Itzá Pre-order and Release

Itzá
Itzá: September 15th 2017 via Broken River Books

Hola everyone! I have some book news: My debut novella, Itzá will be available for pre-sale on September 1st via my Interstellar Bruja Bigcartel Page. Through my Bigcartel, I will make the most income which will be really helpful to me in the upcoming month (I am moving to El Paso, Texas!) Itzá will be available on Amazon September 15th.

Itzá is about a family of water witches. It is written as an intentional magic spell based on the narrative of the main character, Marisol. Marisol shares the mythology she has created around her Great-grandmother and Grandmother and the women in her life who saved her while she fought against the traumas of her childhood.
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The Magician

magic
The Magician lies to her child. Tells her child, it will all be okay. It will all be okay as she puts her on the Greyhound alone on its way to Colorado. Your Tía will pick you up in Denver. Colorado has snowflakes like you can’t imagine. Immaculate formations gentle and soft in your hair. Let them land on your tongue and you can taste clouds. Let them melt onto your forehead and you can hear rivers slithering and shouting. If you eat snow from the palm of your hands, foam will expand on your tongue and drip down your throat. It will taste like another time, a time when the water ruled over the earth.

The Magician was convinced that the planet Mercury carried her womb in the core of the planet. The Magician was convinced someone was trying to poison her. The Magician was convinced her seven year old daughter only spewed out lies. The Magician’s daughter was fragile pieces of skin and bones. A hunched over body, easy to unravel and grasp by the hair. The Magician heard venomous accusations about the man she adored. In the chambers of her heart, he was skill, logic, and intellect incarnate. He made her heart ache and vibrate and she was in love. She was convinced he was reincarnated from the soul of scientist.

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Azucar in the Blood

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Six of Swords from my personal Tarot del Fuego deck by Ricardo Cavolo. 

I have been taught to add sweetness. To my voice, to my tone, to the way I move my body in white spaces. I have been taught to shrink. Cross your legs, keep them shut, never spill out of your clothes. I have been taught to take out my tongue and let it hang down. Open wide for others to spit on my open face. Let saliva spill out of my mouth, put my hands around my tongue and pull. Pull until you’re numb. Pull until your palms are pruned into small soft canyons.
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Mentirosa

ace-of-swords
Ace of Swords from my personal Tarot del Fuego deck by Ricardo Cavolo

My pulse boomed in the room, bouncing off the walls. It felt like my ears were going to explode. My body was ready to dissipate into dirt. I was fed up. I was tired of being an object. A play thing. Here I am at seven. It’s where a lot of my stories begin. My bones ache from exhaustion. The anger burns in my chest. I kick the blue-eyed assaulter in the face. I squirm under the sheets and I fall off the bed. I run to wake up my older cousin and I tell him what’s going on. My exact words: “Luis is touching me where he’s not supposed to.” In El Paso, we live in a small one bedroom apartment. There’s a kitchen and then there’s the bedroom/living room area. Six kids total and two adults. Two beds, one futon, and all of our bodies in this little room. My cousin grabs me and he embraces me. He comforts me in his arms. He doesn’t question me. He tells me to fall asleep in between him and my two other cousins. He becomes my human shield.
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Bitter Brown Girl

strength
From my personal Tarot del Fuego deck. Art by Ricardo Cavolo. 

I was a bitter brown girl. I clenched my fists and jaw when I saw the favoritism in my family for masculine energies and men. It’s a tone. It’s a glint in the eye. Like, being born a boy is automatically a milagro within itself. A warped kind of worshiping. There was white Jesus with his blonde hair and six-pack and there was also Luis. He had the same eye color as white Jesus. He was never a father to me. He was male gaze incarnate. The way he used to look into me, as though I was a woman at the age of seven. I used to dream in blues, underwater and sinking fast into the bottom of the ocean until a light shimmered on top of my head and forced me to look to the surface. I was trapped inside the blue of his eyes. I scraped at his cornea until I could crawl out. When I fell onto the ground and looked to him, his skin and blood turned cerulean and then exploded onto the walls and onto me. Blue blood and guts eviscerated.
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