Award-winning authors David Bowles and Guadalupe García McCall join forces to craft Secret of the Moon Conch, a sweeping fantasy romance about falling in love despite all odds.
Guadalupe: Hi, David! I’m excited about having this dual interview with you, since we are both having so much fun collaborating and dreaming up so many new projects. Because this is my first book collaboration, I have nothing to compare it to. However, I know that you’ve had other collaborations, and so I wondered: What is your favorite part of the process of “writing in collaboration”?
David: Hey, Guadalupe! Great question. Because the project is always what comes first for me, collaboration gives me the chance to tackle projects that are beyond the scope of my own abilities or experiences. It’s such a blessing to find a like-minded person who shares the same vision for a book and to bounce ideas off them until the two of you craft the best version of that literary dream. Then the energy of seeing the manuscript rolling twice as fast with two brains churning it out is really intoxicating, as is the challenge of living up to the amazing writing of your collaborative partner. To some extent, this synergy feels like an amped-up iteration of what an author experiences with a really insightful and hands-on editor, but with even greater investment on the part of the co-author.
With all that in mind, Guadalupe, and given that Secret of the Moon Conch is your first collaboration, I wanted to ask: What was the toughest part, for you, of co-writing this book with me?
Guadalupe: I have to admit the toughest part of co-writing this book was staying true to Calizto’s voice. A big part of my writing process is to give my characters a lot of leeway, letting them think and feel and do what comes naturally to them as people who live and breathe and share their experiences with me in my head. It’s a very visceral, almost spiritual experience, to go on this journey of life with my characters. However, for this book, I had to experience Calizto through your chapters, as a conception of your imagination and your heart. This, of course, made it harder for me to let him do what he wanted in my chapters, because he wasn’t my creation, my fictional child, if that makes sense.
So, when writing my chapters I had many moments when I questioned whether his words, his actions, and his reactions were accurate for him. I had to think more critically than I’m used to if I was going to stay faithful to your vision of this beautiful boy from Tenochtitlan. Though it helped that you and I are good friends, fully committed to writing the best book possible, because it gave us permission to revise our characters’ action, reactions, & dialogue sequences in each other’s chapters as we progressed. And speaking of Tenochtitlan, I have to ask: How did you capture the setting of an ancient, lost architecture so well?
David: It’s so fortuitous, frankly, that you thought of me when you first had the idea for this book, because I was still deep in the weeds of my research into Tenochtitlan and the Tenochcah (the residents of that city, mostly ethnic Nahuas of the Mexica nation). As you know, by that time I had spent a decade and a half studying Mesoamerica and learning the Nahuatl language spoken throughout the Aztec Empire at the time of the conquest (and by 1.5 million people today). But most of my research had been cultural and linguistic in nature. I hadn’t dug into the physical and political aspects quite as much.
But when Steven Spielberg’s production company Amblin reached out to me, asking me to be a translator and consultant on a mini-series depicting the encounter between Moctezuma and Cortés, I found myself really immersed in the particularities of life in Tenochtitlan at the time of the Spanish Invasion. Even though that mini-series was ultimately canceled during pre-production due to COVID-19, the work I did was fundamental in advancing my understanding of the very elements that would make Secret of the Moon Conch such a compelling exploration of the Isle of Mexico in 1521.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Paul Guinan and David Hahn, whose amazing comic adaptation of the Spanish Invasion has produced the most accurate maps and graphics of the Aztec Empire in existence. Our book includes two of these, in fact!
Speaking of the challenges of writing outside one’s comfort zone, how did you grapple with the specific identity of Sitlali? You’re both from Mexico and came to the US, but her place of birth (in Veracruz) is quite different from yours (in Coahuila). I think you did a great job, but what were the challenges in that depiction?
Guadalupe: What a great question! I think a big hurdle for me was trying to understand how her upbringing, her place of birth, and her specific way of life in Zongolica, Veracruz, influences her. The personal history, her family’s conflicts and social structure, that was easy, because I’m a Mexican girl who holds many of the same values. It was the other elements that were hard, because I come from Northern Mexico, our Borderlands, Piedras Negras, Coahila, specifically and I’ve never been to the interior.
