Into the Woods

September is a time of transition, the late summer turning into fall. In that transition, it feels like the brightness outside begins to dim. For those who love summer, and don’t get my wrong, I have love for summer too, their energy recedes and they mourn the loss of this time. For me, as a fall loving person, it signals the beginning of my favorite time of year.

In the last few years, I have tried to move more meaningfully towards celebrating the wheel of the year, the natural patterns of the seasons and cooking, gardening and eating seasonally. Yet now my excitement is renewed as we travel through regions that have more distinct seasons than I have experienced in Texas before.

One thing Ramiro and I both agreed on before leaving on this cross country trip is that we wanted to spend as much time exploring national and state forests and greenspaces that each state has to offer. We were able to visit Oak Mountain State Park in Birmingham, Alabama for Tajin’s first big hike! Of course, the trails were not very clearly marked, so we hiked one trail for two and a half hours attempting to get the the waterfalls there only to learn that we were still an hour away. Thankfully, a kind maintenance worker happened to be passing by in his truck and graciously gave us a lift back to our truck, as Tajin was pretty pooped. Shoutout to Bob!

Now, we’re in a park on Lake Oconee in Georgia, soaking up cooler days (is it actually feeling like fall already?!) and the beautiful woods surrounding us. I got up this morning to sit outside and journal with my coffee, listening to the cawing of the crows and the gentle wind on the water. On our afternoon walk at dusk, a Great Horned Owl perched in a tree so close we could see it watching us, and Chancho, very closely. I also kind of love walking through the dark of the campground under a full moon, fully creeped out by the isolation and the screech owl calls. I know, I’m a weirdo.

While it has taken some getting used to transitioning from one place to the next, the RV is finally starting to feel like home. I’m delighting in the ability cook and try out new recipes, take on new sewing projects, read leisurely in the morning and set time for my writing.

As a planner, I do a lot of research about a place before I visit it to get the scoop on places to visit, where we can eat outdoors or get food, and more. But what I am reminded of daily is that there is room for spontaneity, to discovering something I didn’t plan to, which inspires me to connect in new and meaningful ways.

Here are some highlights so far this month:

Visiting the Burdock Book Collective and Cha Tea House in Birmingham, AL where I got a great matcha tea, some new poetry books and Ramiro and I browsed their zines.

Enjoying my Dropout.tv subscription. Seriously, I would delete all my other streaming subscriptions just to keep this one. It delights me more than any other streaming service combined.

So much fungi everywhere! Once you know to look for it, you can’t not find it growing.

Making new recipes and figuring out how to cook deliciously and efficiently to save on dishwater and propane.

Campfires and cuddling with Tajin and Chancho (not pictured but wrapped up in his dad’s lap).

I also wanted to share a small sample of common phrases Ramiro and I hear from one another as we settle into RV life. I call it, Overheard in the RV!

• Wow, this place has emptied out!
• Did you see that bird?!
• I gotta go outside and ___________(insert RV repair/maintenance task here).
• This place is pretty nice!
• Hey, do you remember where I put the __________(insert necessary object that has a designated place but was not put back in said designated place here).

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What’s Happening with Leticia?

As I work on several projects in progress, I am also revising my poetry chapbook that will be out in November of this year (details TBA) and my next book horror collection, The Remedy is the Disease, out next May from Undertaker Books, my historical paranormal novel, a fantasy graphic novel script, and more!

I also had the realization recently after reading and writing a lot of ecohorror and dark fiction lately that I have enough short fiction for a new speculative collection with some ecohorror and futuristic stories. Not what I was expecting to start creating this year, but it was a cool surprise for myself. I have about five stories so far that I am developing. I have some book recommendations below based on what ecohorror and dark nature stories I am reading.

As I plan for the release of my next two books, I am also visiting bookstores in the areas where we are traveling to plan book release events, workshops and more.

Do you have any bookshops I should visit or reach out to in the north east (besides in New York City)? Comment and let me know!

I also offer editing and consulting services to help you with your own creative projects! I have over a decade of experience helping writers of all ages develop their creative voices and their work with a caring and supportive approach. I love helping people learn more about their creative processes to best tell their stories.

I am currently taking on clients ages 16 and up for my services, although if your child would like support honing and publishing their work, I am happy to work with younger clients upon request. Since I write across a variety of genres, I am able to work with folks who are writing poetry, creative nonfiction, short stories, novels and more, with a special place in my heart for horror, speculative fiction and fantasy. If you are working on a comic, that is fantastic. I would love to work with you! Or, please share with other writers you know who might be interested!

Giveaway!

