What I read in August

 

Here's what I read in July.  Ten books total. Of those,  three were 5 star reads,  four were 4 star reads,  one was 3 stars, and two were 2 stars. A pretty strong month,  comparatively.

Seven of them were review copies. Two were audio. Three were print.  The longest book was 400 pages.  The shortest was 176 pages. A total of 2676 pages read. 

Last Day of a Prior Life by Andres Barba

5 stars. Last Day of a Prior Life is a ghost story that might not be a ghost story, but one that will absolutely steal your heart.

Our unnamed narrator is prepping a house she’s trying to sell, moving through the familiar motions of cleaning and staging, when she turns from the sink and sees a boy sitting perfectly still in one of the kitchen chairs. She asks him what he wants, and when he doesn't respond, tells him he can’t be there, that people are coming, and he simply stands up and walks away. A quick search of the house reveals nothing. No boy. Not a trace. Just a lingering sense of unease and curiosity.

She moves through the showing in a kind of waking dream, unable to shake the encounter. She doesn’t tell her The Man She Lives With. She doesn’t tell anyone. Instead, she cancels her appointments the next day and returns to the house, pulled by a strange, quiet desire to see the boy again.

But what she finds is even stranger. A reflection of herself at the sink, turning, reacting to the boy exactly as she did the day before. The cringey moment replaying itself without her permission.

From here, the story slides beautifully into that eerie space where reality thins as she begins to slowly detach from herself and chases the strangeness of the house and the boy who haunts it. It's less about the supernatural and more about the parts of our lives we abandon, neglect, or refuse to face.

This is a captivating, dreamlike meditation on obsession, grief, and the inescapable regret that follows as a consequence of the choices we make. It’s tender and unsettling.

I went in with zero expectations and found myself completely enraptured. If this isn’t on your radar, consider yourself officially on notice.

Summer Fun Masscare by Craig DiLouie

Brought this book with me while vacationing in a cabin in the Smoky Mountains bc I anticipated it would be the perfect horror companion, expecting a full on slasher, dripping with campy ’90s nostalgia and enough bloodshed to make a VHS horror fan grin. Unfortunately, that’s not what this book delivers.

We get maaaaybe five minutes of gory goodness before the story pivots hard into a tongue and cheek police‑procedural. From there, it’s nearly 200 pages of following the local deputies as they try and repeatedly fail to solve the case before it goes cold… just like the eerily similar massacre from the early ’80s. And the one before that. And the one before that. Because this town has a long, strange history of bodies piling up in the same patch of woods, stretching back to the ’60s.

Local legend blames a hare‑masked creature that burrows underground and rises every so often to feast on human flesh. Deputy Tom, however, is convinced the truth is far more human ... and far more personal. With ties to the ’83 killings and this fresh massacre happening practically under his nose, he’s determined not to let the killer slip away again.

I’ve yet to find anything by DiLouie that hits the same unforgettable high as Suffer the Children, though I keep hoping. I really thought Summer Fun Massacre might be the one ... but nope. It’s not a bad book, just not the book I was expecting. Instead of a slasherfest, we get the behind‑the‑scenes politics of small‑town policing and the slow grind of an investigation that may never find its monster.

If you’re looking for a procedural with a horror edge, this might work for you. But if you’re craving a blood‑splattered slasher romp? Adjust your expectations accordingly. Sigh.

Marla by Jonathan Janz

I picked up Marla right after finishing Craig DiLouie’s Summer Fun Massacre, not realizing I was about to tumble into another horror novel obsessed with small‑town police politics. A weird coincidence for vacation reading... almost as if the universe decided I needed a double feature of local cops losing their minds.

But Marla did something different. Beneath the procedural surface, this is straight‑up grief horror. It's packed with small‑town secrets, a string of bizarre deaths that make zero sense, a community that seems to know more than it’s willing to say, and a mother–daughter duo who radiate unease from the moment they appear on the page, with Marla herself becoming a person of interest when she's spotted right before or right after someone dies. Meanwhile Carl, our main guy and local cop, is perpetually one step behind every death, which only makes the whole thing feel more frustrating and cursed.

I’d actually marked Marla as a to‑buy title years ago after seeing people rave about it, not realizing it was a limited release. Trying to track down a copy was fruitless, so when it popped up on NetGalley, I wasted no time in requesting it. And honestly? I found it to be worth the wait.

