1--What is the title of your latest release?
RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON
2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
When Eva’s husband is arrested for the murder of a friend, she must confront her murky past and embrace her Magick to find out what really happened that night on the river.
RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON is a psychological thriller that weaves together the threads of folk magick with personal & cultural empowerment. At its haunted heart lies a mystery and ghost story, with dark magical realism woven throughout. With deep characterization, domestic suspense, and an unreliable female protagonist, this is my Chicana Girl on the Train.
3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
I grew up in the desert on the Mexicali border of Southern California, then moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where I raised my children and did most of my mothering work, so it’s a natural extension of my themes and characterization of my novels that they take place in the places that raised me. The desert communities I write about remain a magical and potent place of inspiration for my stories.
4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?
Yes, definitely. In many ways, Eva is like me. At the onset of the novel, she’s lost her way and her sense of self-worth, but throughout the novel, while solving the mystery that’s been plaguing her since childhood and protecting herself from the charges against her family, she comes to understand the truth of herself so that she can begin to heal and claim her power and strength. This is exactly what I’ve been working through my whole life and partly why I write the protagonists I do—to heal myself and others.
5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?
Badass Chicana bruja mama! (I had to pick four! Ha!)
6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?
Eva is a bruja whose spirituality commingles with my own, so I knew much about her magickal practice already, but she is also a glassworking artist, and I didn’t know anything about making glass until this novel. I watched quite a few YouTube videos and tutorials about how to create these gorgeous, intricate sculptures from glass, and although I could never do it IRL (I would absolutely burn myself and shatter everything!), it was tremendous fun to write Eva creating this artwork on the page.
7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
The perfectionist in me will not let sleeping dogs lie, ha! So even though I recommend to writers that you lay the tracks of the story in the first draft and play in the mud there, allowing your subconscious to come out to play, unencumbered by critical voices—and though I believe that deep down in my core—it’s difficult to follow my own good advice. The upside of editing as I go is that on subsequent drafts, I’m not focusing on the smaller issues that my picky brain has already caught throughout but larger on structural issues, although there will remain typos until the advanced reading copies! Pesky typos! Luckily, my editors and I have caught them before the books go to print!
8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
I don’t even know what this question means, ha! I’m a comfort food bruja through and through. Give me a plate of love, and I’m quite content.
9--Describe your writing space/office!
I write anywhere I can carve out time. My desk is surrounded by Frida Kahlo portraits (my creative mama and goddess spirit guide), crystals, candles (which I often have lit while writing), and other magickal accouterments. But as a busy mama writing through bouts of chronic and mental illness, my bed, the couch, the car while waiting in the kids’ school pickup line, jotting notes on my phone in the grocery store, or yelling out to my husband to jot down a note I’ve thought of in the shower—all of these are my sacred writing spaces.
10--Who is an author you admire?
Oh, this is a hard one because I admire many authors! It’s a damn hard life, this writing life, though it’s the only one I’d choose—especially for those of us who haven’t quite made writing financially viable yet, so we’re cobbling together income from every source we can.
I’d say Reyna Grande, who is a badass Mexican mama writer I met during my PEN Emerging Voices fellowship because she’d gone through the program a few years before me in Los Angeles and had already published a few successful novels by then, and now, she’s absolutely killing it in the literary world, traveling all over, giving keynote speeches and speaking to packed crowds! Her memoir THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US chronicles her experience crossing the border with her brother to reunite with her parents, who had already made the journey to the U.S. years previously, and she’s just a true badass hero in every sense of the word. I admire her writing, her spirit, and her success. She’s a light shining the path for other Latina writers!
11--Is there a book that changed your life?
Ana Castillo’s SO FAR FROM GOD. I admire Ana for all the reasons I admire Reyna, another strong, empowered Chicana mama writer whose novels and poetry have inspired and uplifted me. But SO FAR FROM GOD was the first magical real novel set in the borderlands of the Southwest where I grew up focused on women and girls’ experiences that showed the injustice and pain but also the magical hope – and I thought, I can do this. I have to do this with my life.
12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)
I’d been sending my novel out for seven years to no avail, and in the meantime, I’d written another novel, which we were sending out to publishers. My agent included both novels in her submission to Blackstone Publishing, and I got “the call” in Target in the toy aisle with my kids—that Blackstone wanted to publish BOTH novels and option the third, which I hadn’t even written yet, which meant I had to get started writing! The third novel turned into this one, RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON!
13--What’s your favorite genre to read?
Just as my books defy genre, my rebellious spirit also defies! Give me ALL the genres! All in one book, if possible!
14--What’s your favorite movie?
Oh Lord! You keep asking me to be definitive and pick just one thing when my heart wants to blur the lines! I have different favorites for different purposes! What I rewatch when I’m sick, during certain holidays, or with my kids or partner. I generally love anything with mysterious hauntings, love, and magical or surreal happenings at its heart. A quirky, offbeat film with Marisa Tomei, Happy Accidents, is up there for me, about time travel and a doomed relationship worth fighting for. Practical Magic is high, high up there. I rewatch the first three Harry Potter movies with my kids every month or so, no joke. And they recently got me through a terrible bout of food poisoning.
