12/29/2008
Luis has been promising an early look at the cover and here it is!
The pre-order page is up on Amazon, though the book won't be released until mid-May. Until then, enjoy!
12/25/2008
Happy Holidays to our beloved Friends and Family!
We pray this missive finds you in the best of health and happiness with the promise of a brighter new year just on the horizon.
We hope you can forgive the electronic greetings this year and the absence of random holiday packages on your doorstep. With the world in such turmoil, we decided as a family that this year we would use our resources to help make the lives of those around us a little better. In honor of you, we chose to sponsor holiday dinners for more than 20 families through our local food bank. Through the Chicago-based Heartland Alliance’s Kids Helping Kids program (http://www.hearlandalliance.org/), our kids chose to help outfit local children with school supplies, provide clothing and bus tickets home for homeless teens, and get toys to refugee children who have relocated to our area. We felt this was the best way to honor our relationships with friends, family, and colleagues this year and we thank you for the love and friendship you have shown us. We are merely passing it along.
This has been a busy and productive year for us. Sometimes it feels like we’re just hanging on to a barely in-control dragster as it zooms around hairpin turns, but we must like it that way since it’s become a way of life for Los Urreas!
Thanks to Luis’s crazy travel schedule, we were able to check in on most of our family this year when we traveled up the West Coast this summer and also a bit through New England. You know how we love a good road trip! Nothing like loading up the van and taking off for as long as possible … I actually cry when it’s time to turn home! This one was a little bittersweet since, with the kids growing up so fast, we understand it will be almost impossible for all of us to travel again like this. It’s exciting to watch them develop their own lives, but we miss them already. Sniff …
Eric is a sophomore at the University of Illinois in Champaign as a percussion performance major. He plays at every opportunity and is hoping next summer to audition into one of his favorite drum corps. Megan is just starting the where-will-I-go-to-college dance. She is working at the beloved local candy shop (the best first job EVER) and is busy with the yearbook, her friends and her various hobbies. Chayo is … what can we say about Chayo? It’s all her world and we’re just living in it, right? She’s in third grade, a voracious reader and writer (big surprise) and performer. She’s in a local kids’ choir, dancing ballet and jazz and keeping us all hopping with whatever she comes up with next.
Luis finished his new novel and it looks like (knock on wood and say a silent prayer) that this may end up being a big one for him. Scheduled for release in May 2009, the book is called “Into the Beautiful North” and it’s a fun and wonderful read about a group of young women from a small town in Mexico who realize one day that all of the men have gone North to the U.S. It becomes a “Magnificent Seven” for girls, as Luis likes to say. We’re really excited (especially since the book is dedicated to Megan and was partly inspired by her and her friends). Luis has also been crazy busy traveling and we’ve been so honored that his work has been chosen by so many different cities and universities for community read projects.
Me? I’m just trying to keep everything running as smoothly as possible (hahahahah). I was really lucky this year to get to spend so much time with my family in Seattle as we learn to maneuver through life’s ups and downs. I especially enjoyed a cruise to Alaska with my mom – the first time the two of us have been able to spend so much time together, just the two of us.
The snow is falling here (again) and we’ll be celebrating a white Christmas – still an unusual thing for us native Westerners, so it makes us unreasonably happy. The five of us will gather this day and think of all the friends and family who have so touched our lives. We won’t be together, but you will be in our hearts. We thank you for your love and friendship and look forward to seeing and hearing from you soon.
We wish you a very happy holiday season and all the best of the better times we know are coming!
12/24/2008
my heart
so oddly at ease
Twelfth Month
--Basho
It's snowing again. It's a white Christmas in Chicago. So many sorrows and worries under a thick silent tide of white.
I want to thank you for a good year. It was a bit exhausting--but any year that sees a hundred thousand miles of travel and speaking is gonna wear ya out a little. I did so many events, and I went so many places, that I can't remember where I've been! Almost everywhere--everywhere--you were kind to me and welcoming. No one could ask for more.
