My special guest today is the talented Sandra Rodríguez Barron, author of the award-winning book La heiress del agua. Sandra was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to answer my questions. Welcome Sandra!
Her novel, La heiress del agua, won Best First Book in 2007 at The International Latino Book Awards and has been a top book club pick and one of Publisher’s Weekly ‘top picks’. Did you foresee such a success when you began writing the novel?
Yes and no. I had to make great sacrifices to allow myself to write and study writing, so I expected from the beginning that success would come quickly. On the other hand, I know that distinguishing yourself in any way as a writer is difficult and highly unlikely. So when I received these awards, I was in awe and grateful, but also relieved and validated.
Tell us a little about what made you decide to write this story. What was your inspiration for it?
First, personal rebellion: I find that Latin American culture can be superficial and inflexible in its expectations of girls and women. Emphasis is placed on physical beauty, social status, marriage, and family, but rarely on intellect, creativity, individuality, and legacy. The mother figure of my novel (Alma Borrero Winters) is not remotely interested in any of these standard feminine values that her family demands that she adopt. Her intelligence is not appreciated and her passion for science is treated as rebellion. The tragedy of the story has its roots in the moment in which this character compromises her values and marries someone socially acceptable to her parents, thus allowing himself to be trapped in a life that is contrary to the path suggested by her instincts. . The consequences are devastating for the entire family, especially for her daughter Monica. I wanted to point out that there is a danger of making women fit into a cultural mold that does not accept their natural talents and intelligence. Second, I wanted to present a balanced argument to the reader regarding class struggles in Latin America using the example of the civil war in El Salvador. I worked very hard to “walk the line” and leave it up to the reader.
When did you decide you wanted to be an author?
I announced that I would become a writer at the age of seven. It amazes me how long it took me to get back to that first self-awareness. I think most of us identify our life’s passion very early on. What happens in between, how we get lost, how we ignore who we are, is another story.
How long did it take you to write the novel? Are you a disciplined writer who writes every day?
La Heredera del Agua took me about a year and a half, working 5 to 8 hours a day. That was before I was a mom, so now it’s much harder to have more than 5 hours of uninterrupted time to write. Right now I’m deep into a novel, and yes, I write or review every weekday between 9 am and 2:30 pm Still, my home life is constantly changing and I teach writing sporadically. I am forced to be flexible.
His was the success story of a first-time author. Can you tell us how you searched for an agent/publisher and how long the editing and publishing process took?
Mine was a “textbook” scenario. I worked with it four ways: One, I bought a copy of The Writer’s Market Guide to Agents. I read it cover to cover, putting sticky notes on the agents who seemed to be compatible with my book. Two, I made a list of agents from novel recognition pages that seemed to be targeting a similar audience. Three, I asked former professors if I could use their names in my inquiry letters. I started sending the letters in alphabetical order. The rejections and “almost accepted” letters started pouring in. Then the fourth method was the winner: I discovered a web newsletter, “Latinidad,” geared toward Latino writers (published by the extraordinarily helpful and knowledgeable Marcela Landres). There were several publishers and agents listed as “Latino writers in search of.” I wrote to one of them, and she became my agent, Julie Castiglia of the Castiglia Literary Agency.
What is he working on now?
A novel due out in June 2010. The working title is The Islanders, but that could change. It is about five siblings who were once abandoned as babies in a motor boat off the coast of Puerto Rico that devastated it after the hurricane in 1979. Now thirty, one of them has an illness that makes him remember parts of his lost , pre-adoptive. childhood. Despite the fierce opposition of his brothers, he sets out to find his biological origins. For him, the search is a source of hope and healing; and one last chance to win back the love of the woman he once hurt. For his siblings, remembering is a much darker journey; one that will threaten their carefully constructed sense of family and shatter what they believe about who they are and how they ended up on that ship.