Did The Monsters of Chavez Ravine hit the bestseller list? No. Did I make a lot of money publishing the urban fantasy novella? Hell no. Did I get all sweaty and clammy waiting for the first reviews to roll in? Oh yeah. By the little plumed hat of El Santo [...]
The Monsters of Chavez Ravine will always be my favorite “book child,” so I was thrilled to learn that it’s an International Latino Book Awards finalist for Best Novel Fantasy/Sci-Fi English. Empowering Latino Futures will announce the awards in October. Here’s why it’s such a big deal to me: 1. [...]
May 8, 1959 is a day that Rachel Cantu will never forget. It’s the day Los Angeles sheriff’s deputies forcibly evicted her family from their grandparents’ home in the Palo Verde neighborhood of Chavez Ravine. The media had turned out in force, so there are lots of photos from that [...]
My mother always wore her hair short. Really short. It looked fantastic on her with her high cheekbones and high-bridged nose. Then I was scrolling online and saw one of those clickbait galleries that show you what a famous person would look like today. Love those! My big takeaway is [...]
There is a character in my urban fantasy novella, The Monsters of Chavez Ravine, nicknamed Ripper. The residents of the old neighborhoods of Palo Verde, Bishop, and La Loma were big on nicknames. In photographer Don Normark’s stunning book, Chavez Ravine 1949: A Los Angeles Story, he includes two pages [...]
In my urban fantasy novella set in the hills above Los Angeles, a doctor from Chinatown makes several house calls to the injured residents living in Chavez Ravine. Chinatown is a little over one mile away, and less than five minutes by car without traffic. I don’t know how many [...]
My daughter asked if I planned to include a map for my urban fantasy novella, The Monsters of Chavez Ravine. The answer was no. But as soon as she said it, I thought it would be a good idea. While the characters and plot are fiction, the setting is real. [...]
While monstrous things happened to bring about the end of the neighborhoods of Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop, “The Monsters of Chavez Ravine,” is a work of fiction. The characters and creatures are the products of my imagination and while the backstory of the eminent domain evictions follows the [...]
Here it is! The cover for “The Monsters of Chavez Ravine,” an urban fantasy novella. Luckily, I have a graphic designer who talked me out of some pretty terrible ideas and with limited input, came up with a cover that captures what this book is about. A big thanks to [...]
My mother and her family lived in Chavez Ravine. It’s the place where Dodger Stadium now sits, just north of downtown Los Angeles. Before the bulldozers arrived, it was a tight-knit community of mostly working class Mexican American families. The Castaneda’s lived in the Palo Verde neighborhood on Bishops Road [...]
