Ulises Silva
So yeah, about this writing thing… I started writing in grad school, when I somehow completed and serialized a 500-page Anime fanfic called Nightmares in the Apocalypse. And because I’m sure you can’t tell from the title, it was a very dark story that had lots of death and destruction and happy dreams. No wait, nightmares. It had lots of nightmares. And death.
It was terribly written and embarrassing to even claim, but it was my first novel-length writing, and so I have to embrace it the way Darth Vader has to embrace his previous associations with Jar Jar Binks.
Maybe it was my horror film upbringing; my parents took me to see The Shining, Alien, and The Exorcist when most of my classmates were going to see The Last Unicorn and The Dark Crystal. Which, come to think of it, were kind of dark movies in their own right, so I guess we were all a little screwed up in 80s. Whatever it was, I kept writing dark fiction, culminating in my first novel in 2007, Solstice.
Solstice is, well, not a happy story. But, hey, for fans of apocalyptic, end-of-world fiction, it’s awesome!
Fast-forward a year or two later, when, I don’t know, happiness and stuff start filtering back into my life. My writing took a decidedly more comedic and lighthearted tone. Some say I sold out my dark, apocalyptic roots, but that’s because they haven’t discovered the joys and oddities of writing in the first person. As a woman. When you’re a man. Which my wife kind of digs. Or not really.
As a result of all this, my second novel, The Perfect Teresa, is to Solstice what, I don’t know, mangoes are to soy beans.
The Perfect Teresa is a novel near and dear to my heart because it got me back into writing, and because I took a “who cares if it’s good” attitude when writing it. Which is to say, it’s totally good and you should buy a copy because, totally, it’s good, I was just kidding when I said I didn’t care.
My new novel, The Modern Aztec's Guide to Dating and Time Travel, takes things in an even zanier direction. Inspired by the works of authors like Christopher Moore and Alexander C. Kane, I let my creative id run amok in an orgy of zany characters, outlandish plot elements, and combative animals. The final product is something that is fun, lighthearted, somewhat profane and raunchy, and what I hope is the start of a successful trilogy of books.
And if nothing else, you now have a novel with a half-Mexican, half-Scottish woman named Quality Jones, who holds the key to the safety of the space-time continuum in her reckless hands.
You’ve been warned.
