I snapped the above shot with my iPhone a couple of days ago. It's the San Pedro sunrise as seen through our bedroom window. I had been lying in bed for hours staring at walls, words loud inside my head. I knew it was time to finish my latest novel, Zero Bueno.Technically it's a novella. The word count is about 33K. The page count is 111. I do not recall when the title came to me but it's my favorite title of any book I've written. Pictured below (I know writers are obsessed with such things) is one of the scribbled pages of the rough draft and my favorite pen (the only pen I use, I order it in bulk each year), the Pilot Precise V5 Extra Fine Rolling Ball.
The words have been loud inside my head for quite some time. I put off writing the book for years because...life. Running a business and a household were my top priorities. Then somewhere along the way, I do not recall the exact year, I became obsessed with audio. I'm still obsessed with audio. Audio is easier (and more fun) to access. I create noise to drown out the words so crowded and incessant in my head. Also. Art. Space is limited in this upstairs flat I share with David so I just arrange pieces of paper on the coffee table and snap shots, which I edit using CanvaPro. I'll soon have 3K designs uploaded at Redbubble.Before Zero Bueno there was Fuckerbutt Happy Time, a novel I described as "field research disguised as fiction." I remember scribbling the rough draft in various notebooks in my studio apartment in San Antonio and in the guest cabin on my mother's ranch wearing footed Tinkerbell pajamas. I love the ending. It was a relief.
And before Fuckerbutt Happy Time there was Bullshit Rodeo, which was born in a butterfly journal in the Albuquerque Sunport in July of 2010. You can read the words but you will never see all the bones. You will never see all the blood. Spoiler alert: The dead butterfly did not make it to Heaven.
With Zero Bueno I am finally done with the blood and the bones. The restless ghosts of Texas and California can find some other bitch to haunt. Some other bitch can scribble it all down then type it up, tear her hair out strand by strand over the formatting and the uploading process, revise it a few times and promote the hell out of it on YouTube/Twitter/Blogger/Facebook/Instagram. Good luck and godspeed.
Muchas gracias and an infinity of love to David for believing in me, encouraging me, bullying me, reminding me, loving me, feeding me, finding me, fucking me...and for being my first reader, editor, publisher, reviewer, promoter. Yesterday he showed me the review he wrote for the poetry anthology (Sirens: Five Femme Fatale Poets) in 2008 when he was just a guy I was talking to on MySpace.
None of this seems real but I assure you it is. Someday a movie will be made if this planet lasts long enough. Vaya con dios, muchachos.
xxx Misti xxx
