erik orrantia

The Other Man and Other Projects

Erik Orrantia — Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:23:35 +0000

When my friend Paul Fahey approached me about writing a piece for The Other Man, a story immediately came to mind. Anxiety also came, starting with tightness in my chest, and it permeated throughout my limbs, my veins, my pores. Could I tell the story? Should I? What would people think of me?

Not something I’m proud of, but something I learned from, something that made me a better person, and a new perspective from which I can continue to gauge myself as a partner. My dogs sit beside me as I write and I envy their simplicity, their lack of consciousness. They just do without thinking. They know what they like and they know when they’ve crossed the boundaries of others because they get snapped at by another, hissed at by the cat, or reprimanded by your truly. Simple. How is it that we humans being so “intelligent” tend to muck things up so proficiently?

Paul wanted real. He wanted non-fiction. He said it would be more authentic. That’s what he got–the whole bloody story, literally–the same story that has replayed itself in my mind a hundred times, along with the images of physical pain and emotional suffering. Sadly, not just my own. The lessons of life aren’t always pretty, and they’re nothing like the neat five step lesson plans I design for my middle school students. But as with my middle school students, the point of the lesson may not always be clear, and the actual learning may be marginal at best.

I haven’t read the other stories in the anthology. I have to apologize. I haven’t even kept up on my blog, due mostly in part to the job I alluded to. Most of my writing these days has been dedicated to the design of those lesson plans that are nearing perfection. Ha ha…that was a joke.

I have managed to eke out a new manuscript called Barbacoa. The inspiration came from traveling to ruins in Mexico and thinking about gay relationships in the Aztec times. What would it have been like in an ancient, regimented culture? Surely there were homosexuals. How might two men have loved and suffered? What lesson would they learn? And how might we interpret it nowadays? See it through the eyes of an archaeologist who stumbles upon a strange burial. I’m hoping to finish it up and get it to you some time in 2014. Until then, happy reading!

Life Meets Afterlife in the Day of the Dead

Erik Orrantia — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 20:58:12 +0000

When I was a kid, we used to go to the aptly named Little Brown Church in Pacifica, California, a small coastal town about 15 miles south of San Francisco. I wore my Sunday best, sometimes brought a Bible, sang along to the hymns, behaved sufficiently well during the children’s Bible classes, and did my best to stay awake during the sermon. I dreaded it. Even back then, I was skeptical about the entire notion of God, Adam and Eve, Noah’s ark, and turning water to wine. Say, why couldn’t they have just drank the water anyway?
Seriously, though, I could never swallow the idea of heaven–some perfect place lined with gold roads where everyone was perfectly happy for the rest of eternity. Why would they need gold roads? Do people walk around there? Do they drive around? Is gold better than asphalt? Besides, it didn’t seem to jive with what I was learning in school about the troposphere and the stratosphere, or even gravity. So then where was this place called heaven? I won’t get into hell and the terrible gas bills the poor devil would incur for all that heating.

I was taught about heaven and hell at a pretty literal level. Add to the whole pot the big guy, God, sitting on a throne, I guessed, prepared to judge me and my life as soon as I entered the antechamber, to decide whether or not I’d go through the French door behind him or take the express elevator down. Of course, he was all-knowing–he’d decided everything long ago and knew what would become of me–yet somehow, they said, I still had choices to make, though he knew what I would decide anyway. I didn’t get it. I didn’t get that or a whole lot of other contradictions I’d been told and tried to piece together and sort out, all the while trying not to balk. Children were to be seen and not heard, at least not their oppositional opinions.

By the time I got to college, I was a cynical atheist. I detested all things religious, and deeper studies of both history and sociology only threw logs on the fire, hold the brimstone. This also happens to be the times when I came out. My mother’s instant reaction was to send me to a therapist–a Christian therapist–and I conceded, more as a challenge than anything else. After a few sessions, they figured out that conversion was hopeless, so why waste the money? I was damned. (At least they kept paying my Cal State tuition…thanks Mom. Oh, she’s changed a lot since then. I want to give her some credit.)

So, I was a confident, intelligent, logical, fairly rational, homosexual atheist. In truth, disbelieving in God was pretty easy because, to me, all the contradictions of the Bible were blatantly obvious. Enter the real dilemma: how was it that so many educated, respectable, even likeable people couldn’t see the same falseness that I was seeing. It all seemed like such a sham, yet I knew believers who were scientists, teachers, doctors–all intelligent and honest–oh, and there were some lawyers, too.

No, I am not about to tell you that I have returned to Christianity. Don’t worry.

