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I Love You Just Like This! is an adorable story about love and all the ways parents feel it for their children.

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Patrice Barton’s artistic talents were discovered at age three when she was found creating a mural on the wall of her dining room with a pastry brush and a can of Crisco.

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One of my favorite songs from Sesame Street is "Sing," written by Joe Raposo.

"Sing.
Sing a song.
Sing out loud.
Sing out strong."

You have that song in your head now, don't you?

I sing songs with my son all the time, and I also sing books. Just about any picture book can easily be turned into a song. I find it to be a great read aloud technique, and we both enjoy the experience. The tune is completely irrelevant, I make up something new every time I sing.

Books that have worked well as songs (for us, at least) include:

• Freight Train by Donald Crews
• Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? by Bill Martin Jr. and Eric Carle
  
• Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
• Big Dog Little Dog by P.D. Eastman
  

...and too many others to count.

Singing was particularly effective when my son was a baby, and I used to sing all of his longer board books to him. It also worked well when he was an antsy toddler. He still likes it now, even though he's older, and every night he'll tell me which books he wants me to sing.

I think I have a terrible voice, and I'm quite shy about using it normally, but my son doesn't mind no matter how off key I am. I tried singing my made-up musical version of Freight Train in a storytime last week, and to my surprise, it actually worked quite well. I'll have to try it again.

If there's a small child in your life, try singing them a book. Just remember, as the wise people at Sesame Street would tell you:

"Don't worry that it's not good enough
For anyone else to hear.
Sing
Sing a song."

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Looking for reviews of children's books? Look no further than the Children's Book Review wiki. It was created by the indefatigable Kelly Herold of Big A little a, who may be one of the most busy and productive people I've ever met. The wiki contains a wonderful and rich variety of blog reviews from all over the kidlitosphere.

I just put up all the reviews I've ever posted on Wizards Wireless on the wiki. There aren't that many... because I tend to make lists and general comments about books instead of writing formal reviews. But, I was surprised to see that I've written 15 reviews so far... I thought it was far fewer than that.

One of the most rewarding parts of reviewing for me has been connecting with authors. If the book has been published relatively recently and I can find an e-mail address, I will frequently send authors links to my blog reviews. And, every one of them has written back, which I find amazing. I have to admit, I felt like a rock star when I got return e-mails from Susan Patron and Mordecai Gerstein only a few weeks after I started blogging.

I'm in awe of bloggers who write reviews regularly (and sometimes even every day!), such as Betsy at A Fuse #8 Production, Jen at Jen Robinson's Book Page, Tasha at Kids Lit, Jules and Eisha at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, Abby at Abby (the) Librarian, Laura at Library & Literary Miscellany... and, ummm... everybody but me.

I've rounded up all the reviews I've written thus far (see the list below). Looking at the list, I notice that I seem to favor titles that contain exclamation points!

Books for Babies and Toddlers

• Freight Train by Donald Crews
• Fuzzy Fuzzy Fuzzy! by Sandra Boynton
• Orange Pear Apple Bear, by Emily Gravett
• Tickle the Duck! by Ethan Long
• The Toolbox by Anne and Harlow Rockwell

Picture Books

• The 20th Century Children's Book Treasury edited by Janet Schulman
• The Baby Beebee Bird by Diane Redfield Massie, illustrated by Steven Kellogg
• Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! by Mo Willems
• How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World by Marjorie Priceman
• Knuffle Bunny by Mo Willems
• The Man Who Walked Between the Towers by Mordecai Gerstein
• Shhhhh! Everybody's Sleeping by Julie Markes, illustrated by David Parkins
• When Dinosaurs Came with Everything by Elise Broach, illustrated by David Small
  

Juvenile Fiction

• The Higher Power of Lucky by Susan Patron
• Rules by Cynthia Lord

Want to contribute your reviews to the Children's Book Review wiki? Take a look at this post on Big A Little a to see how to do it.

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Move over Candace Bushnell, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, Tommy, Mikey, Rico and Kyle are on the scene. Summer reading season is almost here and I can't think of a better pre-season recommendation than Boston Boys Club. Chic lit had to make way for chica lit, and I'm glad to say the the ground for chico lit is being broken by Johnny Diaz and his own tale of the city, filled with hot boy on boy sex, friendship, romance, trying to make sense of who you are, and what you really want against a well-crafted backdrop of Beantown.

