What's up, FYAers! It's Monday, and I think we all know how I feel about that. BUT! Today is a very special Monday (no, not because I managed to make it through an entire day without meetings, and no, it's not because I don't find myself wishing I could contract some nasty flu virus that would give me an excuse to take three days off of work, which is what I wish for every Monday)!! Today is a Very Special Monday because the adorable, charming and enviable Ashley Hope Perez has dropped by to give us a little wisdom about writing her amazing new novel, The Knife and the Butterfly.
I reviewed The Knife and the Butterfly on Friday (and if you haven't read my review and commented, therefore entering yourself in a drawing to receive a free copy of the book, you are dumb. Go do that!), and I had to struggle not to turn the entire review into just a .gif of Lisa Frank unicorns bearing champ cans with Handel's Messiah playing in the background and Paula Deen popping up to say, "JUST READ IT, Y'ALL!" because THAT IS HOW MUCH I LOVED THIS BOOK.
Anyhooskies, when Ashley asked if we'd help her kick off her blog tour, we of course said "HELL YES AND CAN WE SEND YOU SOME CHAMPAGNE?" Then we remembered that she's spending her year in Paris, and we tempered our enthusiasm with a slight amount of seething jealousy and then emailed her weekly to ask her how many croissants she had consumed that day. (Actual fact.) But even though Ashley's living our dream right now, we're still pleased as punch to have her here, giving us some insight into her views about writing. Better yet, Ashley's writing about one of my biggest literary pet peeves! If only she'd send me some damn croissants! Take it away, Ashley! -- Erin
I know it's cheesy, but we had to take this photo to prove to our families that we have actually visited the Eiffel Tower.
How do I loathe thee, glossary? Let me count the ways...
Sorry, you caught me mid hate-fest. Hating against what? Glossaries of all things. I'll explain in a minute. But first, let me dish up an excerpt from my almost-released second novel, The Knife and the Butterfly. (It comes out on February 1, y'all...) It's Chapter 3, and the speaker is my male protag, Azael:
Me and Eddie were coming home from Peln's apartment when we saw cruisers outside our unit at the Bel-Lindo.
"La placa come to deport somebody's grandma," Eddie said, kicking a spray of gravel toward the cop cars.
"Come on, huevón!" I gave Eddie a shove. "If Pops ain't home, we can finish off his beers. Race you!" I took off running.
"Cheater!" he shouted, but there was no way he'd win anyway.
Eddie was older than me by a year and a half, but I was smarter by three. He'd only just dropped out and clicked in with MS-13 even though at sixteen he still wasn't done with ninth grade. School was a waste for us; I figured that out by the end of seventh grade. Better to work and send money out to our kid sister Regina in California. At least that way we was halfway good to somebody.
I was almost up the first flight of stairs when I heard Pops talking. I threw my arm back to stop fat-ass Eddie as he came up breathing hard behind me.
"What?" he asked, all stupid.
"Cállate, man, The pinche migra is right there."
I looked up through the railing and tried to sort out all the I.C.E. Flak jackets. Maybe that drunk-driving rap had to catch up to Pops sometime, but it wasn't like immigration had nobody worse to mess with. Child molesters all running free.
"But what about my kids?" Pops was saying. "I got three, all U.S. Citizens. Their ma, she's... I'm all they got."
"Child Protective Services will take care of them if there are no willing relatives." The cuffs clicked around our dad's wrists.
"Shit!" Eddie said. "I ain't just standing here while they do that!"
"Shut up and think, cabrón," I said, dragging him back down the steps and around to the side of the building. "We go over there, they're going to have our asses separated into foster shitholes, get it? We got to stay clear for now."
A second later the agents came down the stairs. We watched from the shadows as they pushed our pops into a cruiser. He didn't fight.
Eddie shook his head and kicked the side of somebody's busted-up Honda. He looked damn blubbery for a guy with a broken nose and a new tattoo blistering across his back. Our crew called him Etcher, but he'd always be fat-ass Eddie to me. Finally he pulled himself together. "Pinche pendejos. Guess it's a good thing Regina's in Cali with Abue. What are we gonna do? Hitch out there?"
"No way I want to spend my nights watching telenovelas with Grams," I said.