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What I’m Reading and Watching: Into the Woods

The woods beckon us. They can be a dreamy, inviting place where people choose to create their homes. In fantasy works, they are sanctuaries, places for people to connect to the natural world and unique ecosystems, from swampland to boreal forests. They are also places where faeries, witches and other creatures of folklore inhabit, sometimes praying on unsuspecting humans who wander into their woods. They are the site of both invitation and disorientation in our imaginations, and this is what I had in mind when curating this book list. Many of them take place in states and forests we plan to visit in our travels, so I’m spacing them out over the rest of the year!

1. Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds by Merlin Sheldrake
   • A fascinating nonfiction deep dive into how fungi shape the world around us and human life, advancements in food and medicine, and so much more. I have been reading this work slowly since last year and am enjoying it a lot, especially as we see so many different types of mushrooms and fungi on our hikes.
2. Something in the Woods Loves You by Jarod K. Anderson
   • This blend of memoir and nature writing was recommended by my friend Lindsey, whose work I recommended in my July newsletter, and as I spend my mornings bird watching, tracking the flight patterns of butterflies, and examining all of the life around me, this book feels relevant. In this book, Anderson writes a lyrical love letter to the natural world and how his experiences helped him to reconnect to life again.
3. The Ritual by Adam Nevill
   • This atmospheric horror novel set in the forests of Scandinavia is a great winter time read. The book depicts four university friends trying to reconnect with another on a backpacking and hiking trip through remote wilderness. Tensions rise as they find they have little in common with one another now and when two of them struggle on the hike and are injured, things take a turn for the worse, stranding them in unfamiliar territory with ancient pagan sites and something stalking them in the woods. To be honest, I think I liked the film better than the book in this rare occurrence, but I might need to re-read it again to get a better sense of how I feel.
4. Mayra by Nicky Gonzalez
   • I received this book as an ARC (advanced reader copy) from Netgalley and I am hooked! It takes place in the woods of the Florida Everglades, which I love as a subversion of most woodsy dark fiction. In Mayra, Ingrid is invited by her childhood friend Mayra to come stay the weekend at a remote house deep in the Everglades. Ingrid hasn’t seen Mayra in several years, and though they didn’t part on good terms, Ingrid is reeled back in by the strange and magnetic pull Mayra seems to have over her. When she arrives, however, Ingrid realizes that the house she is staying in is owned by Mayra’s boyfriend Benji, an overly gracious host who encourages her to use the weekend to unwind and decompress from the anxiety of her every day life. As Mayra and Ingrid reconnect and Ingrid reflects on their friendship during their teen years, being cut off from the outside world takes a disorienting turn. I’m also reading this book as part of my Latinx Heritage Month reading list, and highly recommend it!
5. The Woods All Black by Lee Mandelo
   • As we travel through the Appalachian Mountains, this book seemed like a perfect fit. It takes place in the 1920’s, and in it, Leslie Bruin is assigned to the backwoods township of Spar Creek by the Frontier Nursing Service, tasked with vaccinating the townsfolk, helping to birth babies and care for the sick while weathering the town’s judgement as a trans man. Forged in the fires of the Western Front and reborn in the cafes of Paris, Leslie believes he can handle whatever is thrown at him—but Spar Creek holds a darkness beyond his nightmares. The Queer Liberation Library and Hoopla have the ebook and audiobook, so I’m excited to read it!
6. The Forest Demands Its Due by Kosoko Jackson
   • Another on my fall TBR! Here’s the summary: “Regent Academy has a long and storied history in Winslow, Vermont, as does the forest that surrounds it. The school is known for molding teens into leaders, but its history is far more nefarious.  Seventeen-year-old Douglas Jones wants nothing to do with Regent’s king-making; he’s just trying to survive. But then a student is murdered and, for some reason, by the next day no one remembers him having ever existed, except for Douglas and the groundskeeper’s son, Everett Everley. In his determination to uncover the truth, Douglas awakens a horror hidden within the forest, unearthing secrets that have been buried for centuries.” I might save this one for when we are traveling to Vermont just to up the creep factor!
7. Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon
