Category: News from Caridad

Well, you already know I’m married and have a daughter (my Fashion Friday blogger!)

(1) I have a cat named Osiris and (2) A turtle named Buffy (that’s them in the photos).

 
 
 

 

 

 

 

(3) I used to play the bassoon.
(4) I was born in Havana, Cuba, but grew up in Levittown, Long Island.
(5) I like dark-haired men with light eyes.
(6) My favorite snack is anything cheesy.
(7) I love Mexican food and could eat it everyday.
(8) I’ve traveled to over a dozen countries.
(9) I sleep with the covers over my ears — hold over from watching too many horror movies as a kid when I was scared of vamps. (I don’t think I’d object to Ryder putting the bite on me though)
(10) Today is not only my b’day, but also my hubby’s b’day! Here’s a Happy B’day to me (I’m not sure hubby would appreciate this b’day card though!)
FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY! Continue reading “10 Things You don’t know about me!”

Here’s a great opportunity for an editor to see your work! Harlequin is making it possible for editor Patience Smith from Silhouette Romantic suspense to take your pitch. You need to send a 2 paragraph blurb to Hosty Rae by March 9th.

Five entries will be chosen by Patience Smith and will be announced March 12th. For complete details, please click on this link

Patience is one my editors at Harlequin and she is absolutely wonderful. We’ve worked together on MORE THAN A MISSION and now the sequel, SECRET AGENT REUNION, August 2007.

Drop by and check this out to see if you can pitch your book!

Check out my Romance Novel television interview! Part 1 is up on the site right now.

Also drop by the thread and discuss the interview.

Hi All–I’m really enjoying this blog, and hope you are too! There are two great questions that were posted elsewhere, and I’m pasting them here so everyone can see them, along with my responses.

“Hi Marcela! I hope all’s well. I’m an aspiring Latina writer, who aims to finish her collection of short stories and poetry and find an agent by October 2007. I understand the significance of a writer’s platform, and as such, I’ve been working on my own. However, I have found very few Latina/o-friendly contests and journals. What are some contests and journals that I can apply to and instantly be seen with literary respect? Also, do you think that my October deadline is realistic?
Abrazos from a fellow comadre!
by Cynthia February 26th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

Hi Marcela!
You mentioned edgy YA. My editor at Berkley mentioned the same thing to me. What in the world does that mean?
by Lara Rios February 27th, 2007 at 10:00 am”

Cynthia: Don’t focus only on Latino oriented contests and journals. Focus on contests and journals that would be a good fit for your kind of writing. For example, if you write creative non-fiction, submit your work to contests and journals that do creative non-fiction. If you write romance, submit your work to contests and journals that do romance. You can submit your work to Latino contest and journals too, but the number one criteria for whether a contest or journal is a good fit for you is what kinds of writing has won/been published before. And by kind of writer I don’t mean Anglo or Latino, I mean literary or commecial, memoir or novel, etc. If a Latino contest is seeking poems, and you don’t write poetry, there’s no point submitting your work just because you’re Latina. As for the October 2007 deadline, I don’t recommend you even try to find an agent with just a collection of short stories/poetry. Most readers don’t buy short story/poety collections, which is why most publishers, at least the large ones, don’t bother publishing them. Pretty much just the really small and/or non-profit houses will be interested in you, and considering how little money they can offer you as an advance, most agents won’t have an incentive to represent you. Instead of focusing on publishing the stories/poems as a book, instead use the individual stories/poems to submit to contests/journals in order to build your platform. As you build your platform, write a novel. By the time you complete and polish the collection of short pieces, and complete and polish the novel, if you’ve done your homework you will have an award or two and a publication credit or two in a journal under your belt. Even then, don’t approach agents–write a really solid single chapter and a synopsis for a second novel. Then, after you have three projects to sell, approach agents. You will be infinitely more marketable if an agent can sell three projects, two of which are novels, then just a collection of stories/poems.