I have enjoyed e-mails and messages from Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain, Italy, Iraq, India, Iceland, Siberia, Chile, Mexico, Germany. I was lucky enough to meet several of my writing heroes this year, and delighted to hook up with newer pals met on the long writer road over the last few years. I've been to DC, Vermont, Virginia, Indiana, South Carolina, California, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin and...and...I can't remember where I've been!
So I'm grateful this winter. And I know none of it could have happened without you, Dear Reader. So thank you. And I hope you have a safe, warm, generous holiday.
We'll post the last three Wastelanders here in the next few days, and the cover of Into the Beautiful North will make its debut after New Year's Day.
Yrs., L
Grinch Meets Grandpa
so oddly at ease
Twelfth Month
--Basho
It's snowing again. It's a white Christmas in Chicago. So many sorrows and worries under a thick silent tide of white.
I want to thank you for a good year. It was a bit exhausting--but any year that sees a hundred thousand miles of travel and speaking is gonna wear ya out a little. I did so many events, and I went so many places, that I can't remember where I've been! Almost everywhere--everywhere--you were kind to me and welcoming. No one could ask for more.
I have enjoyed e-mails and messages from Ireland, England, Scotland, Spain, Italy, Iraq, India, Iceland, Siberia, Chile, Mexico, Germany. I was lucky enough to meet several of my writing heroes this year, and delighted to hook up with newer pals met on the long writer road over the last few years. I've been to DC, Vermont, Virginia, Indiana, South Carolina, California, Texas, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri, Kansas, New Hampshire, Michigan, Wisconsin and...and...I can't remember where I've been!
So I'm grateful this winter. And I know none of it could have happened without you, Dear Reader. So thank you. And I hope you have a safe, warm, generous holiday.
We'll post the last three Wastelanders here in the next few days, and the cover of Into the Beautiful North will make its debut after New Year's Day.
Yrs., L
12/17/2008
Note: some folks have written in to say they have trouble posting comments here. After the bout of hacking and creepy fan wars and the amazing invasions on Chickenhead and the Family Stone here, we took away comments for a while. Then we brought 'em back, but they're MODERATED now. So if you post a message to me, it goes to the great evil computer, Hal. Sooner or later, Hal decides if the message can go through or not--most likely, it will go though. But your message will not appear right away. Keep posting--I love to hear from you!
#
Oh, no. Not another kids' concert. I am paying for my sins, being Dad-Man. Last week, it was The Young Naperville Singers doing their Christmas bash. Cinderella and I made the error of taking a seat before 110 suburbanites had finished squeezing in and out of the aisle. I got stepped on, bumped, or had Chicago butts bobbled in my face over and over. That was nothin'--there was the endless singing after that.
Today, after our snow, it was the elementary school Christmas concert--exactly the same concert we saw last year and the year before that. On benches. I have a bad back, and the bench hurt like hell. I also am not ashamed to say that my luscious and well-mounded double scoop of vanilla ice cream Dad Booty is old now and HURTS on a wooden bench for the nineteen hours it takes to hear every Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa song ever written.
Oh woe is me. I was leaning over, head in hands, cursing ligfe and the holidays. Now, the old man in front of us--flannel shirt and thin gray hair--must have been hurting worse than me. You know those old folks who, in church, kneel and rest their bottoms on the pew behind to hold themselves up? He was half in Cindy's lap. I roused myself from my agonies to sneer at her trying to figure out what to do with his sagging bulk.
Then they got to warbling the uplifting "Tree of Peace" song. I was all cranky about it till I looked at grandpa. He was weeping. He tried to hide it, but tears were pouring down his face.
I looked at the shining faces of the kids, the open little voices to close to life, Life with a capital L. And he, there--who knows what sorrows he has seen? Who knows if he's ill? Or if his time is limited--of course it's limited. What old man or woman does not think of these things. And, faced with the purity of that little hymn, he wept.
It was so pure.
My back still hurt, and my butt was half deflated and made me walk at an angle when I got up. But I was alive. My family is well. We are all here, now. And more snow is coming. I'll think of that grandpa every year at this time.
