¿Cómo están, mis amores?

I’m entering full chaos gremlin mode*. The next two weeks are about to be quite demanding, so I’m trying to get this newsletter out so don’t lose my updating streak! Let’s gooooo.

CUARÓN CON, Or, I went to Dartmouth for a specfic symposium and ate a lot of shrimps.

The shrimp is not the important part. It was an incredible weekend, and the hotel’s restaurant with the delightful shrimps was just the sea cherry on top.

Let’s start with, what is CUARÓN CON? I should clarify, the symposium was actually called Children of Cuarón: Speculative Futures through Cinematic Fiction Conference. Cuarón being of course, Alfonso, the Mexican writer/director who has made so many incredible films. (Huge thanks to the Latin American, Latino, and Caribbean Studies Department with support from Dartmouth Arts & Sciences Dean of Faculty, Elizabeth Smith and the Dartmouth Dialogue Project for making this event happen.)

Now, I’ve been to a lot of conferences in my time. I was just searching for photos for my “Rewind” segment below, and I have tons of photos from cons and fests and signings and events. I had this out of body experience after sending a photo to a friend and said “were we ever really thing young?” But dramatic asides aside, it made me realize just how social I am as an author. Because of the con experience, I felt a little intimidated going to Dartmouth to talk about fiction through the lens of the film Children of Men. I honestly won’t be able to cover everything from the weekend.

I took the Dartmouth coach. It’s 5.5 hours each way, which was great because I wrote the entire time. GUESS WHAT I WAS WORKING ON? Hint: if you love me you’re reading it already.

Anyway, after the bus, I hotelified my room, worked some more on Rebel Angels, had lunch with a friend, and then went to the first event of the night: a viewing of Sleep Dealer, a scifi movie by Alex Rivera. I’d never seen it before, and I wish I could go back in time and tell college me to find a theater and watch it. The movie is 15 minutes in the future US/Mexico border, and follows a young Mexican man whose world is destroyed, and then has to find work n the US. In this version of the future, people don’t have to cross the border. They’re connected through a cybernetwork and implants. It is imaginative and tragic and absolutely human.

It’s only one of the four films that were featured and talked about during the weekend, but the imagery sticks with me. So does The Pod Generation by Sophie Barthes, which is more recent.

Children of Men is a movie that is distant from its source material, but it takes place in 2027. It’s hard to imagine a world in which two years from now the world is a desolate. But then I open up my Atlantic and AP apps and realize, hey we’re doing everything possible to head into that bleak, hopeless future.

People who are a lot smarter than me said a lot of brilliant things on the panels. In a discussion about borders, I recall someone asking something along the lines of “what can we do” with regard to what feels like a future. There were many differing answers. Some called for hope. Some for art. One professor simply said, “We need vengeance.” When we think about revolutions and revolts against authoritarian and fascist regimes, can it be done without vengeance?

I’m not going to answer that right now, but it definitely makes me tailspin into what this all* means. All* is, of course, this life, this writing job, this calling to create outside of myself. What is my job as a writer? What can I say with my voice? Who even needs to hear it? How will it create positive change? How do I tell the truth about the world? What does my vision of the future, and reimagining of the past, look like? Art is a mirror of the world around us, and that world is shaped by politics. Pretending otherwise is a choice. During one of these panels, someone pointed out that a lot of early SFF was very conservative. In the book world, we like to think this is a solely liberal place. After all, we love books! We love free libraries! We love education and school! Dystopia shows a world that has ended. Romance says you deserve a happily ever after. Scifi takes us to space or futures we can only speculate through science. Fantasy gives us a magical realm. What does that mean when you live in a marginalized body? What does dystopia look like if you come from a group of people whose world already ended in 1492 or 1948? What does romance mean when a “hero” in a story makes a throwaway comment while picking grapes, and wonders if “people with questionable visas” should be the one doing that labor? How can we imagine exploring other galaxies when we are destroying our own? And who gets to write the definitive vision of a fantastical world? Vanessa Angélica Villareal does a lot of this work in her thoughtful and delightful book of essays about the intersection of pop culture and being Latina. If you want a non-fiction read, it is great.