Flanked by gorgeous brick row houses in the heart of Boston’s South End, the Club Café is a bar where everybody knows your name—and who you slept with last. Every night men like Tommy Perez, Rico DiMio, and Kyle Andrews take their place among the glistening crowd sporting chest-defining shirts and lots of smooth, tanned skin, sizing up the regulars and the new blood while TV monitors blare Beyoncé and Missy Elliott.

For Tommy, Thursdays at the Club Café in the company of his wingman Rico and a Skinny Black Bitch (vodka and Diet Coke) are unmissable. Recently relocated from Miami to Boston to take a reporting job at The Boston Daily, Tommy is finding it hard to break away from his tight-knit Cuban family, but his homesickness goes into rapid remission when he meets Mikey, a blue-eyed, boyish guidance counselor from Cape Cod. Smart, funny, and wicked cute, Mikey is perfect boyfriend material…until his drinking leads Tommy to suspect that he’s got some issues of his own. Rico—a tough-talking, Italian-American accountant with a gamma ray smile and mournful green eyes that hint at a past he’ll admit to no one—is sure Mikey is bad news, but to Rico any relationship that lasts longer than three hours sounds like bad news. Then there’s Kyle, the lean, preening model and former reality show star who makes a red-carpet entrance into the CC every Thursday as if a swarm of cameras still follows his every move, but whose real life is about to take a dramatic turn he never anticipated.

Over the course of one unforgettable year, Tommy is forced to rethink everything he’s ever believed about life, lust, and love. And in the Club Café, a place filled with endless possibilities—of stumbling upon the perfect partner, the perfect story idea, or just a play buddy for the night—Tommy might finally discover the person he was meant to be.

Any like any good summer read, Boston Boys Club entertains, amuses, and is the perfect compliment to a long, lazy day at the beach and cold tropical drink of your choice. But don't be fooled, there is a serious side to this book, which makes it all the better a slice of LGBT life. There are issues and illnesses, losses and things falling apart. But in the end, things come together and these boys win your heart. This book is a keeper, and Johnny Diaz had better start working on a sequel.


Boston Boys Club
Kensington
ISBN-10: 0758215452

Written by Lisa Alvarado

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Other Important News: Do not miss this year's National Latino Writer's Conference, held at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM. http://www.hcfoundation.org/

This three-day conference that takes place May 17-19, 2007, invites all writers published and unpublished, to participate in workshops conducted by nationally and internationally known authors in the genres of poetry, fiction, screenwriting, playwriting and news writing. Panels of editors and publishers representing such presses as Arte Público Press, Warner Books, Curbstone Press, Simon and Schuster, University of New Mexico, Arizona and California Presses and many others will speak on the process of getting your work published. Agents will be available for consultation and interview.

In addition to the aforementioned workshops and panels, there will be an open microphone reading at which time registrants can read from their work to an audience of authors and publishers. A Thursday evening social and Friday night banquet will captivate participants into further discussion and networking.

Presenters Include:

OSCAR HIJUELOS [Fiction] was the first Hispano to win the Pulitzer Prize for his second novel, Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love which was made into a movie starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante. His novel, Empress of the Splendid Season was published in 1999 and his latest, A Simple Habana Melody was published in 2002.
www.answers.com/topic/oscar-hijuelos

LORI CARLSON [Youth Literature] is an editor, translator and author of Caña Quemada Burnt Sugar: Contemporary Cuban Poetry, Translations and Originals. Among her other publications are Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on the Young Latino in the U.S. and The Sunday Tertulia, both published by HarperCollins. www.cbcbooks.org/cbcmagazine/meet/carlson_
lorimarie.html

BRAULIO MUÑOZ [Fiction] is the author of an award winning novel, The Peruvian Notebooks. He is on the faculty of Swarthmore College and has also published A Storyteller: Mario Vargas Llosa Between Civilization and Barbarism, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2000. In addition to literary criticism he also has published another work of fiction, Alejandro y los Pescadores de Tancay which was published in Italy in 2004.
www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1708.htm

KATHLEEN de AZEVEDO [Fiction] is the author of an award winning novel, Samba Dreams. She is on the faculty of Skyline College and her work has appeared in numerous publications including: Los Angeles Times, Americas, Boston Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Greensboro Review and many others. Her novel Samba Dreams, "reflects the conflict between the Brazilian and the American culture: the sensual and the pragmatic; the myth of self-determination and the myth of El Dorado."
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/02/spotlight-on-
kathleen-de-azevedo.html

