{"id":23641,"date":"2014-06-12T12:44:48","date_gmt":"2014-06-12T16:44:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/?p=23641"},"modified":"2014-06-12T12:44:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-12T16:44:49","slug":"sam-hawken-five-things-i-learned-writing-tequila-sunset","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/2014\/06\/12\/sam-hawken-five-things-i-learned-writing-tequila-sunset\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Hawken: Five Things I Learned Writing Tequila Sunset"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

El Paso and Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez sit across the Texas \/ Mexico border from each other. They share streets, share industry, share crime. One gang claims territory in both: Barrio Azteca. This single criminal organization is responsible for most of the homicides committed in Ju\u00e1rez, and Felipe Morales is one of them. Recruited in prison, and now on the streets of El Paso, \u201cFlip\u201d has no choice but to step further into that world, but he has a secret that threatens his life. A witness to murder and intimidation, he tries playing both the cops and the outlaws in a bid to escape. On the American side, El Paso detective Cristina Salas struggles to balance the needs of single motherhood with those of life in the city\u2019s anti-gang unit. When her path crosses with Flip, their relationship will spell the difference between a life behind bars for the young gang member, a grisly death or freedom. Meanwhile, Mexican federal agent, Mat\u00edas Segura, must contend with the scourge of Los Aztecas while coordinating a long-term operation with the American authorities. The Aztecas, north and south, stand in the way of three lives. They have no qualms about crossing the line, about killing, about moving their deadly product, and it all comes together in a confrontation where the stakes are, truly, a matter of life and death.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2022\u2022\u2022<\/p>\n

Black is not the only shade.<\/h2>\n

When The Dead Women of Ju\u00e1rez<\/em>, my debut novel, came out it was pretty much agreed by all who read it that it was dark, dark, dark.\u00a0 And then there was more dark added to that dark.\u00a0 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s a single moment of levity in the entire book.\u00a0 Maybe this is appropriate given the subject of systematized female rape, torture and murder, but I couldn\u2019t help but think that maybe the book\u2019s darkness limited it somewhat.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to Tequila Sunset<\/em>, which tackles Mexico\u2019s almost unimaginable violence, and the stage was set for another pretty grim telling.\u00a0 I had included hints of warmth here and there in The Dead Women<\/em>, but I felt it was necessary to expand the emotional palette of the next book to both avoid the impression that I write nothing but bleak ruminations on the futility of life and to give myself a break.\u00a0 To that end, I made a concerted effort to give each of the book\u2019s three main characters a positive relationship that showed what they were living for.\u00a0 For Flip, the gang member, it\u2019s a chance at a normal love affair that could lead out of \u201cthe life.\u201d\u00a0 For Cristina, it was her bond to her mentally disabled son.\u00a0 For Mat\u00edas it was the wife for whom he\u2019d give anything.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never say my first book was bad<\/em>, but I will say that leavening the cheerlessness of the subject matter with brighter shades made for a much stronger second work.\u00a0 I\u2019ve kept that lesson with me ever since.<\/p>\n

Personal storytelling is the best storytelling.<\/h2>\n

What crippled me in my early writing formation, and I suspect this is true of many others, is the old saw, \u201cWrite what you know.\u201d\u00a0 As if being an airline pilot who writes means the only really good stuff he or she will ever create has to do with being an airline pilot.\u00a0 It\u2019s a dumb, reductive piece of advice that does no one any favors.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t think it\u2019s the fault of the advice itself, but rather how people take it.<\/p>\n

Everybody has life experiences.\u00a0 Everyone knows what it\u2019s like to be alive.\u00a0 And maybe you\u2019re not a DEA agent or professional hitman or whatever, but that doesn\u2019t mean you can\u2019t write about those things.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been a gang member, but I know what it\u2019s like to have made critical errors in life and suffering because of them.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never been a cop, but I am<\/em> the father of a child with autism, so I know the hopes and fears of a parent who lives with that burden daily.\u00a0 I\u2019ve never fought crime in Mexico, but I\u2019ve experienced the push and pull of a marriage stressed to the breaking point by outside factors.\u00a0 All of these insights I was able to put into Tequila Sunset<\/em>.\u00a0 The rest is almost window dressing to the human story.\u00a0 We care about the plot because we care about the people.\u00a0 We care about the people because they\u2019re drawn from real stock.<\/p>\n

I did a little bit of this in my first book, when I tried to exorcise the memory of my brother\u2019s violent death at the hands of a hit-and-run driver, but it wasn\u2019t until Tequila Sunset<\/em> that I realized the fuel for compelling writing is quite literally everywhere, whether you\u2019re writing slice-of-life stories or crime fiction or books about international espionage.<\/p>\n

Mexican and American crime are more closely linked then you\u2019d think.<\/h2>\n

One of the things most people know about Mexico these days is that it\u2019s wracked by incredible drug-related violence, responsible for killing tens of thousands of people since the mid-\u201800s.\u00a0 What they don\u2019t know is that is that criminals in the United States are the ones providing the fuel for this particular conflagration.<\/p>\n