Pull up a blanket, y'all. Everything is possible. Watch it snow with me.
XXX, L
A Writer's Meditation
#
Oh, no. Not another kids' concert. I am paying for my sins, being Dad-Man. Last week, it was The Young Naperville Singers doing their Christmas bash. Cinderella and I made the error of taking a seat before 110 suburbanites had finished squeezing in and out of the aisle. I got stepped on, bumped, or had Chicago butts bobbled in my face over and over. That was nothin'--there was the endless singing after that.
Today, after our snow, it was the elementary school Christmas concert--exactly the same concert we saw last year and the year before that. On benches. I have a bad back, and the bench hurt like hell. I also am not ashamed to say that my luscious and well-mounded double scoop of vanilla ice cream Dad Booty is old now and HURTS on a wooden bench for the nineteen hours it takes to hear every Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa song ever written.
Oh woe is me. I was leaning over, head in hands, cursing ligfe and the holidays. Now, the old man in front of us--flannel shirt and thin gray hair--must have been hurting worse than me. You know those old folks who, in church, kneel and rest their bottoms on the pew behind to hold themselves up? He was half in Cindy's lap. I roused myself from my agonies to sneer at her trying to figure out what to do with his sagging bulk.
Then they got to warbling the uplifting "Tree of Peace" song. I was all cranky about it till I looked at grandpa. He was weeping. He tried to hide it, but tears were pouring down his face.
I looked at the shining faces of the kids, the open little voices to close to life, Life with a capital L. And he, there--who knows what sorrows he has seen? Who knows if he's ill? Or if his time is limited--of course it's limited. What old man or woman does not think of these things. And, faced with the purity of that little hymn, he wept.
It was so pure.
My back still hurt, and my butt was half deflated and made me walk at an angle when I got up. But I was alive. My family is well. We are all here, now. And more snow is coming. I'll think of that grandpa every year at this time.
Pull up a blanket, y'all. Everything is possible. Watch it snow with me.
XXX, L
12/14/2008
We are here to express our unique version of life, to say, "This being, this me, is part of Life." Just the way that pine tree gives off its pine scent and says, "I'm not an oak tree or a pig. I'm a pine tree; get used to it."
--Neil Fiore
#
I really like that quote. It isn't just useful for writers to remember that. For a while there, I was getting weird-bombs on the blog, all those good people reminding me that I was a pig, not a pine tree. Made me not want to keep the personal note we've established here. So I backed off a bit--stopped posting the "Wastelander" series, as some of you have noted. I have been doing other, hidden internet stuff with a group of writers, and Cinderella pointed out that it has taken a lot of energy away from this website.
So, barring "Wastelander VI," which was about the difficulty in returning home (San Diego) for book tour--I can just imagine the bad mojo that might inspire, and really, who wants to read it anyway--I have a few chapters of 08's series left that I did not post.
Think I will. If you don't know the Wastelanders, they're in the blog archive. It's a form of prose-sketching I invented for myself on the road. Kind a a mix of Kerouac's sketches and Basho's haibun. Maybe. I find it supple and fun, and I hope you do too. I did, though, post tour haiku for a couple of weeks, and those felt like fun, too. I plan to not only do a Wastelander book, or books, but I'm preparing a couple of poetry manuscripts, and one of them is haiku. So the website has been extremely positive this year, in spite of cyber-terrorists.
Watch, then, for "Wastelander VII."
But I won't post it today.
I am not an oak tree or a pig...or a pine tree either. Wish I were an aspen. Am probably a rhino.
Yrs.,
Ludwig Aethelbert Urias
Home
--Neil Fiore
#
I really like that quote. It isn't just useful for writers to remember that. For a while there, I was getting weird-bombs on the blog, all those good people reminding me that I was a pig, not a pine tree. Made me not want to keep the personal note we've established here. So I backed off a bit--stopped posting the "Wastelander" series, as some of you have noted. I have been doing other, hidden internet stuff with a group of writers, and Cinderella pointed out that it has taken a lot of energy away from this website.