However, I will say this: aside from a certainly rationality that I believe I possess, or perhaps because of it, I do not immediately poo poo any individual’s personal reality. I hear and accept the power that “God” has had over the lives of many, or that someone has been healed “miraculously.” I don’t even deny the possibility that some things many consider parapsychology may in fact exist. Who am I to say they don’t? After my stepfather died, my mother was awoken on several instances at precisely the same moment in the deep of the night by noises or an alarm clock that hadn’t been set. Did she have a technical failure? Was her bladder full? Or was she visited by my stepdad (one of those intelligent believers I was talking about)? I can’t say for sure. I guess I’m not a cynical atheist anymore.

I might have thought it a weakness at one point to back down from my atheist convictions. On the other hand, maybe as I get older I’m getting a little wiser? Or perhaps I have come to a point in life that I have a need that hadn’t existed before. As some of you know, I hit an obstacle at the school I worked in as a teacher, all related to an e-mail mistakenly sent to the wrong person. Enough said. Three years of litigation later, it’s still not over. I don’t think I had known despair or fear like I had that first year. Getting fired from a school has lifelong implications; you don’t just go and get another job. It was my comfort, my livelihood, my health insurance, my retirement. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t write. I needed a higher power (or at least somewhere to channel all the fear and negative energy I was harboring). I began to pray. Some of the issues have worked themselves out, others are still pending. The prayer helped.

I’m not saying that God saved me. I’m not saying there is a god. I am all too conscious of a term we called in psychology “superstitious conditioning”–the impulse to attribute cause to correlation connected to a personal action, in this case prayer. It might have been knocking on wood or throwing salt over my shoulder, for that matter. Still, I’m not poo pooing anything, either. I won’t deny the (perhaps self-deceptive) comfort that I felt in handing over my issues to a higher power, an energy out there, or just the universe.

Despite my confessions here (I still cringe when I write or say the word “prayer”), I am nowhere near religious. Indeed, although I do respect the way that religious groups often take care of each other–providing meals and rides for those who need them, counseling, social events, and other means of practical support–I continue to loathe religion in the big picture for the way it incites hatred, self-righteousness, and other forms of social control. Why can’t groups of people provide those practical necessities without having to attribute it all to a god? (Thank goodness for gay community centers–that’s what I’m talking about.)

Why am I bringing up this entire topic? To plug my new book, of course! True, I am writing because my new book, Day of the Dead–A Romance, which is coming out next week from Dreamspinner Press. However, I did want to share some of the inspiration and life changes that led to a story contemplating the afterlife. As do all of my books, I have brought in aspects of the Mexican culture–specifically, notions about death, sexuality, coming out, and migration–as well as the inclusion of place (Guanajuato and the border area this time), as is common in my style. A major difference between this story and my others is that this one is also based in San Francisco, the fabulous city where I was born. Most importantly, I’ve infused as a major theme a character who talks to us (or his mourning lover anyway) from beyond and brings us to the place of his upbringing in central Mexico. Let’s get back to spirituality and religion: What do you think? What is your experience with a higher power? Are we nothing more than chance beings on a floating rock? Is there some greater being or even meaning to life? What about the afterlife? Looking forward to hearing your thoughts! Please take a minute to share.

Have You Heard of The Letter Q?

Erik Orrantia — Sun, 06 May 2012 17:52:48 +0000

“Your joy, like a dog, wants to go for a walk.” ~Eileen Myles

I don’t say this often about a book: The Letter Q: Queer Writers’ Notes to Their Younger Selves (Aruthur A. Levine Books, 2012) is important. When I travel back to a particular time in my life and recall the fear I felt and the self-loathing inside me, I wish a person might have known and handed me this book. It might have made a huge difference for me and, indeed, will end up saving someone’s life, someone driven to recklessness or suicide by the shame or pressure that so many of us can identify with. As Sarah Moon, the editor of the book, says in her contribution to this compilation of writers’ letters, “At the end of the day, you are strong and brave through this, and those are not such bad things to be.” Quite true, for those who make it to the end of the day.

In 1994, James Lecesne, Peggy Rajski, and Randy Stone created an Academy Award-winning short film, Trevor, about an adolescent rejected by friends because of his sexuality. When the creators of the film realized that there were few lifelines out there for young people, they founded The Trevor Project, a 24-hour crisis and suicide prevention service for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth. Find out more about The Trevor Project here: http://www.thetrevorproject.org/.

Like Awake (Cheyenne Publishing, 2011), The Letter Q, was written for young adults and also to benefit The Trevor Project. In order to create the book, Sarah Moon reached out to 64 queer authors, myself included, asking, “If you received a letter from your older self, what do you think it would say? What do you wish it would say?” The result is an amazing, poignant, sometimes funny collection of letters and a few comics whose themes recur throughout the pages like they do in my memory of my struggles and triumphs as I came out to myself, then to my family and friends (not in that order), and learned to find others like me and someone to love.

