Alyssa Sheinmel’s New York

When Alyssa Sheinmel‘s The Beautiful Between showed up in my mailbox a while back, the first thing I noticed was that Alyssa had a day job in the marketing department at a big publishing house—well, we writers who work in publishing marketing departments have to stick together, so I moved it up a little higher on my pile. And her debut novel turns out to be really good: an emotionally honest story about a high school student who’s helping her new best friend cope with a tragedy in his life even as it forces her to confront one that she’s been avoiding nearly all of hers. In this essay, Alyssa talks about some of the places that shaped the world of her story—it’s the first stop on her blog tour, so you might drop by Cleverly Inked some time soon to see what she has to say next…

A lot of people who meet me assume I’m a lifelong New Yorker, but I’m not. I was born in California, and although I moved to the east coast when I was six years old, I didn’t move to Manhattan until I was thirteen. And I didn’t think of myself as a New Yorker for a lot longer than that. I fully believed—and sometimes I still do—that I was just a displaced California girl. I didn’t begin to love New York until well into high school (probably around when I discovered shopping)—and even then, I still believed that I had just as good a chance of ending up in California as I did in New York. But the longer I’ve lived in New York, the more I’ve come to love it. It is my home: it’s where I fell in love with my husband and with my dog (yes, I am in love with my dog), where I work, where my friends are, where my life is. So I wanted to share with you a few of my favorite New York City places.

One of my favorite things about Manhattan is you’re almost always within walking distance of a bookstore. Whenever I’m early for an appointment and need to kill time, or when I’m walking around and get caught in the rain, or if I’m just bored and just need something to do, I know that I can head to a bookstore. Here I am at my neighborhood bookstore, trying (and failing) to interest my dog in some Hemingway.

10 May 2010 | guest authors |

C.M. Mayo and Her Readers, Connecting to History

C.M. Mayo does such a great job of setting up her guest essay that I’m just going to step back, invite you to read an excerpt from The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire, and let her have at it…

My novel is based on the true, strange, and heart-breaking story of, as the title says, “The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire.” If you’ve never heard of Mexico’s little half-American prince, not to worry: even many beautifully educated Mexicans have not.

Mexico’s 19th-century history is, to make an understatement, labyrinthically labyrinthical. (I like to say, if you’ve heard of Santa Anna and you know that Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico’s Independence Day, you’re doing OK.) Many Mexicans would prefer not to dwell on the Second Empire of Maximilian, a period also known as the French Intervention. Royalty, foreign invasion: not an appetizing combination for many.

Furthermore, when I came upon the story of Mexico’s last prince, and began to read more deeply, I soon realized that the little that had been published about him was riddled with errors and a mystifying vagueness. And so began my plunge into nearly a decade of research in archives from Mexico to Vienna to Texas and Washington, D.C.

The Last Prince of the Mexican Empire came out in hardcover last year; this May 5th marks the publication of the paperback edition (and yes, a Spanish version comes out this fall). One of the most surprising and delightful things about traveling around the U.S. and Mexico promoting it has been hearing the stories other people tell me about their connections to this time.

(more…)

29 April 2010 | guest authors |