   • I included this book on a recommended reading list I will be sharing in a future post and want to share my recommendation here too because Rivers Solomon is such an incredible writer. When Vern, a teenager who is seven months pregnant, flees into the woods to escape the controlling religious commune, The Blessed Acres of Cain, where she was raised, her life is changed forever. Giving birth to twins in the woods, she decides to raise them in isolation from the outside world. As her babies grow up, Vern’s own body begins to change in uncanny and sometimes frightening ways, her strength and stamina making her stop at nothing, including brutality, to protect her children from the Cainites, who would seek to get her back at any cost. She is haunted by visions of her pursuers, believing at first that Reverend Sherman, the leader of the commune and her husband, has drugged her and all of his disciples. Vern seeks out her old friend Lucy who fled the commune with her mother, and learns from an EMT that her visions and bodily transformations could be caused by a never befor seen fungal infection. The further that Vern goes to find the truth about herself and the community she fled, the more she finds that the horrors lead back to the historical racial violence of the United States itself. Rivers Solomon’s genre-blending storytelling delves deep into inherited traumas and how one creates an autonomous sense of self outside of the oppressive control of others.
8. Let the Woods Keep Our Bodies by E.M. Roy
   • This is on my physical TBR, published and printed by Ghoulish Books, my favorite San Antonio horror bookstore and publisher. It’s a slim novel, but the cover demanded it be read! Leo Bates has been living in Eston, Maine her whole life. It’s a quiet town, and besides the grief of losing her late parents, it’s predictable. All of that changes when her girlfriend Tate goes missing, and the lead detective on the case blames Leo for the disappearance. Now, Leo must confront her relationship to the town, her parent’s past, and what lurks in the woods where Tate disappeared. Sounds like a perfect read for our trip to Maine!
9. Don’t Let the Forest In by CG Drews
   • I’ve wanted to read this dark fairy tale for a while and am excited to finally get to it this fall. Here’s the summary: “High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality—Thomas Rye. With his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more. But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won’t say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork—whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew’s wicked stories. Desperate to figure out what’s wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster—Thomas’s drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him.” Very excited for this one!
10. Listen to Your Sister by Neena Viel
    • I love a dark speculative novel and this one centers on an eldest child. As an eldest child in my family, I think I’m going to connect to this. In it, twenty-five year old Calla Williams is struggling since becoming guardian to her brother, Jamie. Calla is overwhelmed and tired of being the one who makes sacrifices to keep the family together, especially when Dre, the middle-child, refuses to help. Jamie is sixteen, strong willed and ready to fight for what he believes in, which usually gets him into trouble. When Jamie’s actions at a protest go out of control, the siblings must take refuge in a remote cabin, facing a new threat where their lives and reality itself may be at stake. I’ve heard so many good things about this one so I hope it lives up to the hype.
11. It Came From the Trees by Ally Russel
    • I featured this book last year in my Back to School Horror newsletter, but wanted to include it again, as I am excited for two other books Ally Russel has coming out this year on my TBR. Jenna is an Owlet Scout and a skilled outdoor explorer; her grandfather (Pap) was the first Black park ranger at the Sturbridge Reservation where her troop frequents. But on one ill-fated camping trip with the Owlet Scouts, Jenna witnesses a creature unlike any she has ever seen and her best friend Reese is dragged off into the woods. No one, including Jenna’s mother and the police, believes her, so Jenna must take matters into her own hands by joining another local scout troop and heading back into the woods in search of Reese, and the huge, humanoid creature that took her. I really liked this creepy middle grade story. Jenna and Reese’s friendship was really beautiful, the creature stalking the troops was properly scary and Jenna’s courage and fortitude even in the face of the terrifying creature really made the story engaging.
12. It Waits in the Forest by Sarah Dass
    • A Rick Riordan Presents book is always an interesting recommendation, but the cover of this book is so stunning I had to add it to my TBR. Here’s the book summary: “Selina DaSilva, a resident of the small Caribbean island of St. Virgil. Unlike her community, she does not believe in magic. With a logical mind and a knack for botany, Selina used to dream of leaving home with her boyfriend, Gabriel, and starting a new life together far away—until a vicious, unsolved attack left her father dead and her mother in a coma.  her guilt over her mother’s condition keeps her tethered to the island, relegated to using her mother’s legacy as St. Virgil’s most talented (and most feared) psychic to con desperate islanders and gullible tourists with useless talismans and phony protection rituals. But when one of those tourists ends up at the center of a string of strange murders, the truth that Selina has been denying can no longer be avoided: There is evil lurking in the forests that surround St. Virgil. Another thing that can’t be avoided? Selina’s now ex-boyfriend, Gabriel, who’s returned home for the first time since Selina broke up with him. Desperate to put an end to the killings and claim justice for Selina’s parents, these two former lovers must race to find answers. But darkness is no fool. And evil bides its time. As long-hidden secrets about Selina’s family begin to reveal themselves, Selina knows only one path to the truth remains—and it waits in the forest.” I’m hooked!