I can hardly imagine a single LGBTQ person who can’t identify in so many ways to the unifying experiences that come out as boldly as the rainbow flag itself. Here are just a few nuggets amongst a plethora:

Accepting Yourself

“There is so much more about you to be proud of besides being gay, but somehow sexuality posed the Mount Everest of life’s obstacles—once you conquered it, you could conquer anything else.” ~Erik Orrantia

“One day what seems too heavy will weigh so little you feel you might fly…the very thing you are hiding, the very pain that throbs in your breast turns out to be your finest fiercest teacher.” ~Martin Moran

“Don’t merely accept the fact that you were born gay; treasure it.” ~Doug Wright

Belonging

“Feeling like you belong is never going to be easy.” ~Tony Valenzuela

“Open your eyes and you will see that you’re already in the company of others just like you” ~LaShonda Katrice Barnett

“Yes, there are more of you. Yes, you’ll find each other.” ~Diane DiMassa

“The world is larger and far different than anything you can yet imagine.” ~Richard McCann

Fear, Your and Theirs

“People you don’t know will hate you for who you are.” ~Linda Villarosa

“You are mostly afraid that your family will stop loving you….But they won’t.” ~Linda Villarosa

“You could never have guessed then that the thing you feared most in yourself would one day be the source of your greatest joy, the inspiration for your greatest work.” ~Armistead Maupin

Struggle and Triumph

“We are all struggling to release our souls from stone, like those sculptures of Michelangelo…” ~Gregory Maguire

“On Hurting Yourself: Please stop.” ~Sarah Moon

“Even mistakes can bring great gifts.” ~Marion Dane Bauer

Love

“All the tears wasted on your high school crushes would pale in comparison to the jolt you felt in your body when she told you she loved you for the first time.” ~Jasika Nicole

“Each great love will lead you to a deeper understanding of what love can and cannot do.” ~James Lecesne

“Your capacity to love is your greatest strength and the greatest gift you have to bring to the world. Live it. Rejoice in it.” ~Marion Dane Bauer

“Your heart is big and kind and holds lots of people.” ~Sarah Moon

The Letter Q is not a book you have to read from start to finish, but one to savor piece by piece, in any order, when you’re sad or nostalgic or joyful…or when someone you know is in need.

Taxi Rojo, Inequity and Universality

Erik Orrantia — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:53:37 +0000

Driving west on the two-lane freeway misnamed La Internacional, I see a couple of guys climbing up the rusty, corrugated metal fence that marks the line–La Línea–separating Mexico and the United States. Unemployment likely compels them north, where they hope to find a job mowing lawns, harvesting cucumbers, or washing dishes–anything that will put some money in their pockets. On my side of the fence, the Tijuana side, beat up cars swerve around potholes on the road mere feet from a long row of dilapidated houses, businesses, and a dirt baseball field. On the other side stands a taller, more ominous fence, a controversial multibillion-dollar project composed of thousands and thousands of concrete posts that guard the north like teasing sentries placed six inches apart, just enough space to squeeze an arm through. The new fence stretches as far as Texas. Border-crossers used to jump the rusty fence and make a mad dash for cover from the Border Patrol. Now they’re stopped cold by the second barrier, and by lingering unemployment in California, too.

As the youngest of three boys, I often whined at the inequities between my siblings and me. I was too young for a pocketknife, too little for judo, and one more person–me–wouldn’t fit in the backyard camping tent. “No one ever said that life was fair,” my mother would say. As a lesson, this was one I never internally adopted. Well, yes, I realize too often that life can be cruelly unfair, yet it is not an idea that I have ever come to believe as acceptable. I still root for the underdog.

One reason I threw myself into the heart of Mexico was to experience firsthand another culture, in some country not an economic powerhouse, and to understand how the majority of the world really lives. Though I began this adventure studying in Mexico City, I migrated, not unlike others, to the northern city of Tijuana, perhaps hypocritically so, where I could work in the United States and still live in Mexico. Yes, I commute across La Línea every day through the world’s busiest border crossing. And though I don’t choose to live off of five or ten dollars a day, I do observe daily the stark disparities between the two countries and peoples, and often enough, the relentless human spirit that endures in us all. And I write about my observations, hoping to convey both the disparity and the human spirit.

In my travels to the rain forest of Chiapas and the Yucatán, I fell in love with the lush jungle and the ancient history of the Aztecs and the Mayans. You can read some of that in my suspense thriller The Equinox Convergence (Etopia Press, 2011). In Normal Miguel (Cheyenne Publishing, 2010), you feel my fondness for Mexican rural towns, or pueblos. But when I sat down to write another story, I realized that the place that surrounds me every day, my home, deserved its own story.