So, barring "Wastelander VI," which was about the difficulty in returning home (San Diego) for book tour--I can just imagine the bad mojo that might inspire, and really, who wants to read it anyway--I have a few chapters of 08's series left that I did not post.
Think I will. If you don't know the Wastelanders, they're in the blog archive. It's a form of prose-sketching I invented for myself on the road. Kind a a mix of Kerouac's sketches and Basho's haibun. Maybe. I find it supple and fun, and I hope you do too. I did, though, post tour haiku for a couple of weeks, and those felt like fun, too. I plan to not only do a Wastelander book, or books, but I'm preparing a couple of poetry manuscripts, and one of them is haiku. So the website has been extremely positive this year, in spite of cyber-terrorists.
Watch, then, for "Wastelander VII."
But I won't post it today.
I am not an oak tree or a pig...or a pine tree either. Wish I were an aspen. Am probably a rhino.
Yrs.,
Ludwig Aethelbert Urias
12/10/2008
Done. That's it. Last trip for the year. I went to Phoenix to talk to librarians about Teresita and Into the Beautiful North and The Devil's Highway. The medicine is still powerful: as I was leaving for the airport, Teresita's great-granddaughter called to ask if I was coming to Phoenix anytime soon.
I met great people in the planes going both ways. usually, I am the grinch in headphones, but I got all chatty. You'll appreciate this, though: on the way back,. I was at the US Air counter, and the woman asked me what had brought me to AZ. Writer, I mumbled. Oh? And what do you write? Novel, non-fiction book about the border patrol. The guy next to me said, "There's nothing about the border patrol that's non-fiction." I looked over at him and he just looked migra. Had the haircut. I said, "Are you an agent?" He said, "Pilot." I said, "Are you a BorStar guy?" He flew with BorStar. Then it became the usual border enforcement exam: who do you know? We knew the same Yuma guys.
As soon as that was ascertained, he invited me to come fly the border with him in his helicopter. See how it works? The writing writes you if you get out of the way.
I swear, if I were more open and in tune, the world would give me a new book every day of my life. But if I were more open, my head would explode.
Get this, though--and this is where the new book popped up in my face: he started telling me (blushing a little that I was going to think he was crazy to tell me this--something people do a lot; I can't tell you how many times I hear "I can't believe I'm telling you this"), but out along the Camino del Diablo, east of the spot where there are old graves, there is a haunted patch that nobody likes to go to. Agents will confess if you push them that if you stand there, you feel the vortex of energy, and it gets really spooky. Sometimes it gets cold. And if you watch long enough, you start to see mists and forms moving toward you. OOO-EEE-OOO.
Sign me up, pilot! Ghosts? Helicopters? I'm there!
Beautiful North is starting to head into the world in galleys as we speak. We'll post the cover here very soon. I think you're going to like it.
Sky King Urrea
Dogness
I met great people in the planes going both ways. usually, I am the grinch in headphones, but I got all chatty. You'll appreciate this, though: on the way back,. I was at the US Air counter, and the woman asked me what had brought me to AZ. Writer, I mumbled. Oh? And what do you write? Novel, non-fiction book about the border patrol. The guy next to me said, "There's nothing about the border patrol that's non-fiction." I looked over at him and he just looked migra. Had the haircut. I said, "Are you an agent?" He said, "Pilot." I said, "Are you a BorStar guy?" He flew with BorStar. Then it became the usual border enforcement exam: who do you know? We knew the same Yuma guys.
As soon as that was ascertained, he invited me to come fly the border with him in his helicopter. See how it works? The writing writes you if you get out of the way.
I swear, if I were more open and in tune, the world would give me a new book every day of my life. But if I were more open, my head would explode.