This was my first Jonathan Janz novel, and it won’t be my last. His writing is super accessible, and quietly unsettling in that creepy WTF way that keeps you glued to your Kindle screen. It's more psychological than splatter, where the atmosphere is thick and the emotional undercurrent of grief, guilt, and the way loss distorts our perception, gives the story a bit more weight than I had expected.

Marla isn’t just another small‑town horror procedural. It’s stranger, sadder, and more haunting than that... and it's left me wanting to dig deeper into Janz’s backlist.

Meat Bees by Dane Erbach

Serendipity and I? Besties. I swear, half the books I pick up at random end up weirdly connected, like they’re conspiring behind my back. My last two reads both dove into small‑town police politics and the absolute clown‑show attempts of local cops trying to handle supernatural chaos.

Then Meat Bees waltzed in with the same vibe. And here’s where it gets freaky. My husband, our son, and our daughter‑in‑law had just come home from a trip to the Smoky Mountains. And not just the Smokies — the Tennessee side. And not just the Tennessee side — but a tiny town right outside Pigeon Forge and Gatlinburg, where this book goes completely off the rails. Dolly Parton Stampede? Drove right past it because we opted for the Pirate dinner show instead. Mountain coasters? Planned, but the weather said “lol no.” Souvenir shops full of Dolly merch and chaotic tourist tchotchkes? We lived in those and are 100% guilty of leaving with arms full of fun merch.

So tell me — what are the chances of picking up a book set in the exact place I just visited for the first time ever? I love when the universe aligns like that. It feels intentional, like life is unfolding on a track you’re meant to follow.

Erbach wrote this after their own Smokies trip, when their kids got attacked by wasps. Thankfully, we avoided that nightmare. Aside from some aggressively hungry nighttime mosquitos, nature pretty much minded her own business. And thank god, because if I had stumbled across skeletonized bodies or heard the mountain whisper “leave now,” girl… I would’ve sprinted. I am not built for wilderness horror. Scarlet, Liz, and their Stovetop Outfitters co-workers? Bless them. I would not have made it.

Hard pass.

Four solid stars. The writing is sharp, the pacing is wild, and the story barrels forward like a zipline you can’t get off. There's some gore here but not the kind that would make anyone vomit in their mouth or get that weird fuzzy feeling behind thier knees. And good lord, I tore through it all because I had to know how it all wrapped up.

The Burn Line by Jonathan Sims

Damn, this book had me by the throat.

Sims plunges you straight into the dark, claustrophobic labyrinth of the London Underground, where something is stalking commuters on the Central Line... yet no one remembers a thing. Five strangers wake without having realized they dozed off, full of anxiety they can’t explain, faintly smelling something sweet and rotten, brushing greasy ash off their clothes like it’s no big deal, but also realizing they’ve all experienced the same thing.

As they gravitate toward one another and begin unlocking the memories that were taken from them, the novel tightens like a noose. And once they start remembering? Oh, they regret it immediately.

Sims excels at atmosphere — the claustrophobia, the tension, the sense of being hunted. The book toys with you, unsettling you in all the right ways. But when the creature finally steps into full view, the reveal is simultaneoulsy satisfying and disappointing, shifting the story from something uniquely eerie into something a little more cliche. The pacing mirrors this - slow, deliberate dread that give way to bursts of frantic momentum.

Even still, The Burn Line remains an engrossing, grimy journey through the London Underground and the social machinery grinding beneath it. Imperfect, yes but undeniably compelling. Even so, I tore through it. It’s creepy, it’s weird, it’s sweaty in that summer‑subway kind of way. A perfect pick for a gross, humid afternoon when you already feel like something is breathing down your neck.

Tapeworm by AP Thayer

FFS, you guys. Two pseudo‑vampire wannabe novels back‑to‑back, completely by accident. I started The Burn Line right as I queued up Tapeworm for my commute, and somehow I ended up in the exact same situation twice: books insisting their weird little creatures were vampires when they were very clearly… not. The synchronicity was almost unsettling and this one was just...sigh.

This book was weird, the sex was icky, and I still have no clue if those things were supposed to be vampires or just desert parasites with a superiority complex.

The opening drags — we’re stuck with a miserable couple on a desert vacation with their equally miserable couple‑friends. Fast‑forward a year: same trip, except now the husband shows up solo and refuses to talk about the split. Then he meets a hot desert girl and immediately loses all brain cells.

Nothing actually happens until the last 2.3 hours — which I listened to at 1.9x speed because the narrator read so slowwwww — and then suddenly it’s chaos. Are they vampires? Parasites? Worm‑people? I finished the book and still couldn’t tell you.