Say what you want about the rightness or wrongness of marijuana being illegal in this country, but the fact remains that in forty-eight states it is<\/em> illegal, and with that illegality comes money.\u00a0 Lots of money.\u00a0 Scarcity drives up prices and almost all of that cash flows south toward Mexico.\u00a0 The drug cartels then turn around and do in the United States what they can\u2019t do in their own country: buy guns.<\/p>\n

Mexico has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but gun battles are common.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because of the deluge<\/em> of weapons crossing the border from America.\u00a0 So-called \u201cstraw buyer\u201d purchases have legal sales done on behalf of those who can\u2019t buy for themselves, private sellers circumvent the law and sell directly to the cartels or others simply ferry weapons southward to feed the ravenous demand.\u00a0 As much as we Americans like pot, the cartels like money and guns.\u00a0 Maybe if we stopped giving them so much of both, things would be a lot more peaceful down there.<\/p>\n

Oh, and locally source your weed.<\/p>\n

The world is full of people who do good.<\/h2>\n

It may seem like the world is packed with nothing but bad actors, particularly when you look at the Mexican drug war situation.\u00a0 Corrupt cops, gun smugglers, dope dealers, money launderers\u2026 the list goes on.\u00a0 But you can\u2019t have a war<\/em> without having two sides, and I realized when writing Tequila Sunset<\/em> that it was reductive at best, and flat-out wrong<\/em> at worst, to simply assume everyone involved in this situation is tainted.<\/p>\n

My book has three main characters: a convict and gang member, an El Paso police officer and a Mexican federal agent.\u00a0 They are all, to a one, honorable people doing their best in a situation where honor is considered a weakness.\u00a0 I could easily have had Flip, my gang member, be an irretrievable scumbag with no redeeming qualities, my El Paso detective a hapless victim of the back-and-forth drugs-and-guns trade, and my Mexican federal agent corrupt.\u00a0 And it\u2019s definitely true that people of these types exist.\u00a0 But what\u2019s the point of a story told from that perspective?\u00a0 We all know things are bad.\u00a0 What we don\u2019t know is that there are forces on the side of right who will sacrifice anything, even their lives, for the cause of justice.\u00a0 There\u2019s more drama there than in a million tawdry stories about drug-addled losers.<\/p>\n

I had an interviewer ask me about this very point, and I told him I believe in people.\u00a0 It\u2019s way too easy to stop believing, and I think that\u2019s a tragedy.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t go too big.<\/h2>\n

The problem of Mexico and the drug war is, as I mentioned, enormous.\u00a0 When more than 60,000 people die over a six-year period, that\u2019s huge.\u00a0 Under other circumstances a body count like that could be called a genocide.\u00a0 Massive agencies on the federal level, American and Mexican, struggle with this issue daily.\u00a0 Millions are being spent.\u00a0 It\u2019s the central preoccupation of the entire country of Mexico, when all the people really want to do is make a living and do right by their loved ones.<\/p>\n

In a situation like that, the temptation is to go big.\u00a0 Really<\/em> big.\u00a0 Movers and shakers make for high drama, right?\u00a0 But people don\u2019t read novels to hear about policymakers.\u00a0 They want to know about other people<\/em>, and that means telling stories that are meaningful on an individual basis.\u00a0 I boiled Tequila Sunset<\/em> down until its focus fell on just three people, each representative of a greater part of the conflict, but people nonetheless.\u00a0 That\u2019s where the heart is found.<\/p>\n

I once tried (and failed) to write a novel that tackled these gigantic issues with similar scale.\u00a0 Tequila Sunset<\/em> works, if it works at all, because I learned my lesson from that book.\u00a0 When you get right down to it, those most directly affected by Mexico\u2019s drug war are the ones who are most<\/em> important.\u00a0 Not the suits in Washington, DC or Mexico City.\u00a0 To catch the big fish, go for the smallest lure.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

\n

Sam Hawken<\/strong>\u00a0is the Crime Writers Association Dagger-nominated and bestselling author of\u00a0The Dead Women of Ju\u00e1rez<\/em>,\u00a0Tequila Sunset<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Missing<\/em>. He\u00a0is a native of Texas now living on the east coast of the United States.\u00a0 A graduate of the University of Maryland, he pursued a career as a historian before turning to writing.\u00a0He is active in autism-related causes.<\/p>\n

Sam Hawken: Website<\/span><\/a><\/span> | Twitter<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/strong>Tequila Sunset: Amazon<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

El Paso and Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez sit across the Texas \/ Mexico border from each other. They share streets, share industry, share crime. One gang claims territory in both: Barrio Azteca. This single criminal organization is responsible for most of the homicides committed in Ju\u00e1rez, and Felipe Morales is one of them. Recruited in prison, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-23641","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-theramble","8":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pv7MR-69j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23641","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23641"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23641\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23700,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23641\/revisions\/23700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23641"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23641"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/terribleminds.com\/ramble\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23641"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}