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Why The World Needs Chica Lit

Six years ago today, I came to work and did nothing but sit at my desk, trying to get on the Internet to find out what happened in New York and Washington D.C.

A week later I was laid off from my job. My husband walked out of our house, watching me as I pulled up. The neighborhood was still quiet but candles waited on porchsteps, waiting to be burned. I carried my box of stuf into the house, joining my husband at the front door. He didn’t ask me what I would do next because the answer was simple: I’d find a job. We’d be fine. Life would go on and I’d fall right back into step.
Six months later, I finished the first draft of a book that I had no idea would one day become part of the chica lit movement. I had no savings left in my account and took a job that paid me half of my former salary.
But looking back, I got kicked around. Not destroyed because the events of September 11th showed me what true loss was. But I was a little battered and bruised; uncertain and unable to sleep because one wrong move, one errant dollar spent and we’d be late in paying the phone bill.

But we recovered. The job markt reopened and I got a better job. My book had been revised and I shot off several queries to agents in hopes of selling it before my 30th birthday. In May of 2003, I got my issue of Latina magazine and in it was an excerpt of a book called, The Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes Rodriguez.

When I read it, I forgot about the uncertainty of my immediate world and that larger, scarier one outside my door. I read one review that said the book was “okay” for a story with a happy ending. (Apparently the reader didn’t care for stories that gave its characters what they wanted.) To me, it was a life line that whispered everything would be okay and that out there, even if it was in make-believe land, women like me were winning.

Unlike that reader who deemed herself too good for happily-ever-after’s, there’s a world of women out there who wouldn’t beg to differ with her. They would simply go to the bookstore, hand over their hard-earned cash and read chica lit books during their lunch hour, commute or when their babies nap. They need to go into a world that resembles their world and yet, its a world where women like them win.

These women are grounded by family and friends (Sex and the South Beach Chicas). They are cleansed by tears of laughter and loss (Cinderella Lopez). These women take in deep gulps of breath to laugh at what life throws their way (Underneath It All). These women burn with the fire of determination to the point where they’re willing to do anything – even sell their bodies – for a chance to meet a long lost father and still, have a sense of humor about it (Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban).

The destruction and the lives all of us lost on that day were not in vain. Words and stories were awakened and fingers eagerly tapped on keyboards to give birth to chica lit. Back then we didn’t have chica lit on the bookshelves. Today, there are new stories and new authors waiting to be discovered.

Rather than dwell in loss, today I’m going to celebrate life and creativity. I’m going to dwell in gratitude.
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On The Radio

Up till this morning, I’ve never had the experience of being an on-air expert and frankly, it was a little weird. I called in at 6 a.m. and listened to the conversation between the host, Mel and Ariel Gobert, author of Red Hot Revolution. Two commercial breaks later, I’m on and I’m still wondering how I can help Ms. Gobert market her self-published book.

So I did what I do best: I talked about myself.

But then a brilliant idea occurred to me. Maybe she should link up with a local reporter and take them on one of her blind dates. It could open up a discussion about women in their 50’s who have had careers, raised kids, etc., now entering the dating scene. My former editor would’ve given me a raise on the spot for an idea like that. In fact, I was starting to wish that I was a reporter so I could do the story!

However, my idea bombed. Frankly, I think it horrified her. Hours later when I was at the gym, I realized that that is one of the problems we face when pursuing our dreams. We say we want something and yet, we’re frightened of apprearing foolish. We tell the world and ourselves how much we want it but we won’t do the things that terrify us like, finish a book, find a new man or lose weight.

In a way, I feel lucky to be a foolish person, or a person who doesn’t give a shit if people think I’m foolish. A few years ago, one of my husband’s colleagues turned to me and to my face said, “I read your book and I was so embarassed for you. Those love scenes were so…”

She shuddered as if she’d been mind raped. But I said, “Thank you.”

And I meant it.

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I’m On The Radio, Ma!

Just got the call that I’ll be on Make It Happen with Mel Robbins, live on Monday Sept. 10 at 9 a.m. (EST) on Sirius satellite radio Lime Channel 114. The show will be rebroadcast that night at 9 p.m. EST but I’ll see if I can post my segment on my website.

Woo hoo!

If you haven’t listened to Mel, dudes, check her out. Her no-nonsense, straight-to-the-gut style will get you revved up to get un-stuck and go after what you want! Listen to her take on J.K. Rowling or visit her website.

