Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello authors. I'm Joanne Morrell, children's and young adult fiction writer and author of short nonfiction for authors. Thanks for joining me for the Hybrid Author Podcast, sharing interviews from industry professionals to help you forge a career as a hybrid author both independently and traditionally publishing your books. You can get the show notes for each episode and sign up for your free Author pass over at the Hybrid Author website to discover your writing process, get tips on how to publish productively, and get comfortable promoting your books at www.
Let's crack on with the episode.
[00:00:43] Speaker B: Hello authors. I hope you're all keeping well in whatever part of the world you reside and listen to the podcast in. Today's interview is with Alejandra Martinez on finding your voice, blending culture, community and heart in Contemporary Fiction and WeChat. Her inspiration to write suburban setting, Latinx culture, Salsa in the suburbs and what it means for her personally approaching writing about cultural identity in a way that feels authentic and accessible, especially for readers who may not share the same background. Family, food and community are central themes in Salsa in the Suburb and how these elements drive Alejandra's characters and shape the heart of her story. Alejandra's advice to writers who want to tell stories rooted in their own culture or heritage while also reaching a world audience and much more so my author adventure this week. So I am a bit nervous about the whole process, but it was fine last time I had it two years ago and the only side effects I had was that night I was really shivery like flu like symptoms and it was only for that evening and then the next day I was absolutely fine and constant energy for, you know, for two years. Clearly. It's so common though. Absolutely so common. Everybody I've spoken to, you know, some people are yearly for iron infusions, some people are given their children iron tablets to get their iron back up. You know the lady who actually took the blood, she was talking about her child. It's so common. And my daughter also was a bit low on iron at one point as well. So yeah, very, very common for. For losing stuff. So. And yeah, I have been freestyle writing, which I had a. It was like a sentence kind of come to me, like a prologue or something. The other rather than make sense of what project it could be for or what the story was for, you know, in terms of where it would sit in my business plan or. Yeah, just in any kind of professional capacity. I just thought about it, wrote it down and I'm actually just going to freestyle where it takes me, if it takes me anywhere or it was literally just a sentence to write it out for that thought for the day. Because, you know, I started out writing as someone who was imaginative and inspired by things and I ideas. And it's not the best way to write, I think, when you're trying to finish a work quickly or whatnot. But it certainly was a freeing way to work. Just the fly by the seat of your pants. Discovery writers people call it not plotting, just seeing where it takes you. But you know, it also takes a long time to write like that. I just feel like with this, like that, free flow writing. And I know a lot of people do that as a practice. They sit down and they do morning pages where they just scribble out stuff and there's all sorts of things like that. I don't even want to set up a practice like that or anything. I just want to free flow ideas or things that sort of come to me make them freeing. They don't have to be part of this business, like just enjoy the process of it. Because I feel like I'm really missing that. Like I'm missing writing in general. If you're listening to the podcast weekly, you know that I'm trying to carve out more time to write. They're not bad processes. But when I sit down to work, I immediately go to podcast stuff or admin and then it takes a lot of the day. So in my little schedule timetable, writing is scheduled in there first, but I'm not doing that first because I am now in a habit where podcasts come first and all the people I need to respond to with like my emails and things are flying out as well. You can create habits, you know, they're not hard to do, it's just hard to keep them going. They say that you create a habit in 30 days. There's been habits that I've had in the past that I've broken and some habits that I would like to still break. But yeah, so I'm looking forward to having some fun, just playing with things that are coming to mind and seeing what happens really. From a non professional writing place. From a professional writing place. I still haven't quite made my mind up on what, what I want to be doing. I think in a business sense, it makes more sense to finish the formats of the writer, the hairdresser and the nurse and move on to the second book in that series. But that young adult fiction book still still calls to me. I was talking in one of the episodes last week about writing a couple of pages, you know, like a short story, telling myself the story of that because there's lots of plot holes and things to work out. And then, you know, you go back into the actual work and you show to others rather than you tell yourself the story show to others. And I did do that. I did do that. And it felt like it was just the same stuff that was sort of coming out though, not really, not really solving anything. So I hope everybody who's listening's writing is going well. And if you, if not, then, you know, I can concur.
[00:05:41] Speaker C: It's tough.