15--What is your favorite season?
Fall. And RIVER WOMAN, RIVER DEMON explains why. It’s definitely the cool, crispness and chill to the air, the gradual movement toward the shadow side where we naturally seek the comfort of the fire and hearth and each other’s company, perfect for storytelling, and ghost stories in particular. It’s the time that marks a journey inward, into the underbelly, where transformation occurs.
16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
With my family. Surprisingly enough, one of my best birthdays of late was during the pandemic shutdown because we just had a picnic outside at the park and then played murder mystery and “escape room” type board games the rest of the day while eating cake. It was glorious.
17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
I adored the new Stranger Things season, but everyone already loves that. Let me think of something perhaps lesser known but should be more widely acclaimed.
Alex Temblador’s HALF OUTLAW and Rudy Ruiz’s VALLEY OF SHADOWS are both doing cool, genre-shattering things and casting new light on Mexican-American stories and storytelling. I highly recommend both books!
And I’m loving the remake of the show Roswell, which also makes me homesick for New Mexico since I’ve recently moved to San Diego for the time being while researching my new novel (I have two homes now, Southern California and New Mexico, and I deeply miss the other whenever I’m not there)! I came across Roswell, New Mexico in Netflix’s “Hispanic Heritage Stories” section, and I love that it’s a sci-fi drama/murder mystery that centers on a strong, intelligent, badass Latina protagonist and her familia, which is what I set out to do in my first novel TRINITY SIGHT!
When I told my husband I was watching Roswell, he asked, “The old or new one?” I didn’t even know there was an “old” one until I discovered this remake, but I love the fierce protagonist and somewhat campy and quirky but fun storyline.
18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
Again, I don’t exactly understand the idea of “cuisine,” lol. Perhaps because I grew up in the desert on the Mexican border, and then I’ve been raising kids since my very early twenties, picky kids, picky eaters, so it’s pretty simple around our house. At some point, I’d love to travel and expand my horizons. For now, it’s comfort foods and what my mama taught me to make—mostly Mexican foods. Arroz con pollo (Spanish rice and chicken) is one of my all-time faves. And homemade mac and cheese or potato salad (my husband and daughter’s favorites and I can throw down making them).
19--What do you do when you have free time?
I’m always working on the next book; whether I’m reading or watching movies/TV with my husband and family, I’m always plotting, planning, and getting ideas for the next story.
20--What can readers expect from you next?
My daughter and I are nearly finished with our quantum leap revisions to our middle-grade novel, PI LUNA, which is our indigenous girl-powered Percy Jackson-esque journey. I think YA readers are going to love it!
And I’m working on my next novel, SALT BONES, which takes place along the border where I grew up, dealing with the eco-crisis of the Salton Sea. SALT BONES is a chilling and trenchant retelling of Demeter and Persephone from the Mexicali borderland, a mother/daughter reclamation in the face of violent misogyny and an ecological threat.
A Novel
Eva Santos Moon is a burgeoning Chicana artist who practices the ancient, spiritual ways of brujería and curanderisma, but she's at one of her lowest points--suffering from disorienting blackouts, creative stagnation, and a feeling of disconnect from her magickal roots. When her husband, a beloved university professor and the glue that holds their family together, is taken into custody for the shocking murder of their friend, Eva doesn't know whom to trust--least of all, herself. She soon falls under suspicion as a potential suspect, and her past rises to the surface, dredging up the truth about an eerily similar death from her childhood.
Struggling with fragmented memories and self-doubt, an increasingly terrified Eva fears that she might have been involved in both murders. But why doesn't she remember? Only the dead women know for sure, and they're coming for her with a haunting vengeance. As she fights to keep her family out of danger, Eva realizes she must use her magick as a bruja to protect herself and her loved ones, while confronting her own dark history.
Suspense | Thriller [Blackstone Publishing, On Sale: October 4, 2022, Hardcover / e-Book, ISBN: 9781665057509 / ]
Jennifer Givhan, a National Endowment for the Arts and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices fellow, is a Mexican American writer and activist from the Southwestern desert. She is the author of four full-length poetry collections: Landscape with Headless Mama (2015 Pleiades Editors' Prize), Protection Spell (2016 Miller Williams Poetry Prize Series edited by Billy Collins), Girl with Death Mask (2017 Blue Light Books Prize chosen by Ross Gay), and Rosa's Einstein (Camino Del Sol Poetry Series, 2019). Her honors include the Frost Place Latinx Scholarship, a National Latinx Writers' Conference Scholarship, the Lascaux Review Poetry Prize, Phoebe Journal's Greg Grummer Poetry Prize chosen by Monica Youn, the Pinch Poetry Prize chosen by Ada Limón, and ten Pushcart nominations. Her work has appeared in Best of the Net, Best New Poets, Poetry Daily, Verse Daily, Ploughshares, Poetry, TriQuarterly, Boston Review, AGNI, Crazyhorse, Witness, Southern Humanities Review, Missouri Review, and the Kenyon Review. Givhan holds a master's degree in English from California State University Fullerton and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.
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