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Mary’s Mom Reads Switchcraft

During the Little Dude’s birthday party, Mom swiped a copy of Switchraft from my supply closet. Having reached the middle of the book, she called me the other night.

Mom: I’m at the part where Aggie goes to the baby class.

Me: What do you think?

Mom: By the way, are you going to have Aggie sleep with Nely’s husband?

Me (not sure how we went from the baby class to this): I can’t tell you. You’ll have to finish the book.

Mom (mutters something I can’t quite make out): So, were the moms from the baby class you went to as bad as the ones in the book?

Me: No. The ones at my class were worse. They tried to kill my son, remember?

Mom: That’s right, those pendejas!

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Mary’s Mom Sends Us A Barbie Joke

Teen Barbie 24-Pak
One day, a father gets out of work and on his way home he suddenly remembers that it’s his daughter’s birthday.

He pulls over to a toy shop and asks the salesperson, “How much for one of those Barbie’s in the display window?”

The salesperson answers, “Which one do you mean, sir? We have:

  • Work Out Barbie for $19.95
  • Shopping Barbie for $19.95
  • Beach Barbie for $19.95
  • Disco Barbie for $19.95
  • Ballerina Barbie for $19.95
  • Astronaut Barbie for $19.95
  • Skater Barbie for $19.95
  • and Divorced Barbie for $265.95″

The amazed father asks: “You what?! Why is theDivorced Barbie $265.95 and the others only $19.95?”

The annoyed salesperson rolls her eyes, sighs, and answers: “Sir, Divorced Barbie comes with:

  • Ken’s Car
  • Ken’s House
  • Ken’s Boat
  • Ken’s Furniture
  • Ken’s Computer and
  • one of Ken’s Friends.”
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Shaggy Beast

I finished draft five of the mariachi book. I cut ten pages and it’s still longer than any of my previous books.
Editing and revision are curious times in a book’s life. I could’ve sworn that the book was done, er, two drafts ago. But then after reading my husband’s editorial notes, I found scenes that had once seemed crucial to the life of the story. They were just dead weight and sadly, with some really beautiful sentences, had to go.
But my gut tells me that this newly shorn version is the one that I’ll send to my agent. I’m already missing my characters, which is a sign that they have gone on with their lives and want nothing more to do with me and my God complex.
Sigh. Like a college freshman is to her parents, this book is no longer mine. It now belongs to the readers and while I love it when you guys enjoy my books, there’s a possessive voice in my head that says, “But it was mine first!”
Hey, it could be worse, right?
Now I have to decide which new story idea to write!
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And The Winner Is…

Announcement: Samara L. of Elyria, OH who receives a copy of Valerie Block’s new book, Don’t Make A Scene!
Here is part two of my conversation with Valerie:
Chica Lit: You make references to Ingrid Bergman throughout the book. What qualities of Ms. Bergman appealed to you and how did she figure so prominently in the story?

Valerie: In the book, I used movie stars and directors to reflect on what is happening in the life of one of my main characters, Diane Kurasik, who is a movie lover. Diane is nearing 40 and still single, so a film like Indiscreet, where Bergman plays an actress in her 40s who is cheerful and single without apologies, appeals to her. Bergman was also one of the few people who stood up to David O. Selznick, who sat her down with a stylist when she first came to Hollywood, and told her how they would tweeze her eyebrows, fix her teeth and put her on a diet. She told him, “If you don’t like the way I look, what am I doing here?” And that was the end of that. When Diane is feeling pressure to conform, she recalls this meeting and finds strength to resist.

I wasn’t able to include all my favorites – only the ones that had something to do with what was going on with the story. So it was Katharine Hepburn who found her way into the book, because of her performance in Summertime, another film dealing with a single woman struggling to reconcile what she wants for herself, and her actual place in the world. Glenda Jackson made it in, because of her harassed intelligence, and Lucille Ball, who became personally and professionally involved with an impossible Cuban. Many others, too: Judy Garland, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Carole Lombard.

Chica Lit: Do your family and friends read your work, looking for themselves in your characters? (Mine do and they never get it right!)

Valerie: My friends and family members often bring up bits that I’ve used where they see direct parallels, and it’s useless to argue that I’ve radically changed the details, the context and/or the outcome. At this point, family members have mentioned some episodes that I’ve created from scratch as if they actually happened. These books take on a life of their own.

Chica Lit: How much did your husband influence the character of Vladimir?