I could hardly invent a new indigenous tribe like I had in The Equinox Convergence, nor could I relate the quaintness of cobblestone streets and old-fashioned butcher shops like in Normal Miguel. Rather, I noticed the stories of people around me–a day worker who toils away in the U.S. for meager wages, her sister plagued with a debilitating disease, a drag queen struggling at once with her gender identity and poverty, a couple facing the daunting future of AIDS in a place where treatment is third world, and a man pushed by social pressure and expectations into denying his sexuality. This is Taxi Rojo–A Tijuana Tale (Cheyenne Publishing, 2012). Here, in a place fraught with unfairness, street dogs, dive bars, and traffic take the place of jaguars, stick huts, and waterfalls. Yet regardless of place or geographical borders, the will to survive, the instinct to love one another, and the persistence of the human heart remain universal.

A Bank, a Church, and a Bar

Erik Orrantia — Sat, 17 Mar 2012 23:00:51 +0000

“If you think place doesn’t make a difference,” my psychology professor used to say, “go to a bank, a church, and a bar and see how different you feel in each.” I’ve lived and traveled in Mexico for nearly 15 years now. If you’ve read any of my previous work–Blue Tiles, Normal Miguel, or The Equinox Convergence–you’ve gained an insight about the impact Mexico has had on me. From the small towns of the Sierra Madre to the jungles of Chiapas and Quintana Roo, and from the ancient ruins of Chichén Itzá to the magnificent waterfalls of Agua Azul, I had instantly fallen in love with the lush rain forests, misty mountains, and white beaches found in all reaches of the country. There is an abundance of life intermingled with cultural and spiritual depth. History.

Those things penetrated me and seeped out, or rather exploded out, in my writing. Part of what made Normal Miguel such a hit was exactly that–sharing an experience of people and food and place so foreign to first world folks. The Equinox Convergence imparts the enchantment and simplicity of the indigenous while bringing to the forefront the real, paradoxical face of crime and drug trafficking. When I started on my new project, I thought,what else can I write about…or where else? I live in the answer; I am surrounded by it, and have been for 14 years–Tijuana.

In Taxi Rojo you won’t read about quaint huts made of sticks. You won’t hear buzzing forest bugs (but maybe buzzing transformers on telephone posts!). The only reference to wildlife is a metaphor for rushing traffic. And there is no mention of leaves, great, umbrella-sized leaves of banana trees or jungle foliage. The only leaves are when an angry lover leaves another!

Tijuana is a strange city, surely not unlike others in the world, which grew solely because of their location on an international border. Geographically, Tijuana offers little more than desert, dry air, hot summers and cold winters. Homes are built with no climate control–no air conditioning, no central heating–so Tijuanenses generally bear the weather, practically the same indoors as out, or worse for the blessed, reverse insulation of cinder block. Perhaps you’ve heard of a tad bit of violence, like tortured victims and mutilated bodies, or brutal attacks on adolescents’ parties, or disappearances and kidnappings. True, all those things have happened, albeit almost always related to rivalries between drug gangs.

There is another truth about Tijuana: it is a place where splendid life exists, and the same beautiful, warm people who have come to the border city from all parts of Mexico, along with their virtues, rich customs, and long-held beliefs. Over two million individuals, in fact, who are at once as anonymous as those leaf-eating ants in the jungle and yet each as individual as the rest of humankind, each person with dreams and aspirations, a unique personality, and an internal drive to survive, overcome, and strive. Two million stories exist here in Tijuana, a place like no other. In Taxi Rojo, read about six of them.

Taxi Rojo will be released by Cheyenne Publishing in early April, 2012.

Visiting with Tristram La Roche

Erik Orrantia — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 01:54:32 +0000

Tell us a bit about yourself. Where are you from? What have you written? How would you describe your genre? Besides writing, do you have another career? Another passion?

I always hesitate when I’m asked where I’m from. I was born in London but we soon moved with my father’s work and I lived in the north of England, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and Austria. It was all a great experience, but sometimes I wish I’d had a more stable point in my life as I don’t actually have that focus of somewhere I call home. Still, I draw on my experiences now to create my stories so I guess I shouldn’t complain.

So far I’ve written four novellas: On My Knees, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Fixed, and The Hun and The General. I very much like novellas as a reader; they’ve been overlooked for too long by the publishing industry and I’m glad to see them coming back. As to my genre, that’s another suck-it-and-see question, Erik. Today, especially in e-publishing, books about gay characters automatically get lumped together as M/M. Now, I don’t want to get into the ongoing row about whether M/M and gaylit/gayifction are the same thing, but I do distinguish my books – and as much for the readers as myself – from the run of girlie men sipping sweet kisses, gazing with brown orbs under long lashes and living happily ever after. That’s not me. I write about real gay men, what they get up to, the issues they face, how they find happiness. My very first book, On My Knees (which, incidentally, rocketed up the charts), is a coming out story about a man trapped in an unhappy heterosexual marriage. It was a tale I had to tell, having been through that myself.

