FUN AT THE VIETNAM BOOK FAIR!
Well, if you're going to visit a foreign country, what better time to go than during its national book fair? Especially if one's book is at the fair and one's publisher is the gracious and generous Mr. Ton Quang Toan, or simply Ton as he likes to be called, of Thuong...
HOW MY PURIFICATION RITUAL WAS FICTIONALIZED IN “CHANDA’S SECRETS”
Last post, I included a chapter from my comic adult novel The Phoenix Lottery that demonstrated how life interacts with imagination in the creation of fiction. (My actual experiences with a santerían purification ritual outside Guardalavaca, and at the duPont mansion...
MY SANTERÍAN RITUAL IN FICTION
Hi there, Over the last couple of weeks, I've written and showed pix from Cuba: of Varadero, the duPont estate, and my experience with santería. These have been mixed in with two excerpts from my first novel, The Phoenix Lottery. In those you read about our hero...
CUBA: MY PURIFICATION RITUAL
So anyway... the santerían purification ritual. The photo was taken by the cab driver who then left us.I was in the shed with Isabel and her sister-in-law. It was night. Pretty quiet except for the occasional dog bark. Isabel channels an early slave by the name Jose...
CUBA: SANTERÍA
Hi there,Today begins a couple of posts about santería and the purification ritual I had with a santera in the countryside outside Guardalavaca in north-eastern Cuba. This is a statue to Babablú-Ayé, otherwise known as Santo Lazaro or Saint Lazarus. I took it inside...
CUBA: OUTSIDE VARADERO
My first novel, the Phoenix Lottery, uses lots of other references to Varadero, besides the duPont mansion featured in the last two posts. Above is the lobby of the Melia Varadero. (Go back two posts to see the duPont mansion in the distance with a bunch of beach in...
CUBA: IMAGINING VARADERO
As mentioned in my last post, Varadero features heavily in my first novel The Phoenix Lottery -- especially the duPont mansion. As an experiment, I'm posting the first chapter here. For photos of the setting you're reading about, check my last post. (Next post, some...
CUBA: THE DUPONT MANSION
When I first went to Varadero, Cuba, in 1990, I was blown away by its twenty kilometres (1.2 miles) of almost unbroken white coral sand beach. At that time the last hotel, the International, was at about the halfway point. Then one took a moped out a dirt path which...
CUBA: ONCE UPON A TIME…
Once upon a time... I wasn't so old. The picture above is of me and Daniel twenty years ago, back when we had hair -- and glasses were kinda big. It's taken at dusk in Varadero outside the restaurant of what was a then-3-Star hotel (HAHAHAHAHA) the Kawama. Before the...
BOOK GIVEAWAY: AND A SHOUT OUT TO MAD KING LUDWIG
I've been very bad about posting these past two weeks. BORDERLINE has just come out and I'm racing against a first draft deadline for my new novel. (Title initials G.R.A.) I know, excuses, excuses. And okay, my official deadline is really May 1, but I'm going to be...