And the sex scenes. LORD. I am not built for “daddy do me dirty” desert kink. These scenes were physically painful to endure. I have yet to encounter a monster‑spice moment that isn’t cringe, and this book doubled down.

In the end, Tapeworm is a strange, uneven novel that left me more perplexed than satisfied. Entirely too horny, completely confusing, and absolutely not the vampire book it thinks it is.

Our Cut of Salt by Deena Helm

Our Cut of Salt is presented as a haunted house novel, but what it really offers is a multigenerational family narrative with a light supernatural undertone. The pacing is slow, the prose more clunky than not, and the ghostly elements feel symbolic rather than frightening — with nearly all the actual “haunting” crammed into the final few pages.

The premise had real potential - a house shaped by grief, resisting new occupants, waiting for the return of those it lost. It’s evocative, even cinematic at times. But the novel devotes most of its energy to the inner lives and hidden traumas of three generations of women, leaving the haunting underdeveloped and rushed.

It’s not a bad story — just not the one I signed up for. If this had been marketed as a generational narrative with a haunting twist, I’d have been less disappointed. And if it had leaned harder into the “rage house” concept, it could’ve been something wild and memorable.

I came for the angry house. What I got instead was a family epic with a ghostly garnish.

Jaws by Peter Benchley

It's about time I read this, right?! Born in the 70's, I grew up on the Jaws films, but I'm honestly not sure I would have ever picked up the book if I hadn't seen it on sale on Chirp.

The narration wasn't horrible. Erik Steele has a weird, slightly transatlantic accent, unless he's softening up a Lawng Island accent but it's defintely not the New Yawk accent I grew up with. His women voices were a little cringe and some of his male characters sounded a little too similar to each other, but Benchley's writing had a tendency to overstate who was speaking so it was really easy to follow.

The writing has that very dated, very direct "why you listen here, you" flavor to it which was kind of refreshing, and there was tons of male posturing, which was quite entertaining - all of which lends itself really well to audio.

While the movie ruined beaches and ocean swimming for a lot of people, calling Jaws, the novel, horror... I dunno. The book definitely focused more heavily on the relationship between Brody and his wife, and the politics that drive a summer tourist town, than it did the actual people eating, blood spraying, terrifying, man eating shark. And when it did focus on the shark, it was kind of neat because we were given the shark's perspective... which I enjoyed. Sadly though, once Brody, Hooper, and Quint all hit the ocean together, it felt like Benchley chucked that approach into the water with the chum. Oh well.

And was the affair subplot really needed? A forever pet peeve of mine... authors throwing in cheating spouses, especially when it's not really doing much to drive the story forward and just creates an unnecessary distraction. Book Brody was angry and violent enough. Why anger him more by making his wife sleep with someone else while he's already fuming over the giant fish who keeps killing the tourists and the mayor who refuses to let him close the beaches?

I know it sounds like I'm bitching a lot but keep in mind, I'm comparing book to movie and you will almost never hear me say this because I'm firmly camp "the book is better" buuuuttt... not in this case.

If I just take the book at face value, it's a 4 star. I really enjoyed it. And I looked forward to hitting play on the app every time I got into the car soooo....

Maybe I'll take a peek and see if Benchley's other book is marked down on Chirp... to keep the fish vibes going a little longer!

The Instruction Manual to Being a Vampire by Craig Wallwork

Hold up. Just hold up one freakin’ minute. Truborn Press dropped an unexpected front‑runner for my favorite read of the year, and somehow you’re all sleeping on it. How is no one else reading this book yet? It’s flying under your radars and frankly, you should be ashamed.

The book opens with a woman strolling into a police station covered in blood, wearing a necklace made of severed fingers, calmly announcing she’s the witness to thirty‑three murders. That’s page one. From there, Wallwork hits the gas and never lets up.

As the investigation unravels, we learn our narrator narrowly escaped a late‑night attack thanks to an elderly vampire priest named Roth — the same priest who recently appeared at her grief counseling session, which she reluctantly attends after her father’s death in an attempt to find connection and eavesdrop on other's sufferings. After witnessing the brutal way he dispatches her attacker, she teams up with Roth to help him hunt the “bad blood” he needs in order to survive. Think Dexter, but swap the forensics for fangs. Both murderers with weird moral codes.

Wallwork shines a whole new light on the vampire genre and torches the tired damsel‑in‑distress narrative while he’s at it. Our leading lady is nobody’s victim. She goes toe‑to‑toe with anyone who has the balls to cross her path.