Lara: When the term edgy is used to describe a YA book, it pretty much means a book in which the teen characters are misbehaving in ways that they think is cool but would horrify their parents: drugs, drinking, crime, sex. And we’re not talking Judy Blume sex–think “Rainbow Party by Paul Ruditis” or the movie “Thirteen” starring Evan Rachel Wood.

Toni: Agents and editors are looking for Chiquita Lit for one reason: YA books have made a lot of $$$. So they ask themselves: how can we make more $$$ with YA? One answer is: publish Latina YA. They figure if the average teen buys books, then maybe a Latina teen will too. As for publishing under a specialized imprint vs. a general one, I’m a big fan of specialized imprints, whether they’re Latino, AA, gay or for the boomer market. Some people think specialization means separation, and that separation by definition means unequal. No. Separation can be a bad thing, but it can also be a good thing. Women who attend women’s colleges and AA who attend AA colleges are more likely to get advanced degrees and earn a higher income than if they attend mainstream colleges. Authors and books that are published in a specialized imprint get a certain level of time, energy, and most importantly money they they are simply not likely to get if they are on the general list. Think about it: do you really want to be on the same list as Jennifer Weiner? Yes, it would be fun to tell friends that her publishing house is publishing your book, but you and she have to fight for a bigger slice of the marketing budget; guess who is going to get more $$$ than you?

Hi Everyone! Mercury is definitely in retrograde; it seems everything I posted yesterday didn’t stick, so I’ll try to recreate it today, as well as respond to the more recent postings. Here goes:

Berta: It depends on how you define mainstream. Is it reviewed by the media at large instead of just Latino media? Is it published amidst a general list instead of a Latino imprint? Is is bought by readers of all backgrounds instead of predominantly Latinos? I suspect it is a bit of all the above. If you go by this definition, then Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez’s Dirty Girls Social Club was the first successful mainstream Latina novel. (Though there were nonsuccessful attempts previous to that, e.g. A Little Love by C.C. Medina.) In comparison to the AA market, there are technically more Latinos in the U.S. than AA, but if you look at the sales figures, it seems AA are more likely to buy books than Latinos. This may be due to differences in culture and history: there was a time when AA were legally prohibited from reading and writing. As such the act of reading/writing/publishing holds a sacred place in AA culture that is simply doesn’t for Latinos. Black folk have died for the privilege of reading; Latinos haven’t. AA are also more likely to self-publish when faced with rejection, while Latinos are more likely to give up. As for your AA friend, there may be a difference between literary and commercial multiculti fiction. People of all ethnicities read Beloved by Toni Morrison, but I wonder how many non-AA read True to the Game by Teri Woods.

Sasha: I coined the term “Chiquita Lit’ right here on this blog! It’s on my radar because nine times out of ten when agents and editors come to me looking for Latina writers, what they want is YA Latina chick lit. So yes, Chiquita Lit is what publishers are looking for this very second.

Mary: Hi!!! Great to hear from you 🙂 Some editors do have a very strong vision of what they want to publish. If you are a square peg and they have a round hole to fill, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are they will ignore you. But if you are oval, and other circular pegs are nowhere to be found, they’ll try to squish you into their circular hole. The reason why editors are looking for the Latina Gossip Girl is because the Gossip Girl serious has made serious $$$. If it hadn’t, they wouldn’t be looking to replicate it. I think your readers are right to encourage you to stick to your guns. While Latinas are as fabulous with their shoes and careers and the next girl, when it comes to sex we seem to have a different sensibility. When I am with a group of Latinas, we swap stories about how our parents wouldn’t let us date till we were a certain age, or how our parents were horrified that we wanted to live with our boyfriends before we got married. When I am with a group of non-Latinas, we simply don’t have these kinds of discussions. What is relevent for Latinas isn’t necessarily relevant for non-Latinas, and our stories should reflect this.

Tempest: I agree!

