Q&A With Alex Temblador 

Alex Temblador is an author & award-winning journalist whom I’m so excited about doing this Q&A with today. The books Alex has written are Secrets Of The Casa Rosada, Half Outlaw & her recent release Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide For Creative Writers. What’s amazing is Alex has written her journalism pieces for Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, Architectural Digest, Dwell, The Daily Beast, Texas Monthly & many others! Talk about impressive! 

Q: Alex would you give a brief description of each of your books starting with your recent release Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide For Creative Writers? 

A: Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers is a writing craft book that discusses what it takes to write and edit creative writing pieces with characters or communities of historically marginalized identities. It looks at the entire process by breaking down what to do before you write, what you should think about as you write, and how to go about editing the piece. Everything from dialogue to stereotypes and harmful tropes is laid out in an easy-to-understand manner. It’s a great resource for writers, as well as editors, literary professionals like literary agents and publishers, educators, journalists, literary platforms, and those who produce creative writing projects (TV/film, theater, etc.). 

My second novel, Half Outlaw, is an adult fiction, magical realism novel that follows Raqi, a half-Mexican, half white woman who was raised by her white uncle, Dodge, a member of the Lawless, a gun-and-drugs-dealing one-percenter motorcycle club. When Dodge dies, Raqi is pressured to join a Grieving Ride with the Lawless, with the promise that she’ll be given the address of her Mexican grandfather whom she didn’t know was alive. The chapters alternate between the past (60s-80s) and the present (1990), showing how Raqi’s motorcycle family informed who she is today. It’s a story set in a dangerous subculture about messy families, self-acceptance, and looking to the future. 

Secrets of the Casa Rosada was my first novel (which happened to be my MFA thesis). It’s a coming-of-age, magical realism, young adult novel about Martha, a 16-year-old Mexican girl who is abandoned by her mother with a grandmother she didn’t know existed in Laredo, Texas. While Martha is trying to figure out where her mother went and why she left her, she must stand up to a bully at her new school and learn more about her Mexican heritage through her Spanish-only-speaking Abuela, a renowned curandera, or Mexican folk healer. 

Q: Since you normally write fiction, what made you want to write your first nonfiction book Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide For Creative Writers? Why was now the right time to write and publish it?

A: Being a fiction writer and a journalist is what made me want to write Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide for Creative Writers., I had long observed how writers of historically marginalized identities are often at a disadvantage and that the way that people write about our communities is not always done well, with care, or with respect, and it only harms the historically marginalized community. I’d seen this done time and time again with novels and it didn’t seem like writers, editors, literary agents, publishers, or writing programs were doing anything solidly or widely to stop harmful portrayals or misrepresentations of historically marginalized identities from being disseminated in books, short stories, plays, films, etc. 

The idea for Writing An Identity Not Your Own definitely came about after the publication of American Dirt when I was asked to teach my first seminar on the topic. I wasn’t satisfied with just complaining about this issue in my head or discussing it with writer friends on a small level. I taught classes and seminars on writing identities not your own for some years and had been researching it for my own writing practice well before that. What really pushed me to go to my agent with the book proposal was editing my second novel, Half Outlaw. As I edited my novel, I basically developed the editing an identity not your own process that you’ll find in the third section of my book. I had other sources of information on my computer, on PowerPoints, or from things that I had picked up throughout my writing career, and I knew that having a guide that I could refer to would absolutely help me – and it could help others, too. Soon after, I went to my agent with the idea. 

As for the right time to write and publish this book – a lot of people have brought that up in interviews. We’ve been having this conversation for decades in publishing and yet, time and time again, books were printed that exoticized other cultures, played on harmful stereotypes, or had problematic storylines. I’m glad my book is out now and that hopefully it gets shared widely and integrated in classrooms and publishing houses as required reading, because we have a long way to go. We haven’t been doing a good job with recognizing our own biases and how it impacts our writing and editing processes, and ultimately it leads to harm. I know we can do better as a community and at the least, I hope this book sparks more people to get involved in the conversation. 

Q: How long does it normally take you to write a book?

A: It very much depends on the book. I wrote the first draft of Secrets in one year while studying for my MFA in Creative Writing. For Half Outlaw, I wrote the first draft in a haze of anger over the course of a month-and-a-half. (I haven’t been able to do that since!) I’ve written another novel that has yet to be published and it took me about 5 months to write. Writing An Identity Not Your Own was written (as a first draft) in about six months. I’d already written three chapters of the book as part of the proposal and had the rough outline for the editing process before we even sold the book. I write fast, but that’s mostly because I spend a lot of time beforehand doing as much research as possible and really thinking out the plot or the chapters that I want to write and how I want to write them. 

Q: If you are currently writing another nonfiction book, will it be similar to Writing An Identity Not Your Own: A Guide For Creative Writers? Or are you going back to writing fiction?

A: Now, I don’t have any concrete plans to write another nonfiction book, though I can see myself taking on the task in the future. I’m focusing on fiction again and working on a few novels right now. Fiction is where my true passion lies. And who knows – I’ve started to write poetry too. I try to follow my gut and wherever the words take me. 

Q: How do you juggle being an author and a journalist? Would it be fair to say that being a journalist has helped with your writing skills as an author? What is your advice for anyone wanting to be both an author and journalist/

A: My goal was to always be a full-time author, but I’m not yet in a position to make that move. So, I became a freelance journalist, and it absolutely improved my writing skills because I write multiple articles, some of which are essays or narrative in style, in a week (or even in a day!). After my dad read my second novel, he said, “I’m not trying to offend you, but your writing style is so much better.” That made sense, because I wrote most of Secrets between 2011-2015 and I became a full-time freelance journalist in 2015. Half Outlaw came out in 2022, so I had a lot of time to develop as a writer through my journalism career. 

When it comes to the writing aspect of being an author and a journalist, I think I manage the jobs well. I tend to wake up and work on my creative writing project for 20-40 minutes in the morning, and then I’ll work on my journalism stuff the rest of the day. Sometimes in the evening or late afternoon, I’ll do more creative writing, but that’s not always a guarantee. Social media, marketing, and PR for my author career is probably the one thing that takes up so much more time than I have, but I do fairly well, and I always try to give myself grace. 

I think being a journalist and an author is a great option for writers. When you’re stuck on an article, you can work on a creative piece and vice versa. I’d advise integrating narrative elements to your articles because it makes you stand out among journalists, who are typically taught to write in a different way than creative writers. Just as you would do with creative writing, find the type of journalism that you enjoy – there are so many things you can write about. I focus on travel, the outdoors, diversity/equity/inclusion, culture, and product reviews, not only because these are topics that I enjoy, but because it’s so important to diversify your portfolio. The more you can write about, the more jobs you’ll get. 

Q: What is it like writing for publications that are Conde Nast Traveler, National Geographic, Travel + Leisure, Architectural Digest, Dwell, The Daily Beast, Texas Monthly & many others?

A: I’m beyond lucky to have written for so many different well-known outlets – especially because it’s not easy to get published in some of these magazines as a freelance journalist. It took a lot of time and practice for me to learn to write good, eye-catching pitches, develop relationships with editors, and find the best stories to tell. My favorite thing about writing for these outlets are the people, communities, and experiences I’ve gotten to highlight. Many of the articles I’ve published focus on people and communities of historically marginalized identities. It’s so important to me that as a journalist, I uplift their businesses or their stories, so that they can be supported by a wider audience. Journalism for me has been one of the most profound ways that I’ve been able to be an activist.