Round 1: Revision Fight!

3/26/2017

I am still on the first revision of "La Bruja del Barrio Loco", and it is going great! Well, the fact that the revision process is moving forward, is great.

I added some more good bits, especially about the bruja stalking the main character. I also keep re-reading the ending, and I think it works. I mean, it's a bit sappy, even for me, but damn, I figure after all that drama and shit the main character and her son have been through, some healing is in order.

On another exciting note, besides the revision process going really well, I finally reconnected with my friend, Marcy. She is also a writer and artist. I am so excited that she will do the cover for this novella because as I have explained in past blogs, I was going to buy images from the web, but nothing was really "right". She has this haunting image of a woman's face I want to use in a more square design. (I mean, book covers don't really have to look like the cover of a book, after all, not even printed book covers.) Come to think of it, the work reminds me of Picasso. Hmmm, maybe that's why I like it so much.

Well, back to the novella. The kids are asleep, and they may just stay asleep for another hour. :)

Keep doing what you love! #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.