Help save the blues in Mexico City

Two years ago I wrote a blog post about Ruta 61, a blues club in the Colonia Condesa which was then celebrating its tenth anniversary. Unfortunately, with no fanfare, the owners of the building have closed the club and have booted Ruta from its home. The club's founder, Eduardo Serrano, is trying to raise 200,000 pesos to find a new space and get the necessary permissions to reopen. He's doing it through Fondeadora, a Latin American crowdsourcing website. I've donated. Ruta was the only blues club in this entire city of over 20 million. Click here to go to Fondeadora and give. It's a worthy cause, people. Give what you can.

Let's celebrate

via Etsy [dot] com

I'm not sure why, but I tend to play my cards pretty close to the vest on this sort of thing, and wait until the last minute to let the cat out of the bag. But I've got a new book coming out this year. It's a novel, called One Life in English and Circunstancias atenunates in Spanish. The point of departure is my work as a mitigation specialist. It's about Richard, a gringo in Mexico, who combs the back roads of Michoacán trying to find out about Esperanza, a young Mexican in a Louisiana jail, accused of killing her baby. Richard hopes that his investigation will save her from the death penalty. In alternating chapters, I tell both their stories, and how they're linked by life and death, sex and love.

I wrote the book in English, and Unnamed Press will bring it out in the U.S. in October. It was expertly translated into Spanish by Fernanda Melchor, and is set to be published by Tusquets this autumn (once they give me a date, I'll let you know). The early reviews are encouraging -- this is what Publishers Weekly says, and here's how Kirkus Reviews weighed in. In case you want to be the first on your block to acquire a copy, here's the link to its Amazon page. I don't know about you, but I'm going to make myself a martini.