Valerie: There are two main male characters in the book, both Cuban, and I would say my husband influenced both of them, but neither one of them is completely him. I wanted to write about my husband’s world, which I think any Cuban in exile would recognize, without writing about him. Alexis read every draft. He made sure I got everything right, not just the Cubanidad. But you know that it’s fiction — some might say science fiction — because I’ve written about a Cuban man who doesn’t want to talk, an affliction from which my husband does not suffer, I assure you.

For more information about Valerie and her books, please visit her website!
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Between The Pages With Lisa Wixon

She only planned to stay a week in Cuba, but came home a year later.

Lisa Wixon had saved enough money to travel the world but when she arrived in Cuba, via Panama City, she befriended a young woman who revealed that she was a jinetera (literal translation: a jockey), a young professional woman who earns money by acquiring foreign boyfriends, much like a 17th century courtesan or royal mistress. Lisa turned her experience among jineteros into a novel, Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban.

I’ve owned this book for about a year and when I finally set a time to interview Lisa, I sat down to read it. Four hours later when I finished the book, I had to go back and start it all over again because I didn’t want to leave those characters behind. Also, Lisa told me that there wouldn’t be a sequel.

Chica Lit: How long did it take you to write this novel and what was your process?

Lisa: The first 50 pages took two to three months. I wrote the last 200 to 250 pages in ten weeks and did nothing nothing else. I wrote from 10P till 930A. It was the only way to create the world.

Chica Lit: Pardon me for asking, but how do you support yourself with a writing schedule like that?

Lisa: Travel writing is my main occupation. I take in PR jobs, just to make enough money to take off and think and write. It’s hard. Isolating myself is not something that I love because I’m an outgoing person. With this novel and the one I’m writing now, I have to really isolate myself. Torture is the only way I get it done.

Chica Lit: How did you research your book?

Lisa: The story of Alysia going to Cuba is fiction entirely. I held myself to nonfiction standard talking about issues and facts such as how much women make compared to how much a pair of tennis shoes cost.

Chica Lit: Why did you use an American character like Alysia in telling this story?

Lisa: I knew that people in America would understand her. There are so many similarities between Americans and Cubans in that they are very hard working and they place a high value on education. I wanted to use Alysia as an American woman with education and an upper class background who is forced to live the life as a jinetera to survive in Cuba.

Chica Lit: One of the things I loved in the story were the sex scenes because during those moments, Alysia seems to suddenly wake up and realize what she’s gotten herself into. It’s like she realizes she fell down a rabbit hole.

Lisa: The Cuban women who are jineteras feel that, too. They ask, why have I done this? I’m a doctor, why do I have to do this?

Chica Lit: How did your family react to the novel? Did they wonder what you had been doing in Cuba all that time?

Lisa: Because this story is so far out from my real life experience, they didn’t think anything is true. My mom tells people, “Read my daughter’s book but wear sunglasses!”

Chica Lit: What was your life in Cuba like?

Lisa: After I befriended her (the young jinetera), I moved in with her family. I met other jinoteros and I’d go out at night with them and watched them get picked up. I spent time with them and their boyfriends and girlfriends from other countries.

Chica Lit: How did you feel watching people you came to love, sell their bodies?

Lisa: It was really difficult, a very emotional time for me. I often had to question why I was there putting myself in an emotionally difficult situation and tried to compartmentalize it there. I had to tell myself that me being there would not change the consequences; this would happen if I was there or not. When I came back, it took me a long time to process it. Anger and a sense of indignation fueled me to write this book.

Chica Lit: How difficult was it to get into the heads of your characters?

Lisa: It is almost impossible not to feel what the characters feel. The intensity with which I lived in Alysia’s skin while writing the story was one of reasons why I procrastinated after the book deal. I had to cut out the rest of the world to go back into Cuba at my desk.

Check out Lisa’s novel, Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban.

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Between the Pages With Valerie Block

About seven years ago, my mother in-law gave me a copy of Valerie Block’s novel, Was It Something I Said. I remember thinking that it was a clever anti-romantic, romanctic comedy in that the hero and heroine meet when their plane is about to crash and when he tells her that they were fated, she thinks he’s nuts. I loved it and through the years, scenes from that novel would pop up in my mind.

So imagine my surprise when Valerie’s publicist contacted me about her new book, Don’t Make A Scene. I couldn’t believe my luck that I’d get a chance to talk with an author I’d admired for so long.
Chica Lit: What inspired Don’t Make A Scene?