But here’s the kicker: beneath all the gore, the book digs deep into loneliness, grief, and the hollow ache of trying to keep living when life keeps taking. It’s as much about redemption as it is about revenge... a fist punching straight up through blood, bile, and despair. And just when you think you’ve got the whole thing figured out, Wallwork’s like… uh… no ya’ don’t.

This one’s a wild, bloody, unexpectedly tender standout... and absolutely a contender for my top reads of the year.

For fans of In The Valley of the Sun and Coffin Moon.

Last Days by Brian Evenson

This book had been sitting in my Kindle TBR for waaay too long, and landing a NetGalley copy of the sequel Phantom Limb, which is coming out in October, was exactly the shove I needed to bump Last Days straight to the tippy top of the pile.

I adore Brian Evenson. Not only does he write fiction like no one else, he’s genuinely one of the coolest humans walking around. He was incredibly generous with his time the few chances I had to meet him, and hosting him as a #SMOLfair keynote speaker was one of those pinch‑me moments I’ll never forget.

All that gushy admiration aside, I am kicking myself for waiting this long to read Last Days. This thing is a phenomenally fucked‑up masterpiece and gets every single star from me. Kline might be one of the calmest, most unhinged MCs I’ve ever encountered, and I am fully obsessed.

I wasn't feeling well yesterday and took a sick day from work, and devoured this book with every scrap of energy I could muster... and honestly, it was the perfect story to disappear into. I cannot wait to dive into Phantom Limb today and keep riding this Evenson high.

Blog Tour: CRIMSON IN QUIETUS by Eugen Bacon

 

We're happy to help Meerkat Press support the release of their latest title CRIMSON IN QUIETUS by Eugen Bacon by participating in their blog tour. 

For our portion of the tour, Eugen has decided to participate in our indie spotlight, sharing some insight into fear... fear of writing, fear of rejection, and overocming imposture syndrome.

Confessions of a literary magpie

I had a lot of fear writing this book. My fear was about rejection—how would the audience receive this book? I was nervous, why? Because it was the first time I was writing such a big work set in the Afrocentric Sauútiverse.  

 

True, I’d already written stories set in this universe, including award winners, as in The Nga’phandileh Whisperer: A Sauútiverse Novella that recently won the Foreword Indies Book of the Year, was a finalist in the same award for the Fantasy category and was a finalist in the British Fantasy and Aurealis Awards. It also made the preliminary ballot for the 2025 Bram Stoker Awards. 

But, as writers, we only feel as good as the last book. We tell ourselves: The publisher is expecting… The audience is expecting… Awards are expecting… And we are also expecting…

 

There was already so much expectation for this book, the development of which was supported by the Copyright Agency Cultural Fund as part of the University of Tasmania’s three-month Hedberg Fellowship. I spent three whole months in Tassie researching the novel, whose fiction borrowed from the island’s natural beauty of rocky outcrops, stalactite and stalagmite caves, cascading waterfalls, rivulet trails and fiery auroras that now found themselves in an Afrocentric Sauútiverse novel.

 

In writing it, I connected with the characters, found order in their disorder. I worried if my new kind of speculative literary mystery where the investigator was not a detective, but a sound magic specialist held. The opening of the book was reassuring, as were the publisher’s comments: “This is such a wonderful book!”

 

The story opens with the afterlife, a dimension of the dead, where the souls of our ancestors lurk:

Prologue: Crossing to Eh’wauizo

 

The crossing to Eh’wauizo, the spirit realm, is in the backwaters of a black river. Put a pinch of shadow and blood salt in your pocket, or sew it in a hem. Slip a button, a tooth, a chicken bone, a crystal or a small, shiny thing under your tongue for Ze-ne to collect. The ear of a ghost orchid, or the twig of a dragon-no’s blood tree is also good. It will ward off omens.

 

Tie a blindfold with a spotless garment—ebony or crimson—and listen for light. You will see silver specters in nondescript shapes turning to wine colors. Don’t mind them. Tend away from echoes and negotiate towards ripples of gentler waters whose lick at your calf then your waist then your chest then your neck especially frightens you as you submerge. Keep treading underwater even as your lungs swell.

 

Resist an urge to scream. Don’t struggle or hold your breath, even as your arms and legs begin to feel laden with rocks. Relax your body, think of the potential. Your chest is tearing, everything inside burning, but it isn’t. Your head will feel light, lighter still as you recognize the approaching Ze-ne-nazala, dear Ze-ne—the demigoddess of death—who will float you to a place of no fear.

 

This is Eh’wauizo, the dimension of our ancestors.

