Yo sé ha estado un tiempo. There has been a lot of change over here, which I’ll get into later. For now, per usual, I’ll start with the publication process. Line Edits on The First Casualty are wrapped and applied. I received the edits on November 4th and finished applying them sometime in late December.
I’m not sure exactly what I was expecting, but they were much easier to apply than the developmental stage revisions. These mostly entailed grammatical mistakes and catching some patterns that I’m susceptible to.
What’s next? Neither of the two agents I wanted to work with is currently open to query letters, so for the time being, I’m going down the self-pub route. The next steps for that are buying an ISBN for TFC and getting set up with electronic and physical distributors. Then a sample copy of the work in print that I will send off for copy edtis for the very last fixes. I’m commissioning a new cover artist, whom I’m really looking forward to working with. I expect the first sketches back in early April.
With lien edits wrapped, TFC is on the back burner on my end. I began working on ¡Salvame! again, but while drafting I realized that as with most things, I wasn’t as informed as I’d like to be heading into the project. In an effort to fix that, I picked up the only book I’ve finished since my last progress report.
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez was a phenomenal read.
“Immigrant labor has always been critical to the market’s prosperity. The market recruits it, exploits it, abuses it, divides it, then ships it back home when no longer needed. Only by reining in that market, by challenging its relentless greed, by humbling its colossal power, can Latinos in this country move from incremental to qualitative progress; only then can they shatter the caste system to which they have been relegated. Only by taming the market can the people of the Americas, north and south, move beyond our ethnic, racial, and linguistic divisions. Only then can we grasp our common humanity, realize our common dreams.”
I’m extremely grateful for the recommendation to read this, especially in light of the new administration’s gross pursuit of mass deportation. Harvest of Empire touches on the Latin American experience in the Americas, from the New World Colonies to the first Trump administration. One thing that will always stand with me from Harvest is the United States’ irrefutable role in destroying Latin America for no other reason than fiscal greed and creating circumstances that make living in Latin America untenable for many. Even Obama, who campaigned and won thanks in no small part to the turnout of latinxs thanks to promises of immigration reform, deported people in record numbers and held tens of thousands in detention centers by the day, all while supporting human rights violations from corrpt South American regimes because they furthered the U.S.’s capitalistic endeavors. Its important to face our culpability as the world’s greateset empire, and to that end, Harvest a must-read.
En mi vida personal, 2024 was a strange year. Things came to their end, and I moved with the border collie to the outskirts of Columbus and an old family home. The isolation allowed me to start Rose Street, finish TFC, and spend meaningful time with my siblings for the first time in years. For most of the year I grappled with the notion that I’d wasted the last four years. Then, in an incredible stroke of fortune, I began a new job that opened doors for me. I spent time on the east coast. I left the country for the first time. In February I’ll go to Arizona, then possibly California and/or Paris. The past several weeks I’ve been working on a work visa application to move to Spain. However, in recent weeks I’ve felt an inexplicable desire to spend significant Puerto Rico instead. Mi tía Kaye es de Aguadilla, and I think it could be its own sort of fulfilling to spend time there. As I’ve learned spanish I’ve even done my best to develop the carribean acccent. I’m lucky in that I can do whatever I want, but one way or another I will make my decision in March and move sometime in April.
The downside of all the travel and general busyness is that I haven’t been consistent on Rose Street or even my novels. I plan on being better with both in 2025. By year’s end I hope to be about half way finished with The Ruins of Discord and about a third of the way through ¡Salvame!. I won’t pretend to know when I’ll do the next Rose Street, but in the meantime, I’m going to travel, strike out with women, and see friends and family while I’m in the States. Hasta pronto. Palastina libre. Puerto Rico libre.
Babe, wake up!The 2024 process report just dropped!