Valerie: I wanted to write about what happens when the eternal allure of classic movies collides with the daily indignities of contemporary life. I had a situation, a woman who begins a romance that ends before it has a chance to take off, with a man whose wife refuses on principle to grant him a divorce. Although they’re attracted to each other, things don’t move forward, and not necessarily because of the stalemate with his wife. Just because he’s a man and she’s a woman, doesn’t mean that they fall in love, and burst into song on public transportation, the way it happens in the movies. I saw their story as the kind of anti-climactic stuff that movies just don’t deal with. The characters of Diane and Vladimir emerged as people as I began to write.

Chica Lit: What were the challenges you faced when writing it?

Valerie: I started writing the novel, and although I was enjoying all the cinema business, the story wasn’t moving forward. I looked over at my husband, Alexis Romay, who grew up in Cuba and came to the US as an adult, in 1999. Alexis is also a writer, and we talk about Cuba every day. At any given time, he is cursing in anger, crying in pain or laughing hysterically about something happening in Cuba that he is reading about on the Internet. Alexis has written editorials that could have been published in 1967 or the day before yesterday. The situation worsens, but never changes.

And at some point, I got jealous. I certainly didn’t envy the repression, the censorship, the privations, the hunger, the anger or the frustration that being born in Cuba entails. But for a writer, Cuba is a never-ending source of great material. I felt sheepish, and wondered if he would call me a colonialist for appropriating his stories, but I asked my husband: Would you mind if I wrote about this? And he said, “You and I could write about the same thing, and it would come out completely differently.” So the leading man became Cuban, and that seemed to make the whole enterprise take off.

Chica Lit: Recently, Hollywood has been seeing a lot of misses versus hits. Do you feel that the quality of storytelling has suffered from the rise in celebrity when audiences are more interested in Brad & Angelina’s personal life, versus their movies?

Valerie: The public has always been ravenous for trashy gossip, and the Hollywood stars have always had two jobs: embodying our higher aspirations and desires on-screen, and feeding our darker needs off-screen. Or, you might say, they are idolized by the public for what they do on screen, and then must pay for the deification by having their personal lives dissected and their privacy invaded at every turn. It’s part of the package. There’s a very interesting book, Intimate Strangers, by Richard Schickel, about the ill-will ordinary Americans bear the very people they put on pedestals. It’s almost a law of nature: when people get that big, they have to be shot down, sometimes – tragically – literally, as in the case of John Lennon.

Film has never been the writer’s medium, but in the studios of yore, there used to be a script department, writers on staff. These days, there’s so little respect for writing in the average Hollywood product, you get the feeling that they want to just eliminate the writer altogether. Sometimes films seem to have been written by the wardrobe designer – did you see the Gwyneth Paltrow bomb Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow? – or by a sleeping accountant using a previous script for easy reference. When I found out that Titanic had started shooting before the script had even been started, I decided that I didn’t need to see that movie. I may have been the only person on the planet who made that decision, but I stand by it.

Chica Lit: When you switch on the TV and see some of the reality shows that are produced, do you feel as you write/craft novels that you’re casting pearls before swine?

Valerie: You make me laugh! I reject the very premise of reality TV. And as you know, even the least popular cable channels on television – the wood grain channel, the vitamin channel, etc. – get millions of viewers, even on a Saturday at 1:30 am. There are days when I feel like I’m in a dying business. On the other hand, I can’t watch much of what is popular now – I feel unclean! I know there are others who feel the same, and this is who I write for. Books reach people on a very different level. I hope there will always be a call for that, although I know the numbers are mere, when compared to televised competition of any kind.

Chica Lit: How have you grown comfortable in mixing your Jewish heritage with your husband’s Cuban background? Or, does it remain a work in progress?

Valerie: My husband is fascinated by Jewish history and customs, amused by Yiddish, and absolutely enthralled by the ultra Orthodox. I come from a very secular family, and he’s getting a little too Jewish for us! For my part, I’ve been learning Spanish, reading Cuban history and fiction, watching Cuban movies. I am a fanatic for Cuban jazz. But I’m a gringa in the dancing department, alas: I just cannot follow, and we’ve had some very tense moments, as my husband is a terrific dancer, almost professional, and a big showman who likes to do very complicated moves with the hands above the head. I must spend every neuron keeping the beat, etc. Our wedding countdown unfolded like a real-life version of the rehearsal montage from Dirty Dancing, in which the nice Jewish girl doesn’t exactly “get it” in the end.