[00:05:42] Speaker B: Sometimes I feel like I don't want to force myself to have to write. I really don't. I want to go back because I love it dearly and I enjoy it. I'm missing it, but I'm missing how I felt about it in the beginning, which was the fun, the art, the joy of it, just for no gain at all. Just that I had an idea and that I was going to turn it into a book. And I proceeded to do so for the next year and then I went to send it to a couple of publishers and I moved on to the next story. And I was excited in that sense. And it wasn't about, you know, it was a little bit about getting it out there, but also it wasn't as well. I'm writing for me. How hybrid are you? So I'm putting together a hybrid author checklist which will become available as part of my free author pass. So the author pass that I offer on my website, which is to sign up for you get a PDF document of this free author pass, which sort of defines hybrid authorship and this needs to be updated. So I created this probably about four years ago and it's really just a rundown of expertise from the traditional and self publishing side writing routines, all things like that. But certainly since that the podcast has been running and the term hybrid author has been coined off into so many different directions. And now we're really deep diving into what it does mean to be a hybrid author. I need to update this document for sure and that'll go out to the mailing list that have already got it as a new updated PDF type thing checklist is going to be included which will be, you know, it will cover things like publishing options, revenue streams, creative expansion, platform and marketing rights and licensing and career development. So all ways that you can be more hybrid in your hybrid author career.
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[00:08:34] Speaker C: Alejandra Martinez is an Australian Uruguayan writer based in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales. She migrated to Australia at the age of seven with her family as a military dictatorship was about to take over the country. Her stories have been published in a range of anthologies and magazines, including Best Australian Stories, Black in Girls Talk, and Puente's Review. She has also written short plays, one of which was performed at the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta. An extract from her debut novel, Salsa in the Suburbs, was the winner of the 2022 Newcastle Writers Festival Fresh Inc. Emerging Writer Prize.
[00:09:13] Speaker B: Wow. Welcome to the Hybrid Author Podcast.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: Alexandra hi.
[00:09:17] Speaker D: Great to see you.
[00:09:19] Speaker C: We're so excited to have you and to chat about your new book. Can you tell us how you came to be a writer?
[00:09:26] Speaker D: I guess I' always been into writing, ever since I was even at school. I used to do little novels at school and I was always writing short stories. I always like to write stories about people that are marginalized. Stories you don't often hear, like working class migrants, older people, so people that don't often get a look in literature. And then, for example, I might just see something and then it might spark a story. So that's it's a way, I guess it's a way also of processing the world and giving it meaning. A long time ago I wrote a story called the President's Bodyguard, and that was sparked by going to a cafe and the waiter told us he had been a bodyguard for the president in Lebanon. So that sparked a whole story about how he got there, why we were there, and a whole range of, you know, different issues around the Atmosphere of the cafe. So I guess being a writer, he's seen an idea, putting it into words, processing what happens in the world and telling stories for people to enjoy.
[00:10:27] Speaker C: I love that and I can connect with that. And I do feel, you know, writing a lot of people say it's quite spiritual or catharsis. Like you never know when something's going to just connect with you or spark an imagination to take you off to your own mind and different things, isn't it? It's quite special.
[00:10:43] Speaker D: It is, yeah.
[00:10:44] Speaker C: Oh, well, that's fantastic. Well, your debut novel we're here to talk about today. So exciting. Salsa in the Suburbs, which, you know, it's a beautiful blend of Latinx culture and suburban setting, which the title offers up. So what inspired you to write this story? And, you know, what's the personal meaning it holds for yourself?
[00:11:04] Speaker D: Okay, this was another thing that sparked an idea from something that happened a while back. A friend who. Whose Indian background, mother died and her father and his, I think it was late 60s, early 70s, started dating again. And it was a real shock for the family.
And I also. And then I wondered whether that would happen. What would. Like when my mother died, I wondered, oh, would my father ever do that? And definitely not. That was something he was never going to do. But I started to explore what would happen if someone in a Latin American culture like my own did start to date someone. What would it look like? What would it happen? What elements would be brought in in terms of the family's reaction, the community's reaction, and what would it look like for that character? Like an older migrant man. So I wanted to look at some of that.
[00:11:54] Speaker C: Can you tell us a bit about the story as well? Like, you know, obviously that's definitely the themes and things like that, but that.
[00:11:59] Speaker D: Was one of the themes you definitely like throughout the story. But I also wanted to bring in other things too. Like one of the characters has a mental illness, lives in an anxiety disorder, which I myself have an anxiety disorder. And I really wanted to put that into a book as well, because we. That's another thing. We don't often get real, authentic stories about people living with mental illness and how people function in society, because often it's not about, oh, there's an episode and you recover. It's about managing that and how you do that and how you can live a full life and manage a mental illness at the same time. And I wanted to explore that in the novel too. And then the other thing I wanted to explore in this novel was the two Sisters, one of them really clings to her culture and the other one, it moves right away from it.
