Readers, friends, fans, family members, and people who subscribed/read this blog by some accident of Google: I have written a new book. Well, a 74,000 word manuscript to be exact. Yes, it involves soccer. No, it is not non-fiction. Rather, it is fiction. Here's the plot:

A young man named Manny from South Texas dreams of becoming a pro soccer player, but there's one big problem: he's undocumented. Still, he's sick of living in the RGV, so he and his best friend Hector head North. Manny's quest takes them from San Antonio to San Francisco, but just as he's about to sign a pro contract, a tragedy strikes that derails his plans. Even worse, his friendship with Hector falls to pieces.

I won't be too spoiler-y here, but the book has plenty of bilingual humor and straddles that weird nether region between sports narrative/multicultural fiction/literary fiction. The first half of the book is neat and tidy omniscient narrator, but when Manny's life falls apart, things get messy. A first-person voice emerges from the ashes, and tears down everything you thought you knew. One of the key subnarratives is how the Hispanic/Mexican-American community has dealt with LGBTQ members and that relationship has evolved in some ways but not others. I also make quite a few inside jokes at lower tier soccer in the US (lovingly of course). If you have played PDL, USL Pro, or NPSL, you're in for a treat.

So, a release date? Yeah, about that. I have just started the literary agent query letter/sample shuffle. I decided to focus on agents who have worked for authors I love and adore, give them time to say "umm, no thanks", then regroup and send out more query letters/samples. If you have any tips or insight or leads, hit me up. You will be a legend, an angelic matchmaker with a direct pass through St. Peter's gates upon your exit from this life.

Some folks have asked: para que? Yes, I independently published and promoted my first two non-fiction books. However, I am trying out the traditional route because 1) Agents do lots of cool stuff for you besides finding a publisher - for example. they know all the best dive bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn, 2) I want a publisher to do my battles with Amazon, 3) Ebooks are easy, but making and pushing paperbacks is not so easy, and 4) If a publisher focuses on the format, cover, and promotion of my book, I get more time to write!

That being said, I am not waiting around forever. If, say, in one year I don't have serious progress on the traditional agent/publication front, you can rely on me to Kickstart and independently publish this mofo. There's this story that Paolo Coehlo tried for almost a decade to get his first novel published - folks take that as a moral of "persistence." I've always thought - what if a milk truck had run over poor Pablo after year five? Chingao.

I'd rather run to the indie press Sergio de la Pava/Lone Ranger style and would be happy to live the life of Billy Gaddis: unknown to 99%, absolutely loved by a few, and brilliantly misunderstood.

I wrote about four preliminary short stories to get the main characters and personality dynamics right for the novel, and they are in the incubator/possibly getting published at some rad literary mags and sites. The world of fiction moves about as fast as investigative reporting, so, yawwwwwwwn. As always, I will disappear for two years and then suddenly overwhelm you with content. Or keep you in the loop. I haven't decided yet.