Karen Sandler

Category: Uncategorized

  • A Visit to Oaxaca, Mexico

    My husband and I had a marvelous trip to Oaxaca, which is nearly the southernmost state in Mexico (only Chiapas stretches farther south). We were there for a week with five days of touring and a couple days on our own. The scenery is stark (it’s very desert-like), but the city of Oaxaca and the Oaxaqueños who live there are wonderful.

    I love murals and so many of the ones I saw were brilliant. These were indoors in a shopping area.

    While we were there, the state of Oaxaca celebrated Dia de la Samaritana, or Good Samaritan’s Day, which falls on the fourth Friday of Lent. In addition to the decorations everywhere, people gave out “agua fresca” (fresh water), which is water flavored with fresh fruits, herbs, flowers and other ingredients. We had horchata that day. The “Papel Picado” (the paper decorations) were so lovely.

    Another part of Oaxacan culture that I absolutely fell in love with were the alebrijes (ah-lay-bree-hiss). These are carved figurines made of wood that are painted bright colors in fantastical designs. The ones below are from a museum exhibit of the work of Manuel Jiménez. He popularized the wooden alebrijes.

    I bought way too many alebrijes at the artisan markets. Some were for family, but most were just for me. This one with the cat family sitting on a bench is my favorite. <heart emoji>

    I have a ton more pictures (like of the wedding parade we became impromptu members of), but it would take many more newsletters to show them off. I don’t want to put you all to sleep, lol. Suffice it to say, it was a fabulous trip.

    Some of you reading this might remember my science fiction trilogy, Tankborn, Awakening, and Rebellion. I now have a new series planned that’s a spin-off of the world of the Tankborn books. The first book, Mishalla’s Courage, is published and the second book, Pheno’s Treachery, will be available later this year.

    Click here to order Mishalla’s Courage as an eBook for the device of your choice. It’s also available at that link as an audio book and as a print book edition with color illustrations.

    I’m planning five more novellas, all featuring new characters introduced in Mishalla’s Courage. So you’ll want to get started now with the first book.

  • Innate Identity vs. Imagining the “Other”

    Rebellion Final Cover medWith all three books of the Tankborn trilogy completed and released into the wild, I’m doing as a writer does and working on my next project. Not to give too much away, but it’s a dark fantasy YA with a multi-cultural cast. No elves/orcs/wizards, but my own invented world. I’m on solid ground with my world-building, because it’s not based on anything except my own fertile imagination.

    But what about creating that multi-cultural cast, or more importantly, my main character? She’s Alejandra, a 16-year-old, 2nd generation Mexican-American girl who’s Catholic and lives in Reno, Nevada. She and her mom aren’t below the poverty line by any means, but they struggle a bit financially. She’s not a super-genius, but smart enough to get a scholarship if she works hard.

    Some of the cultural/identity elements of the character:

    • Mexican American
    • Catholic
    • Speaks a little Spanish (but not enough to carry on a conversation with her abuelita)
    • Lives in/grew up in Reno
    • Her family is little lower on the socio-economic scale
    • Very close to her mom
    • Hard worker
    • Not one of the popular kids

    Some of my personal cultural/identity elements

    • Russian-Austrian-Italian-German-American
    • Catholic raised, Jewish heritage
    • Speak quite a bit of Spanish (I could carry on quite a credible conversation with Alejandra’s abuelita)
    • Grew up in Southern California/live in NorCal
    • Have relatives in Reno & have visited there often
    • My family was middle-class, but we went through some rough financial difficulties
    • I was very close to my mom
    • I was a very hard worker in school
    • Most definitely not one of the popular kids

    Based on who I am, how well can I get into this character’s head? How authentically can I write her identity, her culture?

    It might seem like I’ve got it covered since there’s quite a lot of overlap in our life experience. But there’s a very key area missing–she grew up Mexican-American, and I grew up as a white American.

    People are people, you might say. We have more in common than we have differences. Absolutely. But if I want to write an authentic character, one with a different core identity than mine, who grew up immersed in a world different than mine, I can only imagine so much. And it’s possible that what I “imagine” about the character will come from my own ingrained stereotypes that will worm their way into my writing.

    Rosary-sSo what do I not have to imagine? What have I lived? I’ve lived the Catholic upbringing. Catholicism is so rooted inside me that to this day I can’t walk inside the church without reaching for the holy water to dip and make the sign of the cross. Even though I haven’t attended Mass in years, I immediately feel comfortable inside a Catholic church, like I’m home.

    By the same token, I often feel out of place during services at other Christian churches. And although I am Jewish by heritage from both sides of my family and am married to a Jewish man, I’m a complete fish out of water in a synagogue. I don’t know the prayers, in either Hebrew or English. I don’t know the songs. Judaism wasn’t part of my upbringing, so it didn’t get into my DNA like Catholicism did.