Lupe: This is why I admire Harlequin–because they specialize in romance, they understand their readers in a way other houses can’t be because they publish books in countless categories. Either you’re a specialist or a generalist, and most large publishers are generalists. And specialists have an advantage over generalists when it comes to serving the needs of their customers.

These are all great comments! Let me address them one-by-one:

Irene: Yes, there’s a market not only for 40+ but also 50+ women. According to the AARP, one American turns fifty years old every six seconds–that’s a lot of potential readers. And many of the agents and editors I know are 40+. The funny thing is most of the writers I know who write chick lit–presumably fiction by and for the 35 and under crowd–are actually 35+. Clearly there’s a disconnect between what readers are buying and what readers are living. I suspect what will turn the tide is when a book by and for 40+ women makes a lot of $$$. That’s what it took for African-American fiction (e.g. Waiting to Exhale by Terry McMillan) and children’s fiction (e.g. Harry Potter by J.K. Rowling). After a title for older women hits, in a big way, that’s when the publishing industry will proactively publish books for older women.

Chris: I think your question is pretty much the same as Irene; while I’m sure there are exceptions, most women would probably be 40+ by the times their kids need her less and she’s ready for the next phase in her life. I don’t see it being a trend, at least not until a book with that kind of character and theme proves hugely profitable.

Caridad: Chick Lit is indeed alive and well, though it seems to be skewing younger–9 times out of 10, when agents or editors come to me looking for a writer, especially Latinas, it’s because they’re seeking YA chick lit. There are quite a number in the works, enough so that I’m calling it “Chiquita Lit”. But there is a different between women’s fiction and chick lit. Women’s fiction is a very broad umbrella, and chick lit is a subset. When agents and editors–and more importantly, booksellers and readers–hear “chick lit” they have a certain expectation that the novel will be light, fun, and current. If it’s edgy, dark, or historical they’ll be confused or disappointed. It’s the difference between a movie starring Cameron Diaz vs. Helen Mirren–yeah, they’re technically both chick flicks, but filmgoers will have a very different expectation of what each film would be like.

Yolanda: Pitching is a crucial skill most writers need to hone. The first step is to develop the objectivity to compare your work to that of other writers. What specific writers and titles out there can you authentically compare your work to in terms of tone, setting, theme, characters, etc? Come up with at least three to six examples, preferably published within the last five years. Take your list and go to your favorite local bookstore and see how they’re packaged; for example, if they have pink covers with illustrations of thin girls with cute accessories, you’re chick lit. If you’re stumped, visit the author’s web sites and see how they describe themselves; also google the authors and titles and see how the publishers, the media, and particular how book reviewers describe their work. Those descriptions probably fit your work too.

Vicki: Whether or not you have a hard time finding a buyer for your work has less to do with your craft, or its themes or characters, and more to do with your platform. Have you had short pieces published in periodicals? Has your work garnered any awards? Is your day job connected to your work (e.g. you write Law & Order type thrillers and you are a trial attorney by day)? The weaker your platform, the more challenging it will be to get published. I’m not saying it will be impossible; anything is possible. People without platforms, especially in romance, get published everyday–but they are generally not well-published (meaning, their publishers spend little to no money or effort marketing their books).

This good morning hunk was inspired by Rita, a special fan from South Africa! He was also the inspiration for the were-jaguar in MOON FEVER (Oct 2007).

But on a different note — What keeps you warm on those cold winter nights? A blazing fire in the fireplace, some wine, a good book and an even better man?

Tori definitely has the right idea about how to stay warm in this deleted scene from SEX AND THE SOUTH BEACH CHICAS.

In the meantime, why don’t you let me know what keeps you hot . . . I mean warm . . . To help you along, here’s some South Beach Heat to chase away the winter chill that has gripped so many of us.

**WARNING**FOR MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY**
Continue reading “Some South Beach Heat to chase away the winter chill”