PAT MORA [Youth Literature] is a nationally prominent poet/writer. Among her many writing awards, she was the winner of the 2006 NHCC Literary Award and author of Adobe Odes. Her many books of poetry, fiction and children's literature have made her one of the most productive and respected Chicana writers on the literary scene. www.patmora.com

BENJAMIN SAENZ [Poetry] is a prolific poet and fiction writer. He is the author of Dreaming the End of War. He is on the faculty of University of Texas, El Paso and his latest book joins his many others. A former roofer, onion picker, janitor, theologian and Catholic priest, Saenz is now a prize winning essayist, novelist, poet and activist passionately in love with El Paso and its peoples.
www.benjaminsaenz.com/Pages/BenHome.html

BEVA SÁNCHEZ-PADILLA [Playwriting] is a native New Mexican, identifies herself as a literary media and performing artist. Her six produced plays include: La Guadalupe Que Camina, Mali and Maya: A Story of Malinche, Letty y su Mama, Contradictions Split-Rebozo, and An Altar for Emma. As part of her workshop on playwriting, she will perform segments from two of these plays.

ALFREDO CORCHADO [News writer] is a renowned investigative journalist with the Dallas Morning News and previously with the Wall Street Journal and the El Paso Herald-Post. He has won several awards for his coverage of Mexicans in the United States through special projects including: "The Mexicanization of the United States," and the "Disappearing Border." His reporting led to an internal U.S. inquiry and the removal of heads of the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency. His reporting on drug violence along the border led to the discovery of crimes committed in Texan cities under the order of Mexican drug cartels. Google Alfredo Corchado + Dallas Morning News and visit http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22
Alfredo+Corchado%22

YOLANDO NAVA [Marketing] Director of Marketing for NM Monuments of DCA. She is a specialist on writing for marketing and commercial media. Author of It's All in the Frijoles, Nava is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, author and motivational speaker. Her book was winner of the Latino Literary Hall of Fames' 2001 Best Self-help Book Award and was also featured in the Writers Corner of Spirituality.com. Google "Yolanda Nava."

JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH [Screenwriting] is a writer for major TV serials like Boomtown, Medium, Lost, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Charmed and many others. He also writes his own comics with titles like Super-Skrull which he did for Marvel Comics Mini Series and Middleman, which he did for Viper Comics. He hosts a weekly video show performed entirely by Grillo-Marxuach. New episodes appear on his main website, RadioFreeJavi.com or Google "Javier Grillo-Marxuach."


This three-day conference costs a total of $300.00 including all meals. Previous attendees receive a "founders discount" of $50.00 if you register by February 1st. Travel and lodging will be your responsibility. Participating hotels are listed on the registration form. For more information please call 505.246.2261 x148 or email [email protected].

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Move over Candace Bushnell, Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda, Tommy, Mikey, Rico and Kyle are on the scene. Summer reading season is almost here and I can't think of a better pre-season recommendation than Boston Boys Club. Chic lit had to make way for chica lit, and I'm glad to say the the ground for chico lit is being broken by Johnny Diaz and his own tale of the city, filled with hot boy on boy sex, friendship, romance, trying to make sense of who you are, and what you really want against a well-crafted backdrop of Beantown.

Flanked by gorgeous brick row houses in the heart of Boston’s South End, the Club Café is a bar where everybody knows your name—and who you slept with last. Every night men like Tommy Perez, Rico DiMio, and Kyle Andrews take their place among the glistening crowd sporting chest-defining shirts and lots of smooth, tanned skin, sizing up the regulars and the new blood while TV monitors blare Beyoncé and Missy Elliott.

For Tommy, Thursdays at the Club Café in the company of his wingman Rico and a Skinny Black Bitch (vodka and Diet Coke) are unmissable. Recently relocated from Miami to Boston to take a reporting job at The Boston Daily, Tommy is finding it hard to break away from his tight-knit Cuban family, but his homesickness goes into rapid remission when he meets Mikey, a blue-eyed, boyish guidance counselor from Cape Cod. Smart, funny, and wicked cute, Mikey is perfect boyfriend material…until his drinking leads Tommy to suspect that he’s got some issues of his own. Rico—a tough-talking, Italian-American accountant with a gamma ray smile and mournful green eyes that hint at a past he’ll admit to no one—is sure Mikey is bad news, but to Rico any relationship that lasts longer than three hours sounds like bad news. Then there’s Kyle, the lean, preening model and former reality show star who makes a red-carpet entrance into the CC every Thursday as if a swarm of cameras still follows his every move, but whose real life is about to take a dramatic turn he never anticipated.