[00:12:47] Speaker C: Right.
[00:12:48] Speaker D: So I wanted to look at how people respond to the heritage they've been brought up with and why we've got that. Some people really need it and identify with it and that's who they are. And then there's other people that just do not want. They want to move away from it and find their own identity because it's almost like a burden because of the intergenerational trauma and what it all brings.
So I just wanted to look at those two sides as well. And that's done through the two sisters, Lola and Betty.
[00:13:18] Speaker C: Absolutely. It sounds like that builds on the conflict as well, doesn't it? If you've got one very culturally mindset and then the other one trying to get away. I can just imagine the clashes that happen in the novel.
[00:13:28] Speaker D: Yeah. Because one is like a hippie that lives in Mullumbimbi, so totally opposite to what the western Sydney that they've been brought up in, while the other one feels she marries someone from the same background and really wants to maintain that culture because she felt that was ripped away from her when she came to Australia.
[00:13:46] Speaker C: Oh, my goodness. Did you do. Obviously the story's extremely close to your heart. Did you do a lot of research, though, in terms of like, you know, the dating side, especially for the older generation or. Yeah. What was the research like?
[00:13:58] Speaker D: I didn't do so much research on the dating side because I made it like it was in a newspaper. It was like it was set in 2012, so a few years back before a lot of Internet dating happened. And also because he's older, he wasn't really using a computer, it was made more in a newspaper. He's able to open up the newspaper and read it out. And when he talks to his daughter. Daughter about it, he's actually quite proud that he's in the newspaper and his ad is in there and he's quite excited when some of the women start ringing him.
[00:14:29] Speaker C: What kind of tone have you given it? Like quite. Have you kept it quite light hearted or. Because it's quite strong themes or.
[00:14:36] Speaker D: I think it does a bit of both. While there are themes that are quite heavy, there are moments when it is light hearted and humorous bits as well.
So it interwinds.
[00:14:47] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And obviously you're writing, as I said, from the heart and you've had this experience, but was there a specific way you've approached the writing to write about cultural identity that makes it feel authentic and accessible, especially for readers who don't come from that background. Is there things that you've included?
[00:15:06] Speaker D: What I wanted to do, I think, is bring readers into this cultural background, especially because it's in Australia. There's not really a lot of books written. I don't know any actually, about Latin American community and families. So at the same time as bringing readers into our background, I also wanted to have universal themes. Because while I think we all struggle with issues of identity at times in our life, whether it's as an adolescent or as older, or sometimes when a partner dies or separating, we look at who are we now that we don't have this in our life? I wanted to have those universal themes, too, around aging, identity and belonging, like who is our tribe? Where do we belong? I think that's actually broader than the cultural aspects, while at the same time setting it within that cultural. Those. Yeah, those. That cultural setting. I think its readers can feel that they can identify at the same time as being as. Yeah. As finding out about a different cultural background.
[00:16:05] Speaker C: I like that. It sounds like you've sort of subtly weaved it in there, which is nice. Absolutely. Definitely. I feel universal themes everybody can connect with and things. So the actual writing of the work, did it take you? How long did it take you to bring the story to light?
[00:16:19] Speaker D: It took many years, to be honest. I started it off and then I'd send it off like I hadn't finished it. I'd send a chapter here or there somewhere. Nothing really happened with it. So I'd put it away for a couple of years and then I'd pull it out again, do a bit, put it away. And then when I finally sent a section off to the Newcastle Writers Festival, the Fresh Ink Pride, and then when I won the prize, that really gave me the confidence to keep going. And it also gave me, yes, there is something in that story worth telling. So then I actually sat down and wrote the whole thing and spent a lot of time and became quite serious about it and wanted to finish it and get it published.
[00:17:00] Speaker C: Fantastic. And do you have a group of writer friends or a writer's group that you send it to for critiquing?
[00:17:05] Speaker D: I just have friends, but I don't really have a writer's group, but I send it. It's something I need to find, but I haven't got that at the moment. No.
[00:17:13] Speaker C: Yeah. Not necessarily. No.
[00:17:14] Speaker B: Everyone's different.
[00:17:15] Speaker C: Some people thrive in that situation, and sometimes it can be quite stifling for others to have the work critiqued. By lots of people. And sometimes people can come back with different things and you need to take it with a pinch of salt. Personal preference, possibly.