Generally, I am finding so many amazing ecohorror books coming across my path and overwhelming my TBR, in a good way. For a book club I am a part of, I finally read Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer. It is such a surreal and disorienting experience and I loved it so much I purchased a physical copy to peruse and highlight. In Fear and Nature: Ecohorror Studies in the Anthropocene edited by Christy Tidwell and Carter Soles (currently reading), ecohorror “represents human fears about the natural world—killer plants and animals, catastrophic weather events, and disquieting encounters with the nonhuman. Its portrayals of animals, the environment, and even scientists build on popular conceptions of zoology, ecology, and the scientific process.”

As I work on this new ecohorror/speculative story collection and edits to The Remedy is the Disease, I am also thinking about the new term I learned from a Bookstagrammer, @spookycurious, called “femgore,” which I think does a lot to sum up a lot of the work I write and read. It often depicts women or femme folks who are buckling under the social pressures and oppression of cisheterosexual patriarchal societies and who final break, transforming or morphing into a self they make not even recognize. Many times there is a surreal horror element, often body horror, that creates a sense of unease and discomfort, and they often contain a coming of age storyline. You can read my full list here, and another article I wrote a few years ago for Electric Lit about monstrous transformations. What else do you think should be on this list?

It’s also September, which means it’s Latinx Heritage Month! As a Latina author, I believe that we should be reading works by Latinx people all year, but I do want to highlight a few works I am hoping to get to this month that have been on my TBR for a while, including The Family Izquierdo by Ruben Degollado, Eartheater by Dolores Reyes (also a book in translation for Women in Translation month!), The Inheritance of Orquida Divina by Zoraida Córdova and Plantains and Our Becoming by Melania Luisa Marte, which I started last year as an ARC and didn’t get to finish, but now I got a physical copy from Baldwin & Co Books in New Orleans. Latinx in Publishing also has a great list of September book releases!

Writing Prompts

Where is your favorite hiking spot or place to relax where there are a lot of trees or vegetation (your favorite green space)? What does it feel like to be immersed in that space, away from the pace and noise of your normal life?

But make it horror: Who, or what, could be watching between the trees?

Author Spotlight: Rios de la Luz

Rios de la Luz is the author of the novella, ITZÁ (Broken River Books) and the short story collection, An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints (Broken River Books). Her work has been featured in several anthologies, including Burn it Down (Seal Press), The Weird Sister Collection (Feminist Press), and Both Sides (Agora books). Rios loves leading generative writing workshops on body stories, the wilderness, and the lore of our lived experiences. She loves exploring the strange, the magical, and the weird, in her storytelling. She currently lives in Oklahoma with her partner and son.

Rios is one of my favorite writers and people! We’ve been in community with one another for a while and her work has inspired me so much! An Altar of Stories to Liminal Saints is her latest book and one that I have taught from in my workshops and that influenced some of my stories in The Remedy is the Disease. When I think of queer, weird girl lit, surreal writing and femgore, her work comes to mind immediately. I also recommend her as a workshop instructor. Rios started a Liminal Writers online group that meets every Wednesday that I am a part of and I highly recommend. You can reach out to her for more information on her website (linked above).

Additional Resources: Abode Press

Abode Press is open for chapbook submissions until November! Abode Press is an intersectional, anti-racist 501(c)3 nonprofit publishing press dedicated to uplifting underrepresented voices. They do cool work, so polish up those manuscripts and don’t forget to submit!

Call to Action: Opportunities for Solidarity and Care

It feels like every day, waking up to news of yet more unending cruelty and state violence, both in the US and around the world, makes it impossible to self-regulate, to make nourishing food, to be creative. And every day that we do something kind for ourselves and others is a day that affirm that fascism, violence, dehumanization, death making will not win.

What I am personally struggling with right now is that I am not physically with my community in Texas, organizing and supporting as I have in the past. I can support in some ways from afar, but because this trip necessitates that I am a visitor in most communities where we are. This is most potent to me when I visit a city or town, moving with caution because I don’t always know how we will be perceived or whether we will always be safe. So how do we stay connected to one another towards collective liberation?

I am spending some time with anti-colonial, anti-capitalist, abolitionist texts like Omar El Akkad’s One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, Abolish Rent by Leonardo Vilchis and Tracy Rosenthal, Copaganda: How the Police and Media Manipulate Our News by Alex Karakatsanis among several others, studying them and thinking about how to apply this knowledge to my life and work. Many of these are available on Hoopla or from Haymarket Books.

Want to buddy read with me? Friend me on Storygraph and we can start a buddy read together!

Take care, each and every day ❤️

Leticia