I no longer have another career. Like my ‘homes’, my career has been a bit erratic. I worked as a journalist for a while and latterly had my own business dealing with charter yachts and luxury tourism. None of it ever satisfied my intellectual and creative needs so, when the recession bit, I took my cue and packed it all in to write. And here I am.

I have plenty of passions, Erik. Gay rights, equality and freedom in general for all people; art in all its forms, but I am an opera nut; good food and wine; and the two men in my life – my wonderful partner of fourteen years whom I love more every day, and my fantastic son.

Now tell us a secret.

I was once walking down Oxford Street in London and just glanced at a guy coming in the other direction. Our eyes met and there was that unmistakeable spark. He immediately bolted into the department store we happened to be outside. I followed him, knowing full well where he was going. In the menswear department we both grabbed a couple of items and headed for the changing rooms. It was thankfully quiet without being deserted and we had fast, furious sex in one of the cubicles.

Your new book, The Hun and the General, sounds fascinating. Tell us about it. Where did you get the idea? How much research did you do for it? Is this your first historical fiction?

I’ll be perfectly honest and give credit where it’s due: a fan made a casual comment on Goodreads about how she’d love someone to write about Attila the Hun and make him the sub. I thought it was a wonderful idea, so did it – and it was an immediate best seller on All Romance EBooks. I’ve always been inerested in ancient history so had a good idea about the period, though more from the Roman point of view. I started by reading books on the Hunnish empire and their infamous king, but there is actually very little known about him. So I took what I could and created my own Attila. I wove the story around the famous Theodosian walls that the emperor built at Constantinople, and used Attila’s ex-lover, the Roman general Livianus (made up, I hasten to add), to create conflict and romantic interest. It is my first historical, but I can guarantee it won’t be my last – I loved writing it.

In regards to your writing, who has inspired you the most? Tell us about it.

The really honest answer is that I don’t know. I have never had one author whom I have put on a pedestal. I can appreciate one or two works from someone while detesting everything else they have written. Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty made an impression and once I decided to write it gave me encouragement. James Lear’s hilarious The Back Passage was proof, if it were needed, that you don’t have to write about soppy characters if you want to sell books. In another way, Stephen King’s The Mist, a novella, was the one book that made me say ‘I want to do this, I can do this.’ And now here is something out of character. About three years ago we were visiting friends and one of their dinner guests was a medium. Stuff and nonsense, I said. Then, towards the end of the dinner, the medium said someone wanted to speak to me (you can imagine my reaction!). She told me things that made my jaw drop – things she could not know, things my friends did not know so couldn’t have told her, and it was as if my grandmother who died in 1973 were there talking to me. I don’t remember much, but I do remember her saying ‘You want to change career. Why are you hesitating? You can write, you can do it.’ I just wish she’d told me how long it was going to take!

Every writer is unique. What sets your writing apart from everyone else’s?

I don’t think I should be the judge of that, Erik, it’s for others to say. When I read my work it’s just me, I don’t recognise any particular style or atmosphere. However, others tell me they can pick my work out instantly, that it stands out as Tristram La Roche. They say it’s gritty, earthy, sometimes shocking and witty, and that I write with a particular clarity and economy of words. That’s quite funny really because in life, at a dinner party for example, I can be a proper gobshite!

What was your proudest moment? What goals do you have yet to attain? What’s your next project?

Can I have only one proudest moment? If so, then it has to be the birth of my son. If I can have more, I’ll add the day I came out and the day I got my first publishing contract. Goals? Oh, I have many, too many to list them all. I’m always striving for something; I think the secret to keeping going is to always have something in your sights. Last year I went from unpublished to having four books published, and that included the writing of them. I ended the year on a high, but pretty worn out. So right now I’m just deciding what my next project is. I think it might be another novella, and perhaps something naughty and funny. Perhaps so naughty it might get me into trouble in a certain area! I also want to write a novel this year.

What do you hope to accomplish with your writing? If you had to do it all again, what would you change?

I’m quite open about the fact that I want to be a mainstream best seller. And I’d like one (or more) of my books to be made into a film or TV show. Is it wrong to be ambitious? I don’t think so, I’m doing something I love and something with which I hope to bring pleasure into people’s lives, always spreading the message of hope and tolerance. Would I change anything? Yes, I’d start writing thirty years earlier – though I’m told my writing has a depth and maturity that only comes with life experience. Still, there are moments when I’m overwhelmed by the fear of not having enough time.

Your famous last words?

Let’s do that again.