[00:17:27] Speaker D: Yeah. Well, I have found that in the past different people tell you different things and then you're like, oh, do I do this one? Do I do that? And then really you've got to just stop and think, well, what works best for me?
[00:17:38] Speaker C: That's it. Well, you've already mentioned some of the characters in the book, you know, the sisters and the things like that. Can you elaborate with all the things going on, what other characters are in there that shape the heart?
[00:17:48] Speaker D: The main characters are Juan, who's the older man, and there's three sisters, but one of them lives in Italy. So she's sort of just. We just hear from her ringing, see how the family's going. And then there's the other two sisters and the other character. But I don't speak, I don't tell, I only tell her story through how Juan sees it.
Is Frances, who's an aboriginal woman, that is the woman that Juan eventually starts dating and falls in love with.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: Right.
[00:18:16] Speaker D: And he meets her by chance walking his dog in the park and he's really able to relate to her because they both have come from a background of. They've both come from where they've been poor, they've had to be survivors. They're both resilient and strong and they both have a really optimistic and have a love of life. So they identify, I think on those grounds.
[00:18:38] Speaker C: Oh, it's lovely. And I love the sort of celebration of even though he's putting himself out there in the newspaper for dating, it seems to be just the everyday, normal human connection that he seems to pick up. In the end, it gives you a bit of hope of going through a divorce. It's been happening for a couple years, last few years and wasn't interested in dating at all. I remember going out to a pub and seeing that there was the younger generation, which was 18 to 20 year olds, and then there was your older over 40.
There was a massive gap in the middle, but people were still kind of picking up the old fashioned way. I've never done online dating or anything like that and to be honest, I know a lot of people who have met online but it just all seemed a bit scary. So I was happy to see that people can still meet the natural way out and about and have a conversation and get a feeling if they. They like someone rather than, you know, this, all this online stuff or through that way. So I like that. That's celebrated and I like. It's told from, you know, older generation as well.
[00:19:37] Speaker D: Yeah.
You know, I didn't want to go into the online dating stuff.
[00:19:40] Speaker C: There's some horror stories as well. I've got a friend who's done some online dating and she's so funny. You have to write this down. It's absolutely hilarious. There's good and bad points you can meet naturally. Go on a bad date and have that story as well. It's not just online. Isn't it?
[00:19:55] Speaker D: I've got a friend who's actually met her partner on online dating. They're happy together.
[00:19:59] Speaker C: For Sam, it's maybe an easier way, you know, talking about her anxiety character, the anxiety of meeting someone face to face. Online dating might take that out a bit, that you can actually just sort of have a scroll and be like, oh, they look all right, or they don't. Dating is quite anxious when you don't know the person. So.
[00:20:15] Speaker D: Yeah. And I think. And then definitely then introducing them to the family, which he was very. In the novel, he's very. He's very worried about doing that.
[00:20:24] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:20:25] Speaker D: Yeah. And that takes a long time.
[00:20:27] Speaker C: But it's not just coping with identification. He actually, you know, the story romances through to meeting family and going on.
[00:20:35] Speaker D: It does, yes. One of his daughters, the one that lives in Mullumbimbi, that's the hippie.
They're on a road trip. He and Frances are on a road trip and they stop at her house.
And then. That's a real shock for the daughter. She just cannot cope with Frances. She does not understand why her father's with this woman. It's not the woman that they expected when they put the ad in the paper. They expected a Latin American woman who'd be similar him.
That's not what happened.
And then the other daughter, she actually ends up agreeing to go to Frances's house for dinner and meets her properly and gets to understand and see how they relate and what the connection is there. So she's a lot more accepting, I guess, because she's been able to probably. She's gone through a lot herself and he's able to see things more. He's able to be more accepting of what a father's going through.
[00:21:31] Speaker C: Yeah. Oh, no, that's amazing. And it's hard enough bringing someone home, isn't it? But then when you've got all those other elements added on, that's.
So how have you found. How's the publishing, you know, adventure been for you and marketing the book and things. How have you found that aspect?
[00:21:46] Speaker D: Yes, it's very daunting, but exciting at the same time.
So I had the launch on the weekend and that was amazing. It was really lovely to have so much support at the launch and. And people buying the book and. Yeah, so that was great. And now the next step is promoting it online at events, doing some reading, hopefully at writers festivals. We'll see how it goes from here.
[00:22:13] Speaker C: Amazing. And do you feel quite natural to go out there and promote it as a. As an author?
