On Writing
New Mexico Helped Me Imagine a Cast of Characters Who Live Here
Now I Live Here, Too
On my first trip to New Mexico, I landed in the small, historic village of Corrales. With closely clustered adobe buildings, narrow streets, and a network of irrigation canals called “acequias,” it appeared very old. Most of New Mexico is. From the Spanish colonization of the 1500’s to the present — and for tens of thousands of years when this land was occupied only by the natives who settled here, people have called its mountains, forests, and deserts home.
I found my favorite breakfast and lunch place, a consignment shop full of delightful crafts and turquoise jewelry, and winding trails that led me through the Bosque forest to the muddy, red Rio Grande. Corrales became a touchpoint, grounding me when the larger city of Albuquerque overwhelmed my senses.
Later that summer, I spent most of the month of August writing a script for a TV pilot set in Corrales; and a year later I transformed it the into a fictional series (five books and counting.) I began to imagine…two very different families, intertwined. One family who had lived in Corrales…
