Another fragment in the rough of Sound Fidelity, the novel I’m trying to write for NaNoWriMo. This skips ahead several chapters from the last fragment I had posted. At the end of this chapter, Sebastian mentions a song by Duncan Dhu. It’s this one:
Some of the lyrics say:
A whistle crosses the town
And you can see a rider
Who departs with the wind
As he screams that he will not return
And the soil here is of another colour
The dust does not allow you to see
Of course, in the novel, Meche is returning to Mexico after many years abroad. So, you know, foreshadowing. Or past shadowing, since the novel jumps between past and present at several points. One or the other.
I am co-editing the anthology Fungi together with Orrin Grey in 2012. Guidelines and open submission periods are not posted yet. There will be a slush period, so keep your eyes on this blog for some talk of what Orrin and I like and see in the slush as February rolls into town.
Not much progress on NaNoWriMo due to work on Future Lovecraft, which is out in December and has a launch party in Toronto. Well, launch tea thanks to Toronto Public Library and the Merril Collection. There will be a pre-sale for this anthology at the end of the month. It’s your chance to get the book with a bit of a discount. There will also be an Innsmouth ‘bundle’ with Historical Lovecraft and Future Lovecraft sold together with a bit of a discount, or all the Innsmouth titles for a certain amount.
I am still looking for more people to read/comment/yell about Candle in the Attic Window either on their blog, Amazon or Goodreads. It has been getting some good reviews, but alas, it could use some help.
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has officially started and I’m participating with Sound Fidelity, my novel about 1980s Mexico City and music. You can read more about it in this previous post. This is about three chapters into the novel and it is 1988. Meche is listening to “Persiana Americana” (which I had already mentioned)
Excerpt after the cut.
I wanted to briefly discuss the Latin American soap opera, the famous telenovela. Since I’m writing about the 80s, I’m spending a lot of time looking through material from that time period. And thanks to the magic of YouTube whole soap operas are available online. In poor quality, but it’s a chance to brush up on the clothes, hairstyles and programming that enthralled a nation.
Some of the more famous soap operas from this period include Cuna de Lobos and Rosa Salvaje, but I like Valeria y Maximiliano better (since it aired in 1991, it technically does not qualify as 80s, but I’m putting it in that category because it still had much of that decade in it). I was watching some episodes (and starring at the perm and shoulder pads) and though I remembered the soap opera riffed off Gone With the Wind, I didn’t realize how blatantly it stole from the source material.
Essentially, the novel transplants the action from the 19th century American South to Mexico City. It keeps not only the basic plot elements (Valeria wants to get it on with the guy who married her sweet, sickly sister, while being pursued by an older, dashing man) but even steals whole bits of dialogue! I kid you not. Basically the screenwriters found a translated copy of Gone With the Wind and ripped out a couple of pages, underlined some stuff with markers, and asked the actors to read it. Sure, they changed, fluffed and added some stuff, but there are scenes which are right out of that book, like Maximiliano finding Valeria with a photo of the Mexican version of Ashley.
Of course, Mexican soap operas are not always bastions of originality but Valeria y Maximiliano takes the cake when it comes to sneaky adaptations of books (Yo Compro Esa Mujer is the Count of Montecristo, if the Count’s son was avenging him). Most interesting, of course, is its coyness, which, though suitable for the time period, today seems Hays-era like. For example, Valeria and Maximiliano barely get to smooch each other and, despite the dialogue they are spouting, never engage in premarital sex.
Juan Ferrara, who plays Maximiliano, was a suitably debonair actor, though I doubt they’d cast someone with such a large age gap against a twenty-something actress nowadays. He was probably hitting fifty by the time the soap aired and his romantic counterpart was in her twenties, making for some Sabrina-like scenes.
My favourite soap operas were always the supernatural ones like La casa al final de la calle (The House at the end of the Street) El extraño retorno de Diana Salazar (The Mysterious Return of Diana Salazar) and to some extent the period pieces.
Because telenovelas have a finite end (they last maybe half a year), the way the narrative is built on screen is very different from the type of programming American and Canadian viewers are used to. It is, really, more like an extended mini-series. This allows the writers to know where they’re headed instead of engaging in antics of Lost proportions. It also means that telenovelas are remade every couple of decades with new performers, because who wants to throw away a perfectly good plot? Salma Hayek, for example, became famous after starring in a remake of a soap called Teresa.
Anyway, lets spin back twenty years in time. Here is what people were wearing and watching. See if you can determine the plot just by looking at these. First Valeria y Maximiliano (though you already know what that one is about. But try to spot Maximiliano and Valeria, as well as Mexican Ashley, Mexican Melanie and other characters).
Here is Teresa:
And here, El extraño retorno de Diana Salaza:
NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) begins tomorrow. I am going to participate with Sound Fidelity, my novel about 1980s Mexico City and music. The cover standing here is make-believe.
Sound Fidelity takes place in Mexico City, 1989. A trio of outcast teenagers discover they can cast spells using music. My description at the NaNoWriMo site reads:
Teenaged Meche loves music, a genetic trait inherited from her loud-mouth, alcoholic DJ father. She spends her time with fellow outcasts Daniela and Sebastian, spinning their records and yearning for the day when she can turn into an insect à la Kafka just so she doesn’t have to go to school. Meche’s looking for the magic described in books and verified as real by her grandmother. But teenagers in Mexico City don’t get to be witches, don’t get to wield magic, and they certainly don’t get to go out with Joaquin Palomo, the cute boy at school who wouldn’t be caught dead with Meche.
But, then it happens: Meche discovers that the key to her problems is music. You can actually cast spells with songs. Meche and her friends have a chance to fix everything in their lives. Piece back together their broken families, change their status as non-entities and get a love life.
Magic, however, has a way of going wrong and not everyone gets to sing a happy song.
The music the characters listen to is very important since…well, everything revolves around music, so there are lots of 80s bands.
Part of the action also takes place twenty years later, when Meche is flying back to Mexico City for the funeral of her estranged, alcoholic father. She is anxious about returning to her neighbourhood because it will bring back bad memories. Eventually, she runs into her old neighbors and Sebastian, the best-friend she stopped talking to two decades before. How and why he betrayed her when they were teenagers becomes an important question.
Point-of-views characters include Meche, Sebastian, Daniela and Meche’s father, a DJ.
I leave you with “Persiana Americana” by Soda Stereo, which launched them to fame in 1986.
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