Second Thoughts

On a Second Anniversary

In celebration of the second birthday of my second novel, Those People Behind Us, Citric Acid, an Online Orange County Literary Arts Quarterly of Imagination and Reimagination, generously gave me some space in their latest issue to do some second guessing and also write about the Nazi march down Main Street in Huntington Beach last month.

Here’s an excerpt.

I set the story in the summer of 2017, post-Trump’s first election and pre-pandemic. I never thought I’d have to clarify which Trump election, and I used to say at my book events that this period of time felt like it should be classified as historical fiction. I’d generally get a chuckle from the audience.

I changed Huntington Beach’s name to Wellington Beach for several reasons. It was fun to tweak the names of Orange County landmarks just enough, so they’d still be recognizable to locals. I thought the conflicts in the novel weren’t specific to Huntington Beach, but common to most American cities at that time. I created characters on both sides of the political spectrum, and although I did my best to show their humanity, I knew that some Surf City residents might bristle at my take on the city and find it too critical.

Two years later, I realize I wasn’t critical enough.

Read the rest of my essay here.

This issue also includes new poems and an essay by Orange County’s poet laureate Gustavo Hernandez, a book review and excerpt from Lisa Alvarez’s “Some Final Beauty,” some OC muckraking by Jeff Pearlman, and a wonderful editor’s note from Andrew Tonkovich. Subscribe if you haven’t. It’s free.

The eBook version of Those People Behind Us will be on sale for $2.99 on 10/10/2025.

I’m about to travel across the country to Kentucky for a book festival and you might wonder why. The organizers of the Louisville Book Festival accepted my book, for one thing, and then invited me to be on a panel. But the reason I applied was because this festival was established when the founder, Deedee Cummings, realized that the West End of Louisville was a book desert, with no bookstores.

Santa Ana, California, a city of more than 300k residents of which 80% are Latinx could very well find itself in a similar situation.

Libro Mobile, a hybrid nonprofit bookstore established in 2016 by a local author Sarah Rafael García, is the only bookstore in Santa Ana. It’s struggling these days to stay open and may have to close at the end of the year, which would create another book desert in Orange County’s second largest city.

These are challenging times for independent bookstores due to the current political environment, the kidnapping of community members from the streets and workplaces, the loss of federal and state grants, and an overall decline in books sales. So, I’m very happy to join the nice folks in Louisville and talk about the importance of literary community on October 11th at the Kentucky International Convention Center.

I’ll be chatting with Ellen Birkett Morris at 3 p.m. on the Ballroom Stage. Her novel Beware the Tall Grass was the winner of the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, judged by one of my favorite authors, Lan Samantha Chang,

Carmichaels, Louisville’s independent bookstore since 1978 is the festival vendor.

I’ve been bloviating a lot lately and three other online outfits have been gracias enough to share some of their real estate with me.

1. As long-time subscribers of South Coast Repertory Theatre, my husband and I were delighted when Brian Robin, their Director of Media and Public Relations, asked if we’d talk about SCR’s American Icon series. The plays in this series are based on stories about living or deceased people who contributed something of power or impact to our country. So far, the plays have included “A Raisin in the Sun,” “Joan,” and “Nina Simone.” You can read our portion of the interview about halfway through the piece. Here’s the link.

2. Francesca Lia Block chose Beloved by Toni Morrison as the text for a class that was part of the One Story, Pocket MFA, and Antioch’s MFA’s program. She gave a few of her students (including me!) a chance to reflect on Toni Morrison’s impact on our own work. Gracias Francesca for letting me go on and on. Here’s the link.

3. Voyage LA also gave me the chance to talk about my routine, my mother, and whether or not I’m tap dancing to work. (Spoiler alert, I wasn’t always but I am now.) Read the full interview here.

If you are in Southern California on October 19th, come to the Belmont Shore Book Festival. I’ll be slinging my books and leading a workshop on creating complicated characters at 1 p.m.

Speaking of complicated characters, there are five of those types of people in my second novel and as a birthday celebration, I’m giving away a signed paperback. For a chance to win (US only) tell me about your favorite book festival or independent bookstore.