    I know what it’s like to be the unpopular outsider as a teenager. After all these years, that pain still lingers. I know what it’s like to work hard in school. I lived through difficult financial times when I was a kid, where my parents’ worries filled me with anxiety. I know what it’s like to be female, to sometimes be slighted because of my gender, and to sometimes fear men.

    But despite all that Spanish I learned over the years, despite living with many Hispanic neighbors in L.A., do I know what it means to grow up Mexican-American? No. Not in any gut way. I’m white, and I lived the white experience, with all its privilege and dominance, during a time when racism was far more accepted. I’ve experienced subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) bigotry and trivialization because of my gender. But it’s a white face I present to the world, and the world has treated me accordingly because of it.

    So how do I authentically write Alejandra? To some extent, I use my imagination, but in the end, I need some expert input. A friend has been giving me advice about the Spanish that is sprinkled throughout the book. And before the book ever sees the light of day, I intend to find a Mexican-American beta reader to vet my cultural references and make sure I haven’t let stereotypes creep in.

    Could I just decide to write only white characters in my books? I could. But I choose not to. And with that commitment to write diverse, comes the responsibility to make my absolute best effort to do it right.

  • Goals–Fear & Loathing

    Goal KittenThis week for Road Trip Wednesday, YA Highway asks, What are your goals for the new year–for reading, writing, or other? I gotta tell ya, this kind of question always terrifies me.

    It goes along with that equally frightening question, Where do you see yourself in five years? Luckily I’m not out there pounding the pavement looking for a job and so I don’t have to answer that one.

    The thing that’s so scary about goals is that I immediately fear I won’t be able to reach them. I’ll promise myself I’ll lose five pounds, and that bowl of ice cream will tempt me. I’ll declare I’ll read four books a month, and I’ll come up one short. It’s much easier to do things “unofficially,” that is, having the idea or notion or half-baked whatever that I might want to eat half as much ice cream next time I scoop up a bowl. And maybe I’ll count the number of books read without stating that this many reaches a goal.

    That’s not to say I can’t meet deadlines or finish tasks. I do that all the time. I have a few book deadlines in the upcoming year that I have to meet. But those aren’t really goals. To me, a goal might or might not happen, and let me tell you, these books have gotta happen. No choice there.

    So what is it about the word goal that makes me cringe, that makes me worry? What’s up with that, do you think?

    Well, whatever it is, let me put on my big girl panties and fess up to one goal I’d like to achieve. Here it is: I want to become more disciplined in my writing life. I’d like to accomplish that by resisting the allures and attractions of the Web and Internet when I should be writing. It is ever so much more entertaining to read blogs and tweets all day than it is to put words on a page.

    big-foot-wavingGulp. There, I said it. And I will work toward it, I promise. I will do my best to achieve that big, scary goal.

    How about you? What are your hopes for the new year?

  • Merry Christmas

    Christmas 2012b-sTo all who celebrate the holiday, I hope you have a blessed, joyful, family-filled day.

  • Who Are You (woot-woot)?

    Tankborn smlThis week, YA Highway asks the questions How do you decide on names? Would you ever name a character after a friend/family member/ex?

    Back when I was writing romances, I wanted everyday names for my characters. So I kept a baby names book near my computer. I’d flip through it for my hero’s or heroine’s name, looking for one that seemed to match the character’s personality. When I found the right name, a little bell would go off inside me. I could see the character that much more clearly.

    When I started writing the Tankborn series, I couldn’t use a baby name book anymore. The Tankborn trilogy is set hundreds of years in the future. To set the tone for the world, the names needed to be a little more exotic than what’s on offer in the naming books. Also, I had a multi-ethnic cast and I needed names that would suit them. So I had to rely on the Web, and sites that listed, for instance, Brahmin or Chinese or Zimbabwe given names and their meanings. Here’s one of my fave sites for finding international names.

    Kayla, the name of my main character in Tankborn, isn’t super unusual. At least it isn’t now. When I first came up with it, back when I was writing the movie script that later became Tankborn, I thought I’d made up the name Kayla. Not so much.

    When I wrote the first book, I did make up some of the names of other characters: Tala, Jal, Tanti, Quila. In real life, people make up names all the time for their children, why wouldn’t they in my future world? I used made up names mostly for GENs, sometimes for lowborns. And just as with Kayla, sometimes the names I thought were made up, that originated with me, were actually “real” names (Pia and Risa come to mind).

    For my trueborns, I used real names of various ethnicities. There’s Devak (Indian), my main male character, Devak’s friend, Junjie (Chinese), Devak’s father and mother, Ved (Indian) and Rasia, (Indian). Raashida (African), is an important character in Awakening, the upcoming follow-on to Tankborn.

    Do I ever use the names of real people in my books? Yes, although I don’t match the character to the real person. I just “borrow” the real name because I like it and it works for my book. I borrowed Zul (Devak’s great-grandfather) and Azad (Devak’s dead half-brother) from people I actually know.

    How about you? If you write, how do you come up with those character names? If you’re a reader, have you ever stumbled across a name that didn’t seem to fit the character, or a name that was absolutely perfect?