So, like anything else I know nothing about, I got online and researched the place. There were articles, photos, and many videos I watched to get a sense of the beauty of that place, the lush selvas, the close ties to the Gulf of Mexico, and that’s how I got inspiration for some of the scenes in the book. When we first meet Sitlali, she is spending her last night in Mexico on the beach in Veracruz, spending time with old friends, reflecting on her journey, but also saying goodbye to the memories that come from having lived there all her life, memories she will take with her. This came from seeing videos of that beach. The next morning, when she is waiting for her ride at dawn, I had to envision where she would be standing. I saw pictures and videos of Zongolica and its lush jungles and that gave me a specific idea of where she would be standing, outside of town on that day.
The biggest hurdle was grappling with the language, because she speaks Spanish but also some Nahuatl. Of course, that’s where you came in. I looked up things, but most of the time, I relied on you to help me find “just the right word” for what I was trying to convey in moments where I felt she would be using Nahuatl.
A big question for me, when I’m writing a book, is wanting to know what the characters learn, which speaks to theme. Most of the time, this comes later for me, so I wanted to ask: What were some of the themes that emerged for you as you were thinking about Calizto’s journey? And how did you infuse those themes without disturbing or distorting the dual vision of our story?
David: I really wanted to explore what it means to not just survive but to contemplate the possibility of thriving even when oppressive forces have come to bear on all you hold dear. How does someone who has lost everything still cling to hope? The siege of Tenochtitlan, historically, resulted in the near total annihilation of the Mexica (though millions of other Nahua nations survived, including others within the Triple Alliance / Aztec Empire). But for the few that escaped the complete flattening of both cities on the Isle of Mexico, what awaited them was colonization and erasure. At the same time, in the modern day, both the mestizo descendents of 16th-century Nahuas and actual Nahua communities continue to exist (Sitlali is clearly one of these people, as are you and I, along with our families). So while I wanted to push Calizto to the very edge of endurance, as anyone in Tenochtitlan that summer of 1521 would have been, I also needed to give him a way out … And it needed to be something that could be echoed in Sitlali’s story as well.
I can imagine that some potential readers might prefer a book that just depicts the Fall of Tenochtitlan in all its horrifying finality. And others might want a romance that hews more closely to the ups and downs, the tropey angst and fun, of modern love stories. But to tell this story of how love can be the light in the deepest darkness, we had to find a middle road.
Due to all of that, I wonder—How did you manage to balance the messages you wanted Sitlali’s story to put across with the intense historical adventure with which it’s interwoven? Seems daunting!
Guadalupe: Well, I definitely wanted to put forth a story that illustrated the hardships immigrants have faced historically in our Americas. However, this is a story that when taken as a whole presents an even bigger picture of the social issues and injustices that have plagued our community for centuries, because it shows the persecution, destruction, capture, torture, and abuse that Mexicans and Mexican Americans have faced from these two different points in time, 1521 and 2019. Because when presenting these two narratives together, as a whole, we get a mirror image of these issues and injustices as they relate and echo each other. We see it then and compare it to now, and by pinning these two micro-narratives against each other, we are getting a bigger bird’s eye view, an enlightening macro-narrative that illuminates the conflicts and issues in a more holistic perspective.
I think negotiating that balance, bringing it all together the way this story does, shares an important message about our culture and where the social injustices stem from, how they are embedded into our cultural history, but also how they have never really left us. It also asks us to think about the world we live in, to consider how we might shift this terrible, centuries-old narrative, how we might affect change in the world. I think that’s the best part of this book, how it has the potential to open reader’s minds and hearts. That’s why it was important for me to write this book. I think it was worth writing and reading and sharing with young people.
David: Amazing. I totally agree. Thanks! Now let’s get to work revising that second book, yeah?
Guadalupe: Absolutely! Hearts of Fire and Snow, here we go!
