Leticia’s Creative Obsessions: Turning Inward

This is a time of year when even my cells feel fatigued when more sleep is needed, and I value the comfort of coziness and quiet. In the last few years, I’ve felt myself trying to reconnect to the natural turnings of the year and how it feels in my heart and body. Instead of focusing only on Christmas traditions and celebrations that are largely steeped in consumption and false cheer, I find that celebrating the Winter Solstice and Yule feels more my speed. Baking, drinking warm beverages, gathering with small groups of loved ones, and reading or writing in the quiet of my home or sitting around a fire are where I feel most drawn to. Essentially, trying to embody the principles of Hygge.

To celebrate the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year and the return of the sun, I ate good food, drank mulled wine, and sat around a fire with my husband and our friend. I found myself reflecting on this year and what has been meaningful to me, as well as what I leave behind in 2024. We journaled and talked about our reflections around the fire using some reflective questions from Cecily Sailer’s Typewriter Tarot Creative Coven: Winter Solstice journaling prompts. One of the questions was to reflect on being more authentic in our creative work, and this is the question I felt most drawn to answering.

At the beginning of 2024, I chose my one-word theme for the year based on Gretchen Rubin’s “One-Word Theme” challenge, which I have done for the last five years or so. For 2024, my word was “Voice.” To me, that meant my creative voice, my singing voice because I wanted to get return to singing and music, and my voice as an advocate in my community.

Journaling and considering these questions last night, I wondered, have I stayed true to my inner and outer voice?

I feel confident that, despite a lot of pressure not to share or center issues and injustices that are affecting all of us, including living through an ongoing pandemic and bearing witness to the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza as well as Sudan and Congo, and the slow collapse brought on by late-stage capitalism, I have continued to learn, question, and disrupt the constant distractions meant to turn our heads away from real collective care. I have not done so perfectly, but I am grateful for community members who have taken the time to interrupt my ignorance and help me learn what radical change is needed in the fight for liberation and the creation of better, more sustainable lives

I also found myself writing the phrase, “I don’t want to ‘stay in my lane.'” This year the comic I wrote, Cloudbreak, was released. I made a new zine, Home Love (available for purchase!) digitally, which was also a first for me. I signed the contract for my second book, taught new workshops across genres, and started working on several new projects, including finishing my novel, a new poetry chapbook, possibly a speculative novella, and more! All this is to say that life is short and has been pretty damn unpredictable the last several years, so why not create whatever feels the most authentic, engaging, and true to me?

As the year closes and we turn inward, I affirm that that is the kind of energy that has served me this year and the kind of energy I hope to continue to bring into 2025.