Over the course of one unforgettable year, Tommy is forced to rethink everything he’s ever believed about life, lust, and love. And in the Club Café, a place filled with endless possibilities—of stumbling upon the perfect partner, the perfect story idea, or just a play buddy for the night—Tommy might finally discover the person he was meant to be.

Any like any good summer read, Boston Boys Club entertains, amuses, and is the perfect compliment to a long, lazy day at the beach and cold tropical drink of your choice. But don't be fooled, there is a serious side to this book, which makes it all the better a slice of LGBT life. There are issues and illnesses, losses and things falling apart. But in the end, things come together and these boys win your heart. This book is a keeper, and Johnny Diaz had better start working on a sequel.


Boston Boys Club
Kensington
ISBN-10: 0758215452

Written by Lisa Alvarado

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Other Important News: Do not miss this year's National Latino Writer's Conference, held at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, NM. http://www.hcfoundation.org/

This three-day conference that takes place May 17-19, 2007, invites all writers published and unpublished, to participate in workshops conducted by nationally and internationally known authors in the genres of poetry, fiction, screenwriting, playwriting and news writing. Panels of editors and publishers representing such presses as Arte Público Press, Warner Books, Curbstone Press, Simon and Schuster, University of New Mexico, Arizona and California Presses and many others will speak on the process of getting your work published. Agents will be available for consultation and interview.

In addition to the aforementioned workshops and panels, there will be an open microphone reading at which time registrants can read from their work to an audience of authors and publishers. A Thursday evening social and Friday night banquet will captivate participants into further discussion and networking.

Presenters Include:

OSCAR HIJUELOS [Fiction] was the first Hispano to win the Pulitzer Prize for his second novel, Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love which was made into a movie starring Antonio Banderas and Armand Assante. His novel, Empress of the Splendid Season was published in 1999 and his latest, A Simple Habana Melody was published in 2002.
www.answers.com/topic/oscar-hijuelos

LORI CARLSON [Youth Literature] is an editor, translator and author of Caña Quemada Burnt Sugar: Contemporary Cuban Poetry, Translations and Originals. Among her other publications are Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on the Young Latino in the U.S. and The Sunday Tertulia, both published by HarperCollins. www.cbcbooks.org/cbcmagazine/meet/carlson_lorimarie.html

BRAULIO MUÑOZ [Fiction] is the author of an award winning novel, The Peruvian Notebooks. He is on the faculty of Swarthmore College and has also published A Storyteller: Mario Vargas Llosa Between Civilization and Barbarism, published by Rowman & Littlefield in 2000. In addition to literary criticism he also has published another work of fiction, Alejandro y los Pescadores de Tancay which was published in Italy in 2004.
www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1708.htm

KATHLEEN de AZEVEDO [Fiction] is the author of an award winning novel, Samba Dreams. She is on the faculty of Skyline College and her work has appeared in numerous publications including: Los Angeles Times, Americas, Boston Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Greensboro Review and many others. Her novel Samba Dreams, "reflects the conflict between the Brazilian and the American culture: the sensual and the pragmatic; the myth of self-determination and the myth of El Dorado."
http://labloga.blogspot.com/2006/02/spotlight-on-kathleen-de-
azevedo.html

PAT MORA [Youth Literature] is a nationally prominent poet/writer. Among her many writing awards, she was the winner of the 2006 NHCC Literary Award and author of Adobe Odes. Her many books of poetry, fiction and children's literature have made her one of the most productive and respected Chicana writers on the literary scene. www.patmora.com

BENJAMIN SAENZ [Poetry] is a prolific poet and fiction writer. He is the author of Dreaming the End of War. He is on the faculty of University of Texas, El Paso and his latest book joins his many others. A former roofer, onion picker, janitor, theologian and Catholic priest, Saenz is now a prize winning essayist, novelist, poet and activist passionately in love with El Paso and its peoples.
www.benjaminsaenz.com/Pages/BenHome.html

BEVA SÁNCHEZ-PADILLA [Playwriting] is a native New Mexican, identifies herself as a literary media and performing artist. Her six produced plays include: La Guadalupe Que Camina, Mali and Maya: A Story of Malinche, Letty y su Mama, Contradictions Split-Rebozo, and An Altar for Emma. As part of her workshop on playwriting, she will perform segments from two of these plays.

