Thoughts About Solstice

	Solstice Published October 2007 by Tragical Mirth Publishing ISBN 13: 9780979451300 Available at Tragical Mirth Publishing (autographed copies), Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, bookstores, and anywhere books are sold.

Some random thoughts on the writing, production, and meaning of Solstice.

Writing Solstice
Writing this book was important to me for several reasons. On the one hand, I'm a big fan of horror and science fiction, with a particular inclination toward movies and books about the end of the world. When movies such as I Am Legend, The Signal, The Pulse, or The Happening come out, I want to see them no matter what. I started off liking this brand of fiction early on; one of my memories of childhood is hearing about, but not being able to see The Night of the Living Dead or Dawn of the Dead (George A. Romero's masterpieces). Simply hearing the concepts behind these films made me want to tell stories like them. In fact, I tried. Sometime during the second grade, I tried writing some kind of play involving a zombie apocalypse. So you can say I was into horror, and into writing, from a very young age.

Being able to write is being able to tell the stories you enjoy. I've always felt something very empowering about being able to write your own stories, because you can decide upon a sequence of events, a cast of characters, and any number of plot points. When you write, you don't have to think, "This book was great but I hated the ending," or "I wish the author had done this differently because it would have made the book better." When you write, you're in control, and you can tell your stories exactly as you envision them.

So there's that. I wanted to tell a story that incorporated all my favorite elements, including horror, science fiction, strong heroines, an end-of-the-world scenario, and creepy dreams. Solstice was my fusion of all these things, and my way of paying homage to all the books and films that have fascinated me since that time in second grade.

But there was more. As a Mexican-American writer, it's always been important to me to reflect the kind of cultural sensitivities that have influenced my way of thinking. And one of the things I've always struggled with is the notion that there aren't that many people that look like me in film, in books, or anywhere that's not Univision or Telemundo. I've always thought that Latino/as, and people of color in general, will more easily find unflattering, or outright offensive, caricatures of us in mainstream media than they will strong, positive, inspiring examples. So when I was writing Solstice, it was important to me to create a cast of characters that any one of us could actually like, and maybe even be proud of.

And so, I wanted to create real characters with real emotions, conflicts, traumas, motivations, and above all, strength. And I wanted them to be more ethnic than what we're used to seeing. Hence, the protagonist is a tough, gritty, Mexican-Japanese anti-heroine named Io, who must learn to overcome her own sense of despair in order to save the world she professes to hate. Her companion, Yuniko, is a Japanese hacker who sticks with Io for reasons Io only understands when it's too late. There's Jai Lin, a reclusive Lao-American woman who happens to be a Scribe. The irony is that this woman from a poor, Third World country that's largely ignored by world history can summon the power to save the world. And there's Nadie, a person whose very name is the Spanish word for "no one," and who holds the power to destroy the world. These are the kinds of characters that inhabit Solstice. These were the kinds of characters I wanted to portray because I simply haven't seen that many of them anywhere else in mainstream film and fiction.

It all goes back to the empowerment of writing. When you write, you tell the stories you want to tell, with the characters you want to tell. This is what I chose to do with Solstice. And it's what I'll continue to do with my subsequent novels.

Publishing Solstice
There's no hiding it anymore: Solstice is a self-published novel. I tried to avoid mentioning this for as long as I could, because the industry bias against self-published works is considerable, and admittedly somewhat justified. But I wanted to self-publish Solstice, mostly for full creative control (and the irrational fear that a publisher would ask me to change Io's ethnicity or name), but also for the chance to give my book to my parents in less than two years. That was my only goal; anything after that was gravy.

Still, something happened along the way. By following Dan Poynter's great advice (from his The Self-Publishing Manual), and by implementing a few techniques of my own, I was not only able to publish Solstice, but present it as something that was legitimately published. It's been commented by numerous people that Solstice simply doesn't look like a self-published book. And, as it turns out, the reviewers seemed to think the same.

Despite the industry bias against self-published books, and despite the conventional wisdom that says no reputable reviewer will even touch a self-published book, Solstice was reviewed by five publications. Booklist Reviews, Library Journal, Midwest Book Review, La Bloga, and SciFiNow Magazine (UK-base) received my review packets (I took extra steps to bolster their professionalism, which I think may have helped) and wrote positive reviews of the book. I was particularly enthralled when the SciFiNow review hit; here was this amazing magazine from the UK, and there was Solstice on page 91, listed on a half-page slot opposite to Terry Pratchett's Making Money, being called "a very impressive launch for an exciting new author" by the reviewer, Mr. James Rundle. You can read the reviews on the Book Reviews page.

Solstice, slowly but surely, became the Little Novel That Could ^_^ When you consider its micro-budget (I published it with about half of what self-publishing experts say you need to do so), and when you consider all the things I had to do myself to save money (including learning how to typeset, learning how to make videos for the book trailers, and learning all about marketing and promoting), then Solstice really did do quite well for itself. In fact, aside from these five great reviews, I've had two book signings, two interviews, been mentioned on Angry Asian Man, got national distribution (via Biblio Distribution, although now it's Bookmasters), and have sold a modest 1,500 copies within the first three months of sales. That essentially gave me a tiny profit for the endeavor. And with the next phase of my marketing campaign almost ready to go, the hope is to sell out my full print run of 3300 books. Which is someting I simply would not have imagined possible at the start of all this.

I'm very proud of what we accomplished with Solstice. But sometimes I wonder what I could have accomplished with the benefit of a full marketing budget and a real publisher behind me. The fact is, Solstice is kind of like one of those 'best kept secrets' in the science fiction field right now, because reader responses have been very encouraging, but scattered. We need more exposure if Solstice is going to continue its promising start.

Which is why I'm going to work hard to find an agent for my next novel, Inventing Vazquez. If I have to self-publish, I will, but this time around, I want to try and get the backing of an agent and a publisher. Because if I accomplished this much with Solstice with so few resources, then I wonder what I'll be able to accomplish with that kind of publishing support. And considering I have a much deeper personal investment in Inventing Vazquez and the story it needs to tell, I want to make sure it has every chance possible to succeed in the literary marketplace.

So what is the meaning of Solstice?
I'll discuss that later ^_^