Posted More of My Novel: The Harvest

5/5/2017

I haven't posted more of the draft in a while, so here you go: The Harvest. (Also, it's a bit of a celebration post!)

When I wrote the last six pages, I was bickering with my husband and typing very angrily (yeah, who writes and fights at the same time, right?), but I outlined the scene more or less how I had pictured it in my head, over a number of weeks. The novel picks up on the similar plot line to the two previous versions of this novel, centering on a female doctor who is defying the system.

However, her point of view is not the main one, and she is not a main character anymore, but an important side character that will help Alan along his revolutionary path, maybe even more so than the revolutionaries he has already encountered.

On a celebratory note, I realized I crossed 100 pages of the novel! Yay! I am not sure how long it will be, but at the rate it's going, it will cross 300 pages.

Well, I'm off to write more. If my baby, my daughter, doesn't wake up, I will post it before I crash (as it is 3a.m.) or get distracted by my kids.

Do what you love today. That's what I'm doing instead of dieting. Ha ha ha. #Resist

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Dr. Jesú Estrada,
Chicago, IL

I grew up on the outskirts of Yuma, AZ, close to the Cocopah reservation. Because I was ever-bored, I became an avid reader of Spanish comic books and anything in English. Then I moved onto Steinbeck and Stephen King and now read international authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Atwood, and Marouf. I also read a lot of coming of age fiction.

I have been writing stories in both Spanish and English since I was six years old. My fiction and poetry focus on working class issues, primarily about laborers in the Southwest. I also write non-serious fiction, like zombie fiction (I was into it before it got popular with the Walking Dead series, which I love) and dabble in magical realism with a fusion of cuentos and folklore.

I have a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Washington State University, a Masters Degree in English from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelors of Arts from Northern Arizona University. I have also taught creative writing, and will do so, spring 2017. Currently, I live in Chicago and teach full-time at Harold Washington College to an amazing student population.

More about me. I am happily married, been so for over eight years, and have a fabulous seven-year-old who makes my life phenomenal: He too is starting to write short stories. I recently had a second baby, Simona, which put a temporary set-back on the publication of my first book, but made my life infinitely more wonderful. My husband is also incredibly supportive, and I have enlisted him to market whatever I do that is worth marketing.

That damned itch just won't let me be, so I'm back to my original love of words.