Dia De Muertos, My Late Father, and the Big Houses I Built

I am not afraid of death. I celebrate it.

This is a teaching that came down to me from my ancestors in various ways: first and foremost, through my parents, grandparents and my extended family; through the rich culinary traditions of my birthplace, Mexico; through the myths and legends I learned as a child in CDMX; through the traditions of Dia De Muertos, a tradition that honors the dead that belongs to my Mesoamerican ancestors from thousands of years ago.

This year, Dia De Muertos carries a heavier and more colorful tone because I just lost my father this past Spring. He always believed in me as an artist and novelist. After all, he was the person who first introduced me to Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda, Franz Kafka and Carlos Fuentes. He pushed me to pursue my life as a novelist.

I am Mexican. My culture explores, embraces and dances with death because we know it’s a natural event of continuity. It’s not an ending.

I celebrate death in every book I have ever written and published. 13 Secret Cities. 9 Lord of Night. How to Kill a Superhero, volumes 1-4. 12 Burning Wheels. And now, with my newest book, Our Lord of the Flowers, I am exploring new angles of death.

Our Lord of the Flowers is my toughest book. In its pages, a character named Vitrum is tasked with cleaning out the hoarded house that belonged to his late father. It’s during this act of cleaning out his father’s monstrous chaos of physical objects that Vitrum encounters the Aztec gods. It’s in this house where Micltantecuhtli whispers songs. It’s in that big house in Chicago where another god, Xochipilli, the god of flowers and music, begins to haunt Vitrum.

This month I am celebrating death, Dia De Muertos and my own artistic renaissance. If you are ready to read my novel as a web serial, be sure to visit my new web site ourlordoftheflowers.com. The book will be dropping there in November, and it’s going to be a colorful, musical, but also dark journey.