What I’m Reading

This year I decided to re-read Frankenstein, one of my favorite books of all time. It is often called the first science fiction novel, but I also think of it as one of the first body horror novels. Frankenstein wrestles with the fragility of the body, with life and death, with bodily autonomy and autonomy over our lives. Then I decided to read several books and watch films inspired by Mary Wolsencraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Eternal Frankenstein edited by Ross E. Lockhart
   • This anthology is a great collection of stories by several authors that I love, including the ever-talented Rios de la Luz, and several who are new to me. All of the works are inspired by Frankenstein, and this dark anthology is a lot of fun!
2. Eynhallow by Tim McGregor
   • Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s iconic Frankenstein has been retold and reimagined numerous times, but Tim McGregor’s eerie new horror novel Eynhallow tells an untold part of Victor Frankenstein’s story: what happens on the Orkney isles where he seeks solitude to create a mate for his cursed creature? Eynhallow tells that story from the point of view of Agnes Tulloch, a villager on the inhospitable island whose life revolves around her duties as mother to four children and as wife to her abusive husband Robert. Agnes’ life is small, staunched and without much joy save the connection she has with her children and her friend Katie. When Frankenstein, a stranger and a foreigner, comes to the island and resides in the croft on the hill doing his mysterious work, Agnes is contracted to serve him. A begrudging friendship grows between Agnes and Victor, but a frightening specter torments her new friend and the villagers, and Agnes fears that Victor’s work will bring destruction down on all their heads. McGregor’s novel captures Frankenstein’s depiction of how closely life and death are intertwined, centered on the lives of women trying to survive birth, motherhood, the violence of men, and being utterly human in an inhumane world.
3. Chicano Frankenstein by Daniel Olivas
   • I have had the pleasure of meeting and being in community with Daniel and I was so excited to read this book when it came out last year. In this modern reimagining of Frankenstein, an unnamed paralegal living in LA navigates a future modeled after our current society in which he has been reanimated using a controversial procedure to create more laborers for the United States to serve the capitalist system that exploits their labor. Mired in the politics of this controversy, as reanimated people are treated as less than human (very much like undocumented migrants are now), the main character begins to fall in love and realize his connection to his past, which the reanimation procedure is supposed to erase. This book is not subtle in its critiques of US Conservative politics and who our society considers human, and I really appreciated this short but powerful book for that.
4. The No Brainers Guide to Decomposition by Adrianna Cuevas
   • This middle-grade novel was one of my favorites of the year and I had the chance to moderate a middle-grade horror panel with the author at the Texas Book Festival. In the book, Frani Gonzalez is spending her summer break helping her professor’s father with his research at the Central Texas Forensic Anthropology Research Facility with his university. She even makes a new friend, Benji, the son of her father’s colleague who doesn’t seem to mind her fast-paced brain, which she calls “Arañita” (an analogy for her ADHD). But when a body that is supposed to be dead grabs Frani’s foot on one of their research rounds and suddenly more bodies start disappearing, Frani has to reckon with the reanimated dead and her own relationship to the living. The reason I included this book on the list is that even though the vibe is a bit different than a straight Frankenstein adaptation, the themes about bodily autonomy, our relationship to the dead, and what we owe them felt very relevant. Plus, it’s a fun, gross, heartfelt read!
5. A Complex Accident of Life by Jessica McHugh
   • This is an interesting collection of blackout poetry inspired by the original Frankenstein, and I really enjoyed the ways that McHugh interpreted these passages from the book and used them to make her own meaning while still reflecting the complexities of the original text.
6. Monstrilio by Gerardo Sámano Córdova
   • This is by far one of my favorite books that I read last year and one of my favorite books I have read in the last few years. In this novel, Magos is a grieving mother who has lost her son Santiago after he dies from a disease of the lung. In her grief, Magos cuts out a piece of Santiago’s lung and returns to Mexico to live with her mother, nurturing the lung and feeding it as it grows into an entirely different creature she names Monstrilio. When Monstrilio begins to grow out of her control, Magos relies on the communal care of her friend, her mother, and her husband Joseph, who returns to Mexico with her after their separation, to help her give the creature a chance at a new life. This imaginative novel is both love and horror, isolation and grief, and so much more, and I will recommend it to everyone!
7. Unwieldy Creatures by Addie Tsai
   • This is another book I have had on my TBR for a long time and started but have not yet finished, as I am a terrible mood reader and often take a long time to read even the best books. See the description in the link. I am pushing this to the top of my 2025 TBR list!
8. Frankenstein by Junji Ito
   • Now that I am fully aboard the Junji Ito manga train, I figured I should dive right in with this creepy reimagining!
9. The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White
   • This was not my favorite adaptation I read, but I did appreciate how White explores the original Frankenstein from Elizabeth’s point of view and really provides agency and depth to her character. Victor is portrayed as a sociopath whose pursuit of scientific discoveries means that others are subject to his apathy and violence, and I think that tracks for his character. The ending left something to be desired, but it was still an interesting take on the original
10. Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi
    • I haven’t gotten to read this book yet, but plan to finish this in January. However, it came highly recommended to me and I am excited to read it! See the link for the description of the book.

What I’m Watching

For my Frankenstein list, I do want to recommend several films I watched this year related the original novel, including Poor Things, Lisa Frankenstein, The Angry Black Girl and Her Monster. I really enjoyed all of them!

This time of year, I oscillate between wanting to watch something warm and comforting or something dark and scary.

I was sick early in December and just wanted to spend some time at home, so I decided I was going to watch as many Hallmark and Netflix Christmas romances as I could stand, and let me tell you, they did not disappoint. Out of all of them, Hot Frosty and the Princess Switch series on Netflix top the list for most surprising and unhinged. All of these Christmas or holiday romances are just one small plot point away from horror movies and I kind of love that. However, for a genuinely beautiful and heartwarming film, I do recommend The Snow Sister on Netflix. It is a beautiful tale of friendship and made me cry.

Creative Prompts

In honor of the Winter Solstice and the turning of the year, here are some prompts you might find useful to journal and reflect on:

• How are you nourishing your Creative self?
• What can you learn in the quiet darkness? What will be revealed in the dawn of new light?

What’s Happening with Leticia?

My new zine, Home Love, is available for purchase from my website. Buy a copy (or three) and share with your loved ones!

I’m lining up my events for 2025, but if you would like for me to participate in a reading, event or would like for me to lead a workshop for your community, comment or reach out on my website!