Get this, though--and this is where the new book popped up in my face: he started telling me (blushing a little that I was going to think he was crazy to tell me this--something people do a lot; I can't tell you how many times I hear "I can't believe I'm telling you this"), but out along the Camino del Diablo, east of the spot where there are old graves, there is a haunted patch that nobody likes to go to. Agents will confess if you push them that if you stand there, you feel the vortex of energy, and it gets really spooky. Sometimes it gets cold. And if you watch long enough, you start to see mists and forms moving toward you. OOO-EEE-OOO.
Sign me up, pilot! Ghosts? Helicopters? I'm there!
Beautiful North is starting to head into the world in galleys as we speak. We'll post the cover here very soon. I think you're going to like it.
Sky King Urrea
12/05/2008
4 degrees this morning. 12 degrees at noon. Did you see? Chicago was voted the fifth least desired destination to live in the USA! Yes! We're almost #1! One reason listed was that people can't stand the winters. Buck up, chappies!
I have been pondering a small thing. The haiku masters would see it as a meditation on wabi/sabi. All that sorrow and tenderness and ephemeral sweetness of a fleeting life. But, you know, I'm just thinking about dogness. I know the world is ending, and the people are losing their jobs, and the motor companies are failing. (Good-bye before I ever got you, Mustang GT 500!) But dogness prevails.
We have this runty little bastard named Rudy. He's half Chihuahua and half Rat Terrier. And he can't quite figure out which half is which--he's small, but all muscles. He's willful, yet cowardly, yet fierce, yet trembly, yet ferocious yet google-eyed. He thinks he's a Great Dane.
Sadly, he has the curse of sudden, catastrophic seizures. I don't know why--neither does the vet. He's a young, robust dog, but sometimes he goes into terrible shaking fits that seem as if he'd about to die. The women in the house flee in terror and weep, so it ends up being Dad-Man who holds him and tries to ride it out.
A few nbights ago, we were watching TV--it might have been the crap on the tube that put him over--and he went into a bad, bad attack. His eyes were so huge--all he could move was his eyes. He was rigid and rattling and drool fell out of his mouth. It was helpless and terrible, and I held him and promised him it would pass. How lame does that sound? Like some cheesy doggy novel for Cub Scouts, but's that's the way it is. If you have animals, you know.
He pulled through, of course. But it made everybody in the house cry.
Now, here's the thing--ever since his attack, Rudy seeks me out. He makes it a point to lean against me, or to climb in my lap. He comes to wake me up every morning. And, for the first time ever, he always comes to me and licks the back of my hand. Over and over, he licks the back of my hand, then lays his head against me.
He knows, doesn't he? He understands in some way that I helped him. I think...I think he's actually grateful. It's amazing. It's amazing for me, as a writer, because I see something happening in my home that I can't figure out how to put in a book or story. I'd never get away with it. It's so...maudlin.
Real life, man--even with fleas, it trumps the alternative every time. Stay warm. Stay alive.
Adios, amigos--
L
Shovel
I have been pondering a small thing. The haiku masters would see it as a meditation on wabi/sabi. All that sorrow and tenderness and ephemeral sweetness of a fleeting life. But, you know, I'm just thinking about dogness. I know the world is ending, and the people are losing their jobs, and the motor companies are failing. (Good-bye before I ever got you, Mustang GT 500!) But dogness prevails.
We have this runty little bastard named Rudy. He's half Chihuahua and half Rat Terrier. And he can't quite figure out which half is which--he's small, but all muscles. He's willful, yet cowardly, yet fierce, yet trembly, yet ferocious yet google-eyed. He thinks he's a Great Dane.
Sadly, he has the curse of sudden, catastrophic seizures. I don't know why--neither does the vet. He's a young, robust dog, but sometimes he goes into terrible shaking fits that seem as if he'd about to die. The women in the house flee in terror and weep, so it ends up being Dad-Man who holds him and tries to ride it out.
A few nbights ago, we were watching TV--it might have been the crap on the tube that put him over--and he went into a bad, bad attack. His eyes were so huge--all he could move was his eyes. He was rigid and rattling and drool fell out of his mouth. It was helpless and terrible, and I held him and promised him it would pass. How lame does that sound? Like some cheesy doggy novel for Cub Scouts, but's that's the way it is. If you have animals, you know.
