated worse. To boot, the disorientation wasn’t only in my head. My skin, my bare feet, my gut, didn’t feel normal. A hangover from an exotic drug I should never have tried? I couldn’t remember doing such a thing.
Fact was I couldn’t remember anything I’d recently done—last night, yesterday, the past week and for much longer. Maybe I’d been drugged with something that had wiped out my memory. So besides being lost, I had some kind of amnesia? And where the chingaus had my socks and shoes gone to? Had I gotten rolled? I checked for a wallet and found nothing, or anything in the other pockets.
Worried that if I stood I’d lose my footing on the stuff, I stayed crouched, scanning for someone or something familiar. I made out a third wall miles away but just barely, like this hazy place was gargantuan enough to have several climates, with fog in front of me and what looked to be a mirage to the far right. Between me and those distant walls, perpendicular shafts of darkness regularly sundered the background, pillars of black light rising out of the ground as if to keep the flat canopy from collapsing. I could have used a pillar myself, to keep my balance.
I shook off the vertigo and inspected the Flooring, as I’d learn they called it. It was impossible to believe. No wood floor, carpet, tile or linoleum anywhere. No ground, no dirt. Just thousands—no, it must have been tens of thousands of…things sat on I couldn’t imagine how many millions of others. In that sense, the place resembled a humongous junkyard, but most items appeared to be whole, useable, many even new. Any man-made object of value seemed like it would be here somewhere. I tore my eyes from staring too long because it confused me—like speeding through a liquidation sale of valuables from mankind’s every era. Besides, I was in no shopping mood for anything, except information, something to get my bearings or understand what had happened and where the chingada in Aztlán I could be.
Subdued noises came at me from every direction, like my ears were partially plugged…but I didn’t think my hearing was the problem.
From fifty yards in front echoed the steady clicking of roller coaster wheels. The contraption hadn’t been there a minute before, I felt certain of that. It stretched for possibly miles on prairie-like slopes of goods, bearing but one screamer riding with his arms raised. Further back stood a short oil derrick with its gushes splashing the ceiling or gurgling oil that seeped into the underlying goods. A couple of men in black-drenched overalls whooped it up. At least those people acted like they knew where they were. Yet, I hesitated running to seek their help.
Sprinkled throughout as far as I could see, larger groups were involved in different activities. There looked to be parties, a tamalada, a videogame tournament or quieter mundane events, like some kind of business meeting and a wedding ceremony. Plus more—a courtroom trial, a monster truck rally, a team of fresco painters frenziedly at work, and further out a score of naked people obviously involved in an orgy. At the limits of my vision, the eclectic mix of goings-on melded into grayed blurs.
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| publicity photo |
More odd than all these oddities, was that the participants seemed totally involved in their own special thing, paying no attention to groups near them. As if they didn’t know they had neighbors. It was like I’d Google-mapped in real-time and max-zoomed on a world of suburban barbecues. A place where each backyard gathering pretended it existed in its own private mini world, despite the nearby competing commotion. Except, these people needed no eight-foot fences to aid the illusion and suburbia had never looked this loco. . .
Rudy Ch. Garcia will autograph and sign The Closet of Discarded Dreams at
Su Teatro's Denver Civic Theater
on Sunday, Sept. 16th
at 5:00pm, 721 Santa Fe Drive
A free event with refreshments and suavísimo door prizes.
Denver debut book signing and reading of
The Closet of Discarded Dreams
Su Teatro's Denver Civic Theater
721 Santa Fe Dr.
Sunday, Sept. 16th, 5:00pm
by Rudy Ch. Garcia, the unfolding author
One week. Siete días. It's almost here. Like my unnamed protagonist would say, Qué chingaus! People at the readings might ask: What did you think about after you heard you'd be published? What did you feel? How was it, holding your first novel in your hands? So, anticipating that, here's this week's installment of what it's like having your first novel published, at least how I experience it.
The Closet of Discarded Dreams will release Sept. 1 and the process will begin. Then I'll wait. I've gotten past anxiety and some nervousness, and now a bit of excitement seems to be entering the picture. But it will take more time for me to hold something physical in my hand, turn the pages, find the typos, thrill in the fact that my first one reached print.
First though, it will not reach print. A few days after Release, ITunes and Amazon will have it in E-book and pdf formats. Then I'll be hustling to get digital review copies to the press, bloggers and whoever else I promised such. But I won't read it; maybe just scan it. I'm waiting for the paper.
Maybe a week after Release, it will be available as a paperback, but I still won't have it in my sweaty palms, though maybe I can get my first copy by paying for overnight delivery. As an immediate-gratification baby boomer, the process will no doubt take fokkin' forrrrrevvvverrrrr.
At least that could take my mind of all the pre-Release work I'm drowning in. Make up posters, business cards, bookmarks, drink coasters; make sure all the info is included, that there's no typos; design it and beg my daughter to get the files ready for the printers. Do a shoot with the same photographer daughter Marika, check proofs, decide on and send for stills. Etc. Here's what we came up with for a publicity photo. Comments appreciated.
Then daughter says, "You need Facebook and Twitter." "What for? I don't do that stuff."
"Everybody else does. Like your potential readers." Okay, so now I face and tweet, or at least my author self and the book do.
Then at the last minute somebody say, "Where's the QR code?" "What's that?" After a couple of hours of online googling, reading, navigating and back and forth questions to daughter, I don't completely understand, except that I know it's something the kids (under 50) do with their digital toys that I don't have because I can't afford the service they pay for as a "necessity." So I add the QR code, even though I doubt I'll ever use one, otherwise.
Here's what I'll likely send out today for a beer coaster. The idea that I heard about from another author is to take them to college bars, ask Mr. Nice Bartender if it would be alright to leave some around, and then hope the college boys--before they get too
borachos--will notice the graphic while they're waiting for their fourth beer, read it, and maybe scan the QR or head over to the book website.
The Closet of Discarded Dreams is filled with clones of celebrities and historical figures, Marilyn and Che included. So the graphic is a fit. In fact, in the book the two homestead one of the 9/11 monuments, debating, flirting and generally acting unlike anything you might imagine would happen if they'd met in their past real lives. I could be reading a passage from my protagonist's first encounter with the famous twosome, at Su Teatro or in Albu. If you can make it, I think you'll find that, among other things, more than entertaining. It's one part of the novel that I relish reading to myself.
Okay, one more week. In the meantime, you can check out the work my daughter and I have been taking care of, at the sites below. I'm not sure how it's all said but, tweet me, make me your friend, or friend me, like me, face me (or is it give me face?). And when you're done with that, send or connect or link or QR it to all your digital worlds. I love what we've created on the website and more is coming that your friends will probably like. Much more. Just not soon enuf for me.
book website: discarded-dreams.com FB: rudy.ch.garcia Twitter: DiscardedDreams
Es todo, hoy,
RudyG
I'll post the flyer for the Bless Me, Ultima movie. National release is scheduled for February. Supposed to be in several Denver theaters that month.
Julia Flores plays Theresa in Bless Me, Ultima. My second cousin.
Happy Holidays and Merry Meet, Rudy. Hope it is blessed and that you sell lots of books.
Opening date for Bless Me, Ultima's national debut is February 22, 2013.