As you can tell by now, this short weekend in February led to a lot of conversations. I was on an author panel with Carmen Maria Machado, and Vanessa Angélica Villareal, moderated by Marcela Di Blasi. We talked about our relationship to the film, our own work. I have a notebook full of notes, and I wasn’t the only one. Everyone in the audience was furiously jotting down quotes from the panels.

It felt really good to talk about why words and stories matter. And no, I’m not saying every books has to have all the answers to every problem and be ultra politically correct and only show good people doing good things. It was just refreshing to be able to spend a weekend deep diving the impact of one film and one version of a future that is a stone’s throw away, with people who definitely didn’t agree on everything, but had thoughtful answers for questions that might actually be unanswerable. Wait, is this what it’s like to have a conversation outside of the fucking internet where everything is reduced to hot takes without context?

Have I mentioned it was an incredible weekend? I’m still buzzing with ideas and wishing I could be in a group chat with everyone to be like, “hey, latinos in scifi. do we exist without earth? discuss.” Just. Incredible.

Also, the shrimps at the Hanover Inn. 10/10.

Because I was having so much fun, I did not take any pictures! Except of the José Clemente Orozco mural at the Baker library.

This one went a bit long, so I’ll talk about some of the other events and my take-away from them in another update. For now, please enjoy these graphics I made to procrastinate the 4 jobs and 1 life event I’m balancing.

February: took the train to DC and back to see Adriana Herrera and Kristina Forest launch their new books at East City Books. They should still have signed copies if you’re looking for some good romances. Also, lots of espresso martinis, a Spotify romance event celebrating Kennedy Ryan, and I was wrong, I did get some photos from Cuarón Con: my fit and this plant at the local bookstore.

March-ish: I had an event at Santa Clarita and this incredible reader gave me a bedazzled copy of Orquídea Divina! I signed books at Mysterious Galaxy (they ship!!), and learned to drive. LOL, jk. The wonderful team at the New Children’s Museum in San Diego made this adorable photo booth of the Scourge from Valentina Salazar is Not a Monster Hunter.

As you can see from my libro prograss bar: no progress on Heroes and Hotel books. One of the plus sides of so much long travel, including 3 weekend trips to California, means I’m getting a lot of writing done. I need silence to edit. I need chaos to write. I can’t explain it and I’m set in my ways. So from planes, trains, and fancy buses, I’ve written about 10k of Monster House, my substack first serial fiction. It’s a novella. You can read a sample over here and subscribe for the whole monster enchilada. It will be a little weird, a lotta smutty, and just me trying to have some fun with a story and play around with an idea i’ve had for a few years.

Speaking of monsters … here is a bingo book card for all you monster lovers fuckers.

Reading: Magical Realism by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal. I started this before the con, and am working my way through the essays. Some I relate to so much, and others are a reminder of how different all Latinx experiences in the US. It’s so sharp and deeply researched.

Watching: This show is ridonculous. Philippa Soo from Hamilton fame? JOSHUA JACKSON? It’s like Grey’s Anatomy was on luxury cruise, only the medical crew is only 3 people. How much drama could they have? All of it. I wish the romance felt a little more streamlined. Right now it feels like they don’t know which way the sea is blowing, heh, but I’m still having a good time. You had me at BIG DECK ENERGY.

Listening: I haven’t stopped listening to the new Bad Bunny album. Apologies to anyone who has had to be in an adjoining room with me in the hotels. This album has been on full blast. Every song I listen to a little more carefully, and right now VeLDÁ is on a loop. The drop is just so sexy.

Okay, I’m getting the “too long for email” Substack warning. That’s it for now. I’m not currently on Instagram or Threads. The apps are off my phone, but I log in once a week or so because I truly hate not replying to messages. So if you want to hear from me, write me a letter. A love letter, preferably (platonic unless you’re Pedro Pascal).

As always, write on, and let me know what you want to see from me here.