I finished the first forty pages of Love, the title, back then, three days before Christmas in 2008. I started the book in English because I wanted Terry to be able to read it. He read it, then said that I should continue instead in Spanish. Too many ESL mistakes. The nerve!

I did continue writing in Spanish after the new year, but no more than a few pages. I went back to English. I had started the book in English and I would finish it in English, and I would have my monolingual boyfriend read it — that ruthless hairy man! One’s boyfriend should read one’s novels.

Months later, I moved to Santa Monica and I got a job in Venice. Soon Venice became the setting of the story, and when I learned about the beat poets at the Gas House Café, the late 1950s the time period.

The book changed its name to the The Witches of Windward Circle. Where did the title come from, I don’t know. I liked it because it illiterates — is that the word? Once again I have to leave my desk and interrupt Terry’s work with yet another ESL question… It alliterates, the title alliterates. The action didn’t take place near Windward Circle so I had to make some revisions in the plot. The Witches of the Linnie Canal didn’t sound as good.

It took me about five years to finish it. By the end, I realized I had to put the word Love back in the title. Then another year of editing and about six months more to find a publisher. Finally, the book is out. You can buy it in Amazon. And from the Publisher, Rare Bird Books, here. Amazon made the title even longer by adding “a horror farce” to it.

Terry read an early draft. He still hasn’t
read the last chapter, but he knows the end. I told him once while he was having a shower.

I’m still writing in English, now about a bookkeeper that kills. Murder has become a recurrent theme in my work. And I still have ESL problems; probably you’ll find a few errors here and there in these posts. Please ignore them. I cannot always ask Terry to leave his desk and come check what I wrote. He’s a good sport, but he has a day job.