Enter to win a copy of Don’t Make A Scene by emailing me at mary@marycastillo.com with “Don’t Make A Scene” in the subject line. Next Tuesday, I’ll draw one name from a hat and announce the winner!
Visit Valerie Block’s website, or buy her books!

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Between The Pages: Caridad Ferrer

Cari and I met online when we were both dreaming of the day we’d sell our first books. She was one of my first fans and has been actively promoting chica lit and chick lit through the Chick Lit chapter of Romance Writers of America. But now, she’s stepped out from behind the scenes to become a rising star in young adult fiction.

Her debut, Adios To My Old Life placed second in the Florida Writers Association’s Royal Palm Literary Award, was named by Latinidad as the Top Teen Read of 2006 and received the Rita for Best Contemporary Single Title Romance, the most prestigious award given by Romance Writers of America.

Today, Cari is releasing her second young adult novel, It’s Not About The Accent. She sat down to share her story of publication and how music has played a role in all of her books.

Chica Lit: It’s Not About The Accent is about Caroline who transforms herself into Carolina during her first year in college. Where did the story and Caroline come from?

Cari: It came primarily from the basic premise of how at some point or another, we all want to be someone or something else than what we are. Growing up, I remember a lot of Latina girls wanting to be more Anglo in their appearance with hair color and dress and tinted contact lenses. What I thought would be fun for this story would be to take a girl that on the surface is as white bread as they come (by her own reckoning) and have her try on the persona of a Cuban girl. It’s not entirely a random choice either— her great-grandmother, whom she adored, was Cuban although that was a fact my character didn’t find out until after her Nana’s death. But for her, it was like pieces of a puzzle falling into place— her great-grandmother had been the one person in the family who had had these exciting adventures and had traveled many places and she was the only one who hadn’t been born and bred in this small, Ohio town.

Chica Lit: Tell us about your journey to becoming a published (and award-winning!) author?

Cari: I wrote. And wrote. And wrote some more. Seriously, though, I’ve been writing my entire life, but seriously with an eye toward publication for about the last six years. My original focus was women’s fiction, which I still write and it was one of those manuscripts that captured an agent’s attention. While she was shopping that manuscript to editors, she heard that another editor was looking for Latina-themed young adult novels and did I have an idea? I was a little thrown initially, since I’d never considered YA— I honestly didn’t think I’d have a good voice/tone for the genre. But I gave it a go and well… here I am.

Chica Lit: If you could back to the time before you published your first book, what would you tell yourself?

Cari: Don’t ever assume ANYTHING. I know that publishing is a freaky, unpredictable industry, but if you had told me that my first published novel was going to be young adult and that it would win awards not only for young adult books, but take a RITA in an adult category and that nearly two years after selling my first young adult novel, I’d still be waiting on that first elusive sale for one of my women’s fiction novels, especially considering how close I’ve come a few times with those manuscripts? Well… let’s just say I’d be asking what you smoked.

Chica Lit: What turns you on creatively?

Cari: Oh, music. Without a doubt. A musical passage or a lyric can inspire whole scenes, if not entire storylines, in a flash. There’s nothing that brings me peace, fires me up, stirs the deepest core of my emotions as music— any kind of music.

Chica Lit: What turns you off?

Cari: A lack of respect for the creative process, especially when it comes from other writers, who are the first ones who should respect that the process is different for everyone. Actually, just a lack of respect in general— all of us who do this gig have first hand knowledge of how hard it is, both creatively and from a business standpoint. The last thing we need to be doing is tearing each other or what we write down.

Chica Lit: Best piece of advice ever given to you?

Cari: The classic, BICHOK- Butt in Chair, Hands on Keyboard. You can’t write a book without actually, you know, writing.

Chica Lit: What’s next?

Cari: I’m currently working on a modern retelling of the story of Carmen, from Bizet’s opera. My Carmen is a dancer, and rather than an army officer and bullfighter, she finds herself between an intense, disciplined music prodigy and a flamboyant, let it all hang out, soccer player. It’s been a lot of fun writing this so far, since the overall setting is the world of competitive drum and bugle corps (it all makes sense, I SWEAR). Anyhow, drum corps was an activity that formed a huge part of my adolescence and it’s been a blast being able to revisit some of the best times of my life while writing this story. Right now, the working title is, “A Thin Line” and it’s scheduled for a Spring 09 release from Dial.

After you run out and get Cari’s new book, It’s Not About The Accent (so she’ll become a best seller and buy me a drink at next year’s RWA Conference!), here’s the soundtrack she created for the story!