novels

• The Conspiracy Theorist (86,000 words) is as much a queer love story as it is a weird horror melodrama that combines the uncanny supernatural powers of Stephen King’s CARRIE with the themes of mental illness, trauma, and grief from Marvel’s WANDAVISION and JESSICA JONES. In TCT, Belinda Ruiz has lived with unexplained supernatural abilities all her life, ostracized in her small town of Calvary, California because of her unexplained role in the deaths of her father and best friend. When Belinda’s bully goes missing at the start of their junior year, Belinda is blamed for the disappearance and her mistreatment worsens. As Belinda’s mental health deteriorates, she finds herself falling in love with newcomer Elena Marin, whose family has moved to Calvary to escape their own baggage. Elena is determined to “save” Belinda and prove her innocence, but their amateur investigation goes nowhere. The girls delve deeper into their own world and Belinda realizes she can no longer repress her emotional instability, believing that she really did have something to do with her bully going missing—until she gets kidnapped and long buried truths about Calvary’s past rise to the surface.

Currently, I am revising this novel as part of WriteHive’s Mentorship Program.

• Mad Girls can be described as a serial killer duo origin story, detailing two girls’ descent into murderous madness in a fictional agricultural California town based on Soledad, CA. It is a horror novel grounded in the reality of how lonely and angry teenage girls feel as they go from girl to woman. There is also a romantic subplot featuring the main two girls. Both girls are Mexican-American, as am I. Currently, I am querying this novel.

Word count as of 3/11/22: 84,600

short fiction

• Melodrama is the theoretical short story collection in my head and heart. The heart of the collection, “This Rambling Heart,” is forthcoming in 2022. The first story in the collection, “The Goodbye Glory,” was published by Berkeley Fiction Review in 2018. All of the stories in Melodrama are (mostly) realism, with elements of autofiction and queer Mexican women at the forefront of each story. Think Ottessa Moshfegh meets Adam Haslett in terms of thematic concerns.

Completed stories as 1/12/22: 9

• Lights Out (working title) is another theoretical short story collection in my head and heart. It is my queer speculative/horror collection. Lights Out primarily features sappic/lesbian/WLW characters. It contains elements of magical realism and weird/supernatural horror. Many of the stories in this theoretical collection have been published or are forthcoming, and can be found under the publications tab of my website.

Completed stories as of 8/24/22: 17