Upcoming Works

	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.

So now that Solstice is out and about, what's next?

	Inventing Vazquez

A comedic satire about Latino/as in the film industry, Inventing Vazquez is for any Latino/a or person of color who's ever thought, "Why aren't there more people who look like me in Hollywood films?"

Liliana Vazquez, an intelligent but hopelessly mousy and timid Mexican-American woman, is hired by a major film studio as a Hispanic Sensitivity Issues Consultant. Her job seems fairly straightforward: review screenplays of upcoming movies, flag any issues that might offend Hispanic audiences, and voice these issues, as necessary, to the respective producers. Too bad no one else in the studio seems to have gotten the memo.

Together with her fellow consultants in Consultants' Corner (including Hari, a Sikh man hired as the Arab-American Sensitivity Issues Consultant, and Mi-Soon, a foul-mouthed Korean-American woman who serves as the Asian Sensitivity Issues Consultant), Liliana must try and get the studio to listen to her. Before it releases its next Hispanic appeasement flick--a movie about a magical habañero plant that gives a man magical Spicy Latin Lover sexual powers. But can she find her voice--literally and figuratively? And can she do so before a petulant trickster named Snowlili can get her fired?

This is a far departure from the gloom and doom of Solstice, but it tells a story I have wanted to tell for a long time. Through Liliana, I raise the question of just why there are so few positive representations of not just Latino/as but of people of color in Hollywood films.

I'm now working on the final draft of this novel, and am hoping to land an agent this time around (I went the self-publishing route with Solstice).

The Mourning Syndrome
I give myself time off between drafts of novels. So when I finished the first draft of Inventing Vazquez, I started work on my next novel, The Mourning Syndrome. A mixture of supernatural horror and science fiction, this novel centers around an amnesiac novelist, Maria Gonzalez, who realizes her cryptic novels seem to be encoded memories. Memories of a horrible trauma that may be related to the sudden outbreak of something called the Mourning Syndrome--an strange illness that is slowly wiping out the world's populations in a series of bizarre mass suicides. In other words, it's a really happy story ^_^

Solstice Spin-offs and Such
Way down the line, I expect to do more with the Scribe vs. Editor universe created in Solstice. I've long thought of doing a prequel that deals with Io's pursuit of the Scribe Poinsettia, but now I'm contemplating doing a sequel. Yes, a sequel. And in light of some of the very encouraging feedback I've gotten for Solstice, I'm also thinking of expanding that universe and creating more stories about this clandestine struggle between Scribes and the Editors that monitor them.