My website: http://tristramlaroche.com/

My Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/#!/profile.php?id=100002276172449

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/TristramLaRoche

Amazon Page: http://www.amazon.com/Tristram-La-Roche/e/B0054U5A2E/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1

You can buy The Hun and The General here:

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Hun-General-ebook/dp/B006GHC3HE/

Amazon.co.uk: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hun-General-ebook/dp/B006GHC3HE/

All Romance E-Books: http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-thehunandthegeneral-648816-144.html

Bookstrand: http://www.bookstrand.com/the-hun-and-the-general

and other links on Tris’s website

New Year’s Glibberish

Erik Orrantia — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 18:44:44 +0000

When I was younger, much younger, I had been accused on more than one occasion of arrogance. Indeed, my 11th grade English teacher called me glib before I even knew what it meant. In most ways, I was a go-getter, shy in my own way, needing a strong sense of confidence before coming out, so to speak, yet a determined chap nonetheless. Never one to talk much about my own “greatness”–the idea that one’s own greatness speaks for itself has always been obvious to me. Rather, one to simply attempt to excel for excellence’s own reward, always intending to be better than before, though a certain Leo aspect in me can help but be driven by tacit competition with others. I had no purpose for New Year’s Resolution; I already had resolve.

My dear mentor, Jerry McCullough corrected me, or instructed me, one might say. “New Year’s Resolutions are not gimmicks of procrastinators or the irresolute,” he said, or so I remember, “but an opportunity to focus energy on specific goals.” At 41 years old now, I’m way beyond any youthful arrogance, sometimes feeling as if I’m grasping at the ledge of some precipice at the bottom of which surely lies misery far beyond the sharp pains of the precipice ledge on my fingers.

A few years ago I learned that balance, at least for me, represented an ideal to the extent that I would have it tattooed somewhere on my body, except for the fact that the image of a balance itself has been usurped by an astrological sign and the Chinese symbol for the word is less aesthetic than I care to display. I mean balance in everything about me–physical, spiritual, financial, hysterical, you name it. I even intend to be imbalanced at times, to even out the constant strive for balance–I mean to let myself go to extremes in a sort of controlled way, or a way controlled enough that keeps me from being a control freak. Balance.

And so I trudge on in another year of life after battling through what I arguably consider to be the two worst years I’ve ever lived. True, I’ve had wonderful times in their midst–Normal Miguel was published and won the Lammy! I took awesome trips. I had a fabulous celebration for my 40th birthday, filled with dear friends and sentiment. I fell more in love with my partner. All with litigation in the background. I won a drawn-out hearing as I fought for my job. I lost the appeal. It’s over. I’m fired.

Fear had kept me up many nights. The fear of falling into that precipice. Poverty, joblessness, homelessness, social rejection, utter loss. So far, I have averted those undesirables and found within me enough of that determination from my youth to move on. Many people have been there for me, and have appeared, while some have disappeared. True what they say–you find out who your real friends are. But overwhelmingly, I am reassured that those who ever knew me and believed in me were genuine, as is their continued belief in my integrity. Far from arrogant, I am humbled and grateful. Many have said that there is a reason that all of this happened, that all will be good in the end. Though I don’t always see the light, I must trust it is there, and that I will prevail. I’ve no other option.

In the meantime, and as I continue down the road, I declare my resolutions for 2012. (I’d love to hear what yours are.)

1. To maintain the status quo of those things in my life that are functional and satisfactory–namely my health, my lifestyle, and my relationship. No balking at such maintenance for often, especially with the eroding force of time, positivity diminishes as silver tarnishes. Maintenance takes effort.

2. To publish both Taxi Rojo–A Tijuana Tale and Day of the Dead–A Romance.

3. To choose a [new] career path and take the plunge and/or continue to seek more satisfying employment in line with my skills, beliefs, and long-term goals.

4. To write another novel.

There. I said them. I published them. No more talking, just doing. Happy New Year and the best to you [and the rest of the world] in 2012.

Nearing a Hard Year’s Soft End

Erik Orrantia — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 20:02:27 +0000

Been a while since I’ve written. Let me excuse myself for such a long absence. More than anything, I’d like to let you know what I’ve been up to and where I hope to go. I also hope I can coax a few of you to read my blog again as I’ve so enjoyed interacting with you. I also hope to visit more frequently those online groups I had become such an active member of…and have missed as of late.

For nearly two years now, I’ve been riding the roller coaster of some unfortunate litigation related to my work. To make a long story short, I had won an initial hearing brought upon by my school district and then lost the appeal. Though it’s made me question our system of justice, I have also accepted mistakes I have made for which I have paid a heavy price. At least I am in a new position which, though it does not pay what I had been earning, it does pay the bills. It has also taken the time which I had liberally expended writing blogs and working on books. Now that I’ve been in the position a few months, I’ll need to find a way to balance whatever may be my new life with my yearning and passion for writing.