"Think we should call Beto and Roxann?"
"Hell, no. Tío Beto hates my ass."
"Entonces, qué? Can't stay in the apartment. They'll find us for sure. And without Pops, we ain't got the plata to pay for it anyway."
"We'll get our shit and clear out, then. This is our hood, we know our way around. CPS ain't going to care that much what happens to us."
We waited till the cruisers pulled out, then we ran back up the stairs, loaded up what we could carry, and hit the streets.
I know, I know, you're all ready to pop over to Amazon.com or your local indie and order you up some more The Knife and the Butterfly because you so want to see more of the gritty, complex world Azael lives in. Consider that your homework. But first you have to take a test.
Yes, seriously.
I'm not in the classroom full-time anymore, but (in case you were wondering) I was that teacher, the one who gives the pop quiz on the day you think, "Only a sadist or an evil genius would give a quiz today." For the record, I am an evil genius. And I am giving you a test in my guest post. Don't worry, though, it's multiple choice; you can totally handle it.
1. Based on the context, la placa probably refers to:
(a) a pee-wee baseball team
(b) the PTA
(c) the fire department
(d) the police
2. Cállate most nearly means:
(a) comb your hair, it looks terrible
(b) shut yourself up
(c) I dance on your mother's grave
(d) It's an off-brand of Clamato
3. Based on the context, a pendejo is anybody who:
(a) pisses you off
(b) acts like an ass
(c) doesn't do what you want
(d) all of the above
4. A telenovela is:
(a) a nighttime soap opera
(b) a sport played only in L.A.
(c) the first part of a musical
(d) like a cock fight but with pigeons
Okay, I know you did great. And I promise I wasn't being cruel to subject you to this. I just wanted to prove to you that---whatever your level of Spanish---you really don't need a glossary to read The Knife and the Butterfly. All you need is a big appetite for a story that will take you into dark places and show you a good dose of light, too.
Maybe I'm a little touchy about this, but that's because an otherwise gorgeous review from Kirkus Reviews had a bit about how The Knife and the Butterfly "could have benefitted from a Spanish glossary."
Really? I don't think so. I think a glossary would have been a hideous growth upon my lovely book. I mean, really, what screams to you "BORING" more loudly than a list of vocabulary defined in the back of the book?
I checked all the best books in the famous Shakespeare & Co bookstore in Paris, and NONE have glossaries.
And did you need a glossary to understand the excerpt? Let me answer that one for you: no, you didn't. You managed just fine on your own. Maybe you used those handy context clues we teacher types are always talking about ("pendejo"="asshole"=insult ---> Done!).
Or maybe you are type-A (like me) and you looked up even the words you knew just to make sure that they didn't have some secondary meaning or connotation that might change everything. (I definitely did that with the Spanish in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.... Just to be absolutely sure that meanings weren't different in Spanish Spanish versus the Mexican Spanish I know.)
But even then you were okay without some dweeby word list that would make the novel feel like a social studies textbook. Because nowadays there's this crazy thing called the Internet, and it's full of amazing sites like wordreference.com with language forums that will let you ask native speakers questions about usage, connotation, and any other linguistic particularity you could ever think of.
Here's my biggest gripe with glossaries: they thumb their noses at an author's word choice. If I just wanted to say "jerk," I would have done it in the novel. But instead, I want the reader to get at least a little of the texture of the characters' linguistic world.
A glossary would wholly unravel that texture.
NOT in my novel, thank you. If you ever find a glossary in one of my books, cover it in peanut butter and feed it to the wolves. (The glossary, I mean. Save the rest of the book.)
My only wolf cub, Liam Miguel, preparing in our Paris kitchen to keep the world safe from unnecessary glossaries.
If you want more glossary-free intensity and drama, check out all of The Knife and the Butterfly, available on Wednesday (February 1). And after you read it, holler at me in whatever language you like. Don't worry; I'll use context clues.
More interviews, excerpts, guest posts, and secrets (including two truths and a lie) coming throughout Ashley's The Knife and the Butterfly blog tour. See the full tour schedule here.
Check out Ashley's blog, follow her on twitter @ashleyhopeperez, or find her on facebook.