ALFREDO CORCHADO [News writer] is a renowned investigative journalist with the Dallas Morning News and previously with the Wall Street Journal and the El Paso Herald-Post. He has won several awards for his coverage of Mexicans in the United States through special projects including: "The Mexicanization of the United States," and the "Disappearing Border." His reporting led to an internal U.S. inquiry and the removal of heads of the Immigration Customs Enforcement agency. His reporting on drug violence along the border led to the discovery of crimes committed in Texan cities under the order of Mexican drug cartels. Google Alfredo Corchado + Dallas Morning News and visit http://www.findarticles.com/p/search?tb=art&qt=%22Alfredo+
Corchado%22

YOLANDO NAVA [Marketing] Director of Marketing for NM Monuments of DCA. She is a specialist on writing for marketing and commercial media. Author of It's All in the Frijoles, Nava is an Emmy award-winning broadcast journalist, author and motivational speaker. Her book was winner of the Latino Literary Hall of Fames' 2001 Best Self-help Book Award and was also featured in the Writers Corner of Spirituality.com. Google "Yolanda Nava."

JAVIER GRILLO-MARXUACH [Screenwriting] is a writer for major TV serials like Boomtown, Medium, Lost, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Charmed and many others. He also writes his own comics with titles like Super-Skrull which he did for Marvel Comics Mini Series and Middleman, which he did for Viper Comics. He hosts a weekly video show performed entirely by Grillo-Marxuach. New episodes appear on his main website, RadioFreeJavi.com or Google "Javier Grillo-Marxuach."


This three-day conference costs a total of $300.00 including all meals. Previous attendees receive a "founders discount" of $50.00 if you register by February 1st. Travel and lodging will be your responsibility. Participating hotels are listed on the registration form. For more information please call 505.246.2261 x148 or email [email protected].

Add a Comment

A staff writer for The Boston Globe, Johnny Diaz covers Boston’s colorful neighborhoods and Hispanic issues. Previously, Diaz was a reporter for The Miami Herald where he shared in the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the federal seizure of Elian Gonzales and its aftermath. MTV Real World fans will remember him as the “gay guy’s boyfriend” from the Miami season. In Boston Boys Club, his first novel, Johnny Diaz follows a trio of friends as they search for that perfect guy at the most happening bar in Boston, the Café Club.

I caught up with Johnny as he continues to juggle being a successful journalist and preparing for the national debut of his novel. Come back next week for a review of Boston Boys Club, summer read season is just around the corner.

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Talk about chico lit and its place alongside chica lit...
What connection do you feel with writers like Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, and the chica lit movement? Who are the writers that influenced you, and what about them/their work clicked for you?

I believe chico lit is the guy's chica lit. Just as Latinas look for themselves and their stories in contemporary fiction, so are their gay brothers, cousins, and amigos. We want to see ourselves reflected accurately and positively. Latino readers of gay fiction want something that goes beyond what we've read countless times before: the gangbangers, the big and strong old-school macho guys, the sexy hot Latino gardeners to have sex with, and the stereotypical flamboyant drag queens. We're more than that just as Latinas are more than housekeepers and Spanish-accented sexy bombshells. What about our stories that speak of friendship and the struggles with being accepted not just in your own family and culture but in your own social group? What about our stories that show how we're constantly swaying and thriving in a bicultural bubble? We often speak two languages because of our parents and we travel back and forth in between cultures, 24-7 and I haven't seen many recent novels by a gay Latino writer that speaks to all that, especially from an American and Hispanic point of view.

I feel a strong kinship with Alisa Valdes Rodriguez and her chica lit movement. For one, I was a college intern in Living/Arts at The Boston Globe when she was a writer here. (She was my unofficial mentor and she would often read my copy and give me advice before I filed my stories to my editor. I sat next to her and I think I used to her annoy with questions about where to eat and dance.) I feel what she does now as an author is what she was did as a journalist, telling our stories, informing and enlightening readers about our culture and backgrounds and how diverse and rich we are. She broke a lot of new ground in Boston and in Los Angeles and in mainstream journalism. She always inspired me to do the same. (I actually have her old job here at The Globe.) When I read The Dirty Girls Social Club, I wanted to do a guy's version of that, hence Boston Boys Club but with not so many main characters, just three guys and how a gay Cuban-American adapts to a sometimes staid town like Boston.

