Tales of Lost Southtown will be published in the summer of 2023 by FlowerSong Press. It is something of an epistolary novel comprised of 50 short pieces that have been woven together in a cohesive arc. The work is very much influenced by my time living in San Antonio (2004 through 2017). Bits of the work appeared over the years in various forms as short films, performance art presentations, published short stories, and even as a play (also titled Tales of Lost Southtown, produced by Jump-Start Performance Co. in 2014).

Before I had found a publisher for Tales of Lost Southtown, I wrote three books in quick succession that featured many of that work’s characters. These supernatural mystery novels are collectively called The Cucuy Club Chronicles. I self-published them in 2019.

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TUNNELS UNDER THE TOWER / THE MATTRESS DEVIL / NO BLOOD FOR CORN

A intriguing dynamic emerged between two of the characters in Tales of Lost Southtown (the narrator and his neighbor, Johnny). Their interactions made me think of Watson and Holmes: the chronicler and the investigator. In fact, one of “tales” of that book veered so close into the conventions of the detective genera that I decided not to included it as one of the Tales of Lost Southtown. Instead, I used it as the springboard adventure to begin the action of the first Cucuy Club book, Tunnels Under the Tower.

And thus was born the basic conceit of the series. Johnny Esparza runs the Cucuy Club, a blog he uses to record his investigations into the folktales peculiar to the American Southwest, particularly those connected to the Mexican-American communities. He is aided in these investigations by his friend Richard Taylor, a skeptical filmmaker. Their misadventures begin as simple interviews of people claiming to have had encounters with improbable beings or supernatural entities, and things eventually meander into even more implausible situations of escalating madness…that never loses an absurd and comedic quality.

I began Tunnels in November of 2017 as part of National Novel Writing Month. By December I had finished the first draft. Because of an unhealthy aversion to editing my prose, I decided to draft an outline for the second novel in the series. By January I had finished the first draft of The Mattress Devil. Still in editorial avoidance mode, I wrote a third Cucuy Club book, No Blood For Corn. The first draft of that one was done by February.

It was time to begin to edit.

However, my resistance only doubled. As a mode of procrastination, I wrote the first draft of a massive surreal scientific fiction trilogy. After 200,000 words of that project, I realized the absurdity of being surrounded by a mountain of unpolished novels, all languishing in a flabby early draft state.

So, the editing began. The torturous, mind-numbing process of trying to maintain an internal consistency, not of just one novel, but all three in the series.

But they are done. I, of course, had help. I commissioned the art work for the covers. I wheedled and begged my girlfriend to do a line edit. Wrangled my sister to proof read them. And then I taught myself the basics of Photoshop to design covers. I formatted the interiors. Loaded them up to Amazon. And I sat back to watch the money roll in.

Well, I’m still waiting on that last bit.

They are entertaining books. I’m proud of them. I described them, somewhere, as if Kinky Friedman had written The X-Files. Buy them. Read them. Review them. Tell your friends. Maybe, one day, I’ll write some more in the series.