He pulled through, of course. But it made everybody in the house cry.
Now, here's the thing--ever since his attack, Rudy seeks me out. He makes it a point to lean against me, or to climb in my lap. He comes to wake me up every morning. And, for the first time ever, he always comes to me and licks the back of my hand. Over and over, he licks the back of my hand, then lays his head against me.
He knows, doesn't he? He understands in some way that I helped him. I think...I think he's actually grateful. It's amazing. It's amazing for me, as a writer, because I see something happening in my home that I can't figure out how to put in a book or story. I'd never get away with it. It's so...maudlin.
Real life, man--even with fleas, it trumps the alternative every time. Stay warm. Stay alive.
Adios, amigos--
L
12/03/2008
I was out there shovelling after our first snow storm. Muy macho Dad-Man! Getting the snow out of the driveway and off the sidewalks and off the brick path to the front door, cursing all the possible pedestrians who might slip and fall. Then I was starting the vehicles out there to make sure they were running. Then I was scraping off the Honda so our daughter can go to her 1957 job at the Naperville nuts'n'chocolate emporium! Cripes, man--this is Main Street USA, and Mickey and Goofy are comin' in a red jalopy with tuba music playing! Now we hunker down and await tonight's fresh snow storm. I have a talk tomorrow in dntn Chi, and that's IT for 2008! Finito! Oh, no--oops. I forgot I have to fly to Phoenix on Monday. But THAT'S it! Then I'm done!
So here we are, in the ghastly aftermath of the Mumbai massacres. Once again trying to figure out what people are so mad about. Especially here in Toontown where we live. But, you know, you have to shovel hard and fast in this world, because the mung and the pestilence and the anger flood high really fast. F'r example, that aforementioned daughter--The Naper Nut!--(she will kill me for that)--goes to a high school about the size of five of my high schools put together inside a suburban nuclear reactor wed to a mini-mall. One of those schools. And one of her li'l chums is a Pakistani kid.
Said young man has announced to his Naper Buds that he hates America. He hopes Pakistan attacks us. And he feels that it would be all right for innocent Americans to be killed. He's saying this to Americans. His belief is that a few innocent civilians should die now to avoid the deaths of many people later. Oddly, he hasn't quite figured out that one of the girlies he's offering these pensees to is the eldest child of an FBI man. A great big really scary FBI agent.
Really? Here? Here in neighborhood-pet-turkey-BMW-town? Where the newspaper runs alarming stories if there is graffiti? Hate? Death? Terrorist longings? Here?
Oh shit. Shovel fast, amigos. Shovel hard. It's rising.
Me, I'm going to be up yonder valley. 2,000 cans of beef stew and a bunch of solar panels.
Luige
So here we are, in the ghastly aftermath of the Mumbai massacres. Once again trying to figure out what people are so mad about. Especially here in Toontown where we live. But, you know, you have to shovel hard and fast in this world, because the mung and the pestilence and the anger flood high really fast. F'r example, that aforementioned daughter--The Naper Nut!--(she will kill me for that)--goes to a high school about the size of five of my high schools put together inside a suburban nuclear reactor wed to a mini-mall. One of those schools. And one of her li'l chums is a Pakistani kid.
Said young man has announced to his Naper Buds that he hates America. He hopes Pakistan attacks us. And he feels that it would be all right for innocent Americans to be killed. He's saying this to Americans. His belief is that a few innocent civilians should die now to avoid the deaths of many people later. Oddly, he hasn't quite figured out that one of the girlies he's offering these pensees to is the eldest child of an FBI man. A great big really scary FBI agent.
Really? Here? Here in neighborhood-pet-turkey-BMW-town? Where the newspaper runs alarming stories if there is graffiti? Hate? Death? Terrorist longings? Here?
Oh shit. Shovel fast, amigos. Shovel hard. It's rising.
Me, I'm going to be up yonder valley. 2,000 cans of beef stew and a bunch of solar panels.
Luige
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