So Alisa has been a big influence on me as well as authors such as Nicholas Sparks and William J. Mann. Some fellow writers frown on Nicholas Sparks because they say his writing is hokey and full of cliches with his simplistic stories, but they ring true and bring a romantic escapism for the reader. William J. Mann is a fellow gay writer from Cape Cod and he has written books about the gay party circuit. His novels have been the closest thing I've read to good gay fiction that speak to the everyday struggles of dating and relationships. But again, none of his characters are Latinos, hence another reason for writing BBC. I wanted to write something fun and positive about being gay and Hispanic today. I want people to read my novel and walk away with a good feeling about gays and Latinos in general, like they know understand us a little better.

Boston Boys Club will no doubt be popular as queer fiction in the LGBT community, but it also has the appeal of Bushnell and Sex and the City. Not to give anything away, but BBC has a strong thread of friendship as well as romance and sexuality. What do you that says about where we are in the culture wars, i.e. gay reality not a "subculture" anymore, but popular culture.

I find that if you write about universal themes (strong friendships, sweet romances, and the longing for intimacy) that they will transcend labels and be part of popular culture as opposed to a subculture or a specific niche. I know my characters are gay and one of them is Hispanic but their stories will resonate with anyone who has had issues with committing to a relationship, helping someone with has his own addiction issues or chronicling the challenges of being a newcomer in a new home and job. I describe the book as a Same-Sex in the City because men and women of various backgrounds related to that show, even though it was about four straight women and their search for Mr. Right. I hope that readers who pick up Boston Boys Club will relate to one of the characters, even if they are gay or Hispanic. My guys are all looking for love, and themselves and aren't we all in our own way?

On a related note, in your opinion, what do you think Latin culture has to offer the LGBT community and vise versa, and ultimately what do those communities bring to the "larger" body politic?

The Latin culture has offered us a rich tradition of storytelling. Our tradition is about sharing, being passionate and proud about who you are and what you do. We're all storytellers, from our abuelos y padres. I remember growing up in Miami, listening to my dad tell my sister and I stories about Cuba or he would pretend to be the voice of one of my sister's dolls to keep us entertained on long drives to Disney World. There is a long tradition of this among many famous gay Latin writers, from Reinaldo Arenas and Elias Miguel Munoz to Cuban poet Richard Blanco. You read their books and poems and you can hear, taste, smell, and see the results of those passed-on traditions of storytelling.

And by sharing their stories, they also contribute another layer of the Latin experience - the gay experience, which has often been something you know but don't talk about. They've written about their tight-knit upbringing and struggles of being gay in a machismo mundo to being ostracized at times from a culture that is so often warm and embracing yet so cold and shunning with it comes to homosexuality.

As a journalist and novelist, do you experience one kind of writing as different than the other? For me, writing poetry feels very intuitive, very much a right brain activity, where fiction writing seems almost exclusively left brain. Does this resonate for you, and if not, how would you describe how your work develops, how it's linked?

That's a great question. I find that my writing for The Boston Globe is very left-brain and somewhat serious. I am writing with a pair of handcuffs on because the story is not about me, but about the person, the topic or the issue. I funnel the facts and the information from my notepad and do my best to write them into a clear and concise article that flows. I feel I have to keep my personality - my voice - at bay to tell the story for the newspaper. Sometimes, I struggle to keep my first-person observations out so that the article is completely third-person but sometimes, a personal insight or observation surfaces and I get away with it.

Writing fiction is pure pleasure for me. It's my creativity unleashed and it doesn't feel like work at all. It's feels more like art, something you do because your spirit guides you - calls you - to do it. When I write fiction, I feel I can take those proverbial handcuffs off (the ones from above at the newspaper) and let my voice run free and wild. When I write fiction, I feel like someone running in a boundless field of sawgrass or someone swimming in the middle of the sea. I don't where I'm running or swimming to but I am having fun exploring, seeing where the journey takes me. So yes, fiction is very "write" brain for me. :)

Where do you see yourself as a writer ten years from now?

I see myself smiling and writing, sharing my stories with others as a writer and telling other people's stories as well as journalist. And hopefully, I'll still be bopping around New England and South Florida in my little white Jeep Wrangler to find those stories.

Tell us something about yourself not in the official bio.

I'm addicted to the six-inch Veggie Delite sub (no mayo, honey mustard por favor) from Subways sandwich shops. I eat one daily for lunch, plus two chocolate chip cookies.


Written by Lisa Alvarado

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