[00:22:18] Speaker B: Had a bit of author themes or anything around it.
[00:22:22] Speaker D: It's something I probably. I feel like I'm happy with the book and I'm happy. I want people to read the book, but the speaking is something I've got to work on.
[00:22:29] Speaker C: No, you're an.
[00:22:31] Speaker D: I think that's something that. Yeah. Needs to. Yeah. I mean, I think the book speaks for itself. There's a lot of themes in there that people will relate to.
[00:22:38] Speaker C: Absolutely. No, it sounds fantastic and you've shared so much already. But do you have any advice to give to writers who want to tell their own stories or tell stories rooted in culture or heritage or things that have sparked imagination for them to reach a broader audience?
[00:22:53] Speaker D: I think it's really important to tell stories of different cultural backgrounds because we live in a multicultural society and it's good to see the diverse stories in our literature. We want to see those stories. But I think it's really important when you bring people into a different cultural background to have those universal themes too, because you want people to relate to the characters on various levels. So if it's not on a cultural level, they might be relating on a different level or because of different aspects of the character. So I think whenever you're writing a. It's important to try and incorporate some of those universal themes that affect all of us.
[00:23:32] Speaker C: That's great. And what about.
It's always a question that comes up, but say, for example, like myself, wanting to write a character from your background, do you encourage people to write different backgrounds if they're not firsthand telling it.
[00:23:45] Speaker D: Something like that, you would need to do a bit of research. I think you'd want to be speaking to people who are from that background and find out a little bit more. It depends what type of character you want to write. Are they going to be a main character, secondary character?
I guess it depends on the depth of the character depth. And then you'd want to really do your research. If you're looking at a culture from a different background, which is why I didn't want to go into the character, the Aboriginal character in my book either. I wanted to have it from.
I wanted to have it from the viewpoint of my characters, how they see what's happening in Australia as well and what happened to Aboriginal people through colonisation.
[00:24:23] Speaker C: Yep, yep, that makes absolute sense. And that's a wonderful advice. Thank you so much. And I know that our listeners are dying to know where they can purchase the book on and offline.
[00:24:33] Speaker D: You can buy it at like most bookshops have it. You can order it online, you can go to Puncher and Watman's website and order it from Punchman, the publisher from their website. Or you can order it from your local bookshop.
[00:24:46] Speaker C: That's amazing. Well, thank you so much, Alejandra. You've shared some amazing insights to the books. Congratulations. It sounds fantastic.
[00:24:53] Speaker D: Thank you so much, Joanne. It's been lovely to talk help to you, so thank you for having me on.
[00:24:57] Speaker C: Thanks again.
[00:25:04] Speaker B: So there you have it folks, the truly inspiring Alejandra Martinez. Next time on the Hybrid Author Podcast we have Dimitri Kakmi on Resurrecting the Past, writing Gothic fiction for modern readers. Dmitry Kakami was born to Greek parents in Turkey. He is the author of the Dictionary of Gadfly under the pseudonym of the Sozzled Scribbler, the Door and other uncanny tales, Motherland and When We Were Young as Editor. Motherland was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards in 2008 and is published in England and Turkey. His short story the Boy by the Gate was first published in England in the New Gothic and reprinted in Australia in the year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2013. Haunting Matilda was published in the horror anthology Cthulhu Deep down under and shortlisted by Best Fantasy Novella in the Aurelius AW 2015. His essays and short stories appear in various Australian and overseas anthologies. Dmitri has more than 30 years experience in various aspects of publishing, including editing, lecturing, teaching and mentoring. For 15 years he worked as a senior editor at Penguin Books. As well, he was secretary and Fiction and non fiction co editor of the online literary journal Kalopy X. Dimitri's monthly column 101 Horror Movie Nights appears in the US based Drunken Odyssey literary website. Dimitri Kami is a highly respected writer in the literary and speculative fiction fields. His forthcoming Gothic novel, the Woman in the well, has been described by one editor as an astonishing mix of literary horror and folklore. Dmitri is currently working on the psychological crime novel the Perfect Room. He lives in Melbourne. Truly outstanding conversation with Dmitri. I wish you well in your author adventure this next week. That's it from me. Bye for now.
[00:26:50] Speaker A: That's the end for now. Authors, I hope you are further forward in your author adventure after listening and.
[00:26:55] Speaker C: I hope you'll see.
[00:26:56] Speaker A: Listen, next time, remember to head on over to the Hybrid Author website at www.hybridauthor.com to get your free author pass. It's Bye for now.