Allow me to update my current literary endeavors:

First, I am proud to be a judge for this year’s Lambda Literary Awards. I won’t reveal the category or the books I’m judging, but I will say that it is an honor for me to take on the task. I stand behind Lambda Literary’s decision to include all writers–gay, straight, and in-between–as eligible for an award. I also thank the organization for supporting so many categories of writing and writers. Sign up as a member today!

Second, you may have heard of Taxi Rojo, my soon-to-be released novel about a small group of people in Tijuana whose lives come together as the result of an ill-fated taxi ride. I thank Mark Probst at Cheyenne Publishing, the publisher of Normal Miguel, for having the faith in my work, once again, to take on this project. I can’t say enough positive words about the family of authors under this publisher and their willingness to help one another out as harmonious siblings. Look for Taxi Rojo in April!

Third, I have completed another manuscript title Day of the Dead–A Romance. This is my first work in which the setting expands into the United States from Mexico. It features a bi-cultural relationship–an American and a Mexican–whose (lives and deaths) straddle the border, and the cultural and legal issues that go with it. I’ve brought the characters to my childhood home, San Francisco, and flash back and forth to my adult home, Mexico. Once I put the finishing touches on it, I hope the book will find its own home in the capable hands of a willing publisher.

Finally, I’m thrilled to share these links with you and indebted to Piet Bach of Wilde Oats who has reviewed both Normal Miguel and The Equinox Convergence in the 9th edition of his publication. As you will see, he must have spent significant amounts of time on these insightful reviews, works of literature in and of themselves. I hope you’ll visit them and see for yourself what I’m talking about!

http://www.wildeoats.com/Normal-Miguel-by-Erik-Orrantia-reviewed-by-Piet-Bach.html

http://www.wildeoats.com/The-Equinox-Convergence-by-Erik-Orrantia-reviewed-by-Piet-Bach.html

Nice to be back and I hope to read from you pretty soon! In the meantime, happy holidays, salud, y suerte! Here’s hoping for a prosperous 2012…

The Equinox Convergence, A Review by Indigene

Erik Orrantia — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 01:27:33 +0000

I’ve been absent for awhile–my life’s veered toward a new, hopefully temporary mission. Namely, I’m looking for a new job! In the meantime, I’ve been completing my new manuscript, Day of the Dead–A Romance. I wanted to take a moment though, and thank Indigene, an amazing reader and reviewer, who just published this review of The Equinox Convergence. The review, as for her skill and insight, speak for themselves:

The Equinox Convergence by Erik Orrantia

Posted on September 24, 2011 by Indigene

My Rating:

Atua, a young shaman girl from the Núkul tribe near Acapulco, struggles to fulfill her destiny of becoming a curandera, a shaman, like her adoptive father, despite the encroachment of the modern world on their traditional ways and the stain of her troubled past. She crosses paths with Bennie, a local boy from the small town of Carritza. But Bennie has other aspirations—to follow in the footsteps of Saul, who runs a lab for the drug lord, Tio Che. When the military steps in to take him down, the balance between light and darkness—the equinox—approaches, and each of them must find a way to stay safe…

The Equinox Convergence is Erik Orrantia’s second book and follows on the heels of his Lambda Literary Award winning novel Normal Miguel. The seasonal equinox – a balance between equal parts of light and darkness – serves as the metaphor for this incredibly gripping mystery suspense thriller that delves into the human capacity for both good and evil and how given certain circumstances and motivations, seemingly decent people can be drawn into the depths of darkness. The fictitious rural Mexican town of Carritza located 120 kilometres north of Acapulco in the Province of Guerrero, and the neighbouring Ejido Mapolombampo the indigenous village of the Núkul Tribe and the Tribe’s adjoining traditional lands are the main settings for this story where worlds collide – that of Mexico’s drug trade and traditional indigenous life.

Atua is of the Núkul Tribe and the adopted daughter of At’tansa Ikana (Revered One), the Núkul’s healer and spiritual leader. Although the Tribe is patrilineal and by tradition the title of curandera (shaman) falls to the male line, Atua seeks to follow in her father’s footsteps and become the spiritual guide of her people. Her father encourages this by imparting Núkul teachings and practices and including her in traditional ceremonies so that she may learn and grow to fulfil her aspirations and destiny.

