Hello, everyone! Hope this thing finds you all happy and healthy. I just ordered pizza and spent the whole day working on edits and reading Silvia Moreno-García’s Silver Nitrate because I’ll be in conversation with her at BookPeople in a couple days, so things are good. Let’s talk about editing first, shall we?
Editing: the best worst thing ever
I love editing. I hate editing. Editing shows me all the things I missed. Editing is a necessary part of the process I’ve learned to enjoy. Nothing makes me feel like a hack more than seeing what my agent/editor caught that I’d missed. Editing is how you take a narrative to the next level, how you make it leaner, meaner, and far more powerful. I’m super lucky because my wonderful agent was also a Senior Editor at Knopf for a decade, so she’s an amazing editor. She helped me get The Devil Takes You Home into shape before we went out on submission. She sold that thing at auction and changed my life in the process, so I trust her. Like, a LOT. After this, my editor at Mulholland will get it and then he’ll do his magic. Josh Kendall, who also edits many of my favorite writers like Joe Lansdale, David Swinson, and Michael Koryta, is also a magician who has always seen what I’m trying to do with my work, so I look forward to seeing what he thinks of this one. Yeah, I’m also not looking forward to his letter. In any case, editing has me thinking about something important: only the work matters. You can talk about writing, but unless you actually write, that talk means nothing. From award to one-star reviews and from hate mail to folks saying you’re one of their favorite writers, the only thing that matters is the work. Oh, and if you’re editing anything right now…hugs.
So I won a Shirley Jackson Award…WHAT?!
Yeah, so to be honest, I still hadn’t fully gotten over winning a Stoker, so this will probably feel surreal for even a bit longer. I really wanted to be at Readercon, but after the trip to NYC for the Edgars and then to Pittsburgh for the Stokers, my bank account told me I was staying home. In any case, I was a reader for the Shirley Jackson Awards two years in a row a few years back, so I was surprised when I got a nomination because I know just how much quality stuff they read from across the world. I recorded a funny video with my acceptance speech and sent it to them knowing it was a hell of a long shot. Then I watched the award ceremony on Facebook and…BAM! A tie between Sophie White’s Where I End, which I’m now dying to read, and yours truly. Honored and stoked and surprised don’t even begin to cover it. I’m not used to winning things, so this was…special. Also, I joined a very special club: the only author to win the Stoker and Shirley Jackson in the same year was the great Stephen Graham Jones. Oh, and I’m the first Latino and obviously the first Puerto Rican to win a Shirley Jackson Award in the novel category since the award’s inception in 2007. Maybe I’ll write more about it when I get that beautiful thing in the mail.
Two documentaries I enjoyed
Wow, what a transition! I don’t care. Also, isn’t total freedom the best thing about having your own newsletter? Hah. Anyway, I’ve been in the mood for documentaries lately and have enjoyed Unknown: The Lost Pyramid and Unknown: Cave of Bones. I highly recommend the latter, which talks about something I hand’t read much about. It discusses a recent expedition into a South African cave that contains skeletal remains of homo nailed, an ancient human relative who ritualistically buried their dead more than 250,000 years ago, which was unheard of. The pyramid one was decent, but it was all about Dr. Zahi Hawass, who has a solid resume but is a problematic, insufferable, megalomaniacal dude I have a hard time listening to.
Homesickness
Yes, I was home in early June, but the older I get and the more years I spend away from home, the more I miss it. I know this is where I need to be right now, for personal reasons and for career reasons, but I’m always thinking about going home. I have a lot of photos on my camera and my phone, and find myself opening my phone just to look at photos on the beach (like the one I used at the top) late at night. I have a few things lines up, and if they all fall where I want them to, I’ll probably be able to afford tickets home this winter break. It would be awesome to spend more time with my folks, read at the beach, eat amazing food, and write a good chunk of the next novel there…
Well, this one got a little long, so my apologies for that. As always, thanks for reading. More this weekend. Stay cool and be good to yourselves and each other.
Congratulations!!
You answered my Twitter question about agents editing. You are blessed!