Bennie is a young man who works at the El Pueblito ice-making shop supplying the Town of Carritza and neighbouring communities with ice. But he wants more out of life; to have more money in his pocket; to be more than an ice-maker; to live a different kind of life. As a means of achieving his dreams, Bennie along with his work mate Poste run drugs for Saul a drug lab supervisor who works for Tio Che, a powerful and mysterious drug lord. But with the government’s latest crackdown in the war against drugs and in response to police corruption, the military is dispatched to Carritza to break the ring of drug manufacturing and stop the flow of trafficking and Bennie quickly realizes that he is trapped in a world from which there is no escape. Bennie’s drug runs take him through Núkul territory and his world collides with that of Atua’s placing them both in mortal danger.

The opening scene in this novel is a jolting one and with each chapter the mystery and suspense is incrementally and continuously heightened plunging the reader into a page-turning web of intrigue and suspense as the story unfolds. The author achieves this with chapters that are relatively short in length and by alternating the first person perspective amongst and between Atua and Bennie and the story’s multitude of recurring and occasional secondary characters. Although Atua and Bennie are the primary characters in this tale, it is truly an ensemble cast and each character holds a certain piece of the story’s puzzle, which they slowly reveal with each chapter through their respective narratives.

This has the effect of continuously maintaining a tautness of suspense as to what will happen next and eventually the multiple perspectives converge to reveal the mystery. It also serves as a means of providing the reader with a wealth of insight into each character’s back story, motivations and actions thereby bringing a fundamental understanding of who these characters are and enabling the reader to establish a level of empathy, if not outright compassion in certain cases, for characters such as Bennie and Saul even when they are committing unspeakable acts in their desperation to survive. In this, I have yet to come across an author with such an innate talent and ability for writing multiple voices and perspectives in such a distinctively concise manner as Mr. Orrantia. We get a glimpse of this aspect of his writing in Normal Miguel, but, in my opinion, the in-the-round multiple character perspective technique employed in The Equinox Convergence is taken to an altogether higher level of writing.

Mr. Orrantia has publicly stated his need to write about his adopted country of Mexico and in The Equinox Convergence he continues to illustrate the facets of Mexican life. Through his writing the author demonstrates an intrinsic knowledge and understanding of the political, social, economic and cultural dimensions of this country and its peoples. He has written Mexico’s world of drug trade with an unnerving sense of realism, depicting its brutality and violence with a sobering and stark honesty. This coupled with his firm grasp of rural life in Mexico and the divide between socio-economic affluence and disparity, the author deftly nuances the links between poverty and the lure of the drug economy. Equally, his writing of indigenous life through the fictitious Núkul Tribe, which is a synthesis of the ethno-cultural, linguistic and spiritual ways of life of several indigenous nations in Mexico, resonates as respectful and authentic without the stereotypical romanticisation or voice appropriation too often experienced in fiction written about indigenous peoples by non-indigenous authors. Atua emerges as a foundational and well-nuanced character in this respect because she represents a level of universality in indigenous perspectives and voices in reaction to colonialism and its destruction of indigenous ways of life. Atua also emerges as foundational to the underlying theme of the story and the character through which the other characters are measured in respect of the balance of light and darkness.

Even though he does not have a multitude of published works, it is not difficult to understand why Mr. Orrantia is an award-winning author. The writing in The Equinox Convergence emerges as uniquely Orrantia – exceptional prose, descriptions that are rich and intricate but that do not intrude, an in depth understanding of, and sensitivity to, the complexities and diversity of Mexico and superb characterization. I was completely and utterly engrossed in this mystery suspense thriller to such a degree that I lost track of my place in the story and did not realise that I had come to the final page of the book, which ends in a masterfully written cliff-hanger. The story and characters in this novel continue to linger and I await the sequel with great anticipation. Most highly recommended.

The Equinox Convergence by Erik Orrantia is available in ebook format at Etopia Press and at Amazon.

I normally won’t post a review in its entirety, but I was floored by the thoroughness of her work. For her website and the rest of her huge catalog of review, go here: Indie Reviews.

An Afternoon with Alex Beecroft

Erik Orrantia — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 02:41:00 +0000

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted. You may be happy to know it’s because I’ve been busily writing my next novel, Day of the Dead–A Romance, set between the quaint, colonial town of Guanajuato and my city of birth, San Francisco.

I did have a chance, however, to sneak in a guest blog at the site of seriously talented Alex Beecroft. Like me, she’s published with Cheyenne Publishing and other publishers, and she also did the spectacular cover art for Normal Miguel. In addition to her full-length novels (Captain’s Surrender, False Colors, The Witch‘s Boy, and Shining in the Sun), her work appears in a number of anthologies and short stories.

Thank you, Alex, for your generosity in sharing your virtual space with me for a discussion on some Mexican history and the small town as they relate to the creation of The Equinox Convergence. Here’s the link:

http://alexbeecroft.com/2011/09/welcome-to-erik-orrantia/

or on LiveJournal: http://alex-beecroft.livejournal.com/229771.html

I hope you’ll have a chance to stop by!