 

Protagonists Muso’mi and Fin’Lei each reminds me of myself in their own different way. Muso’mi is gifted and sometimes wishes she wasn’t. She’s not consumed with vanity and doesn’t like confrontation. She doesn’t need a mirror to tell her what she looks like, because she’s studied many mirrors and decided she likes her jaw, she doesn’t like her jaw. She likes the shape and fullness of her lips, she doesn’t like the shape and fullness of her lips… It varies with moods, how she feels about herself.

 

Like Muso’mi, Fin’Lei is curious about the world, she’s exploratory. She’s had the best and the worst of worlds. She’s had Granmaé, someone to look up to, clear-eyed, honest-faced Granmaé whose entire being said trust me, because you can. On the other hand, Fin’Lei has never known familial love. Her parents are hardworking, doing the best they can as humans would in a world where robots and enhanced humans perform better. Such is the iron of life—Fin’Lei didn’t choose it.

 

It’s natural, then, that these two misfits, Muso’mi and Fin’Lei, find kindredhood in each other. But the universe is warped and has other ideas.

 

I wrote this novel as stories-within-stories. It’s a creative composition that’s both spontaneous and researched. My writing was discovery, lived experience and more. I layered the novel story by story, creating a longer piece of work using a discipline of short story writing already familiar. I paid attention to the short story and embedded vignettes and tales that could be continued, carefully placed within the novel, interlinked them and layered with characters, events, motifs and interplays—a sum of the parts.

 

In hindsight, I can say imposter’s syndrome be damned! The reviews are coming and they affirm that, in Crimson in Quietus, I did something right.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Crimson in Quietus 

Release today!

Science Fiction | Horror | Afrofuturism

From the queen of genre-bending speculative fiction, comes the newest Sauútiverse offering, a mystery like no other, where the investigator is not a detective, but a sound scientist. 

In a world where sound is a tangible force, Muso’mi is a maadiregi—an expert in the art of consuming it. At the prestigious Mahadum, she researches the language of silence, seeking to master the gift her mother calls theft. But academic intrigue turns to deadly peril when her friend vanishes after unearthing a hidden truth. Pursuing clues through pools of quietude across worlds, Muso’mi stumbles upon a horrifying discovery: a pattern of carnage left in fields of harvested silence. Now, the hunter becomes the hunted, as her unique expertise draws her into the orbit of a serial killer who understands the power of sound all too well. 

Includes a glossary of Bantu, Afrocentric and made-up words from this cross-cultural tale written in gorgeous lyrical language packed with emotion. 

Meerkat Press | Bookshop.org | Amazon

“Bacon has one of the most unflinchingly unique voices in modern fiction, be it in the speculative field or anywhere else. Crimson in Quietus is her most lyrical, ambitious work to date.” 

—Keith Rosson, author of Coffin Moon

“Eugen Bacon has crafted a unique and utterly fearless literary mosaic that gleefully defies genre traditions and rejects all conventional standards of classification. Unflinching and written with such powerful poetry and lyricism, Crimson in Quietus is raw, intense, and captivating. One of the most extraordinary, mesmerizing, and magnetic novels I've ever had the honor of reading.”

—Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Bacon’s prose is as rich as the worldbuilding, studded with neologisms derived from African language and legends (a helpful glossary provides both meanings and derivations).

—Publishers Weekly

 

 

Eugen Bacon is an African Australian author. She is a Solstice, British Fantasy, Ignyte, Locus, Foreword Indies and BSFA Award winner. She’s also a twice World Fantasy and Shirley Jackson Award finalist, and a finalist in the Philip K. Dick Awards and the Nommo Awards for speculative fiction by Africans. Eugen is an Otherwise Fellow, and was announced on the honor list for ‘doing exciting work in gender and speculative fiction’. Danged Black Thing made the Otherwise Award Honor List as a ‘sharp collection of Afro-Surrealist work’. Visit her at eugenbacon.com.

 

The 40 but 10: Roie Oknin

 

I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!

Today we are joined by Roie Oknin. Roie is a writer, artist and medical student. He holds a BSc in Neuroscience and a BA in Psychology and works as a research assistant in ophthalmology. Ramen, Existential Crises is his first novel.

Why do you write?

I think I write for the same reason I make anything. I like taking something that only exists in my head and giving it form. Writing also lets me spend an unreasonable amount of time thinking about very small things, which suits me quite well, as an overthinker.

What do you do when you’re not writing?

I enjoy far too many things. My personal motto is trying to unlock the 25th hour of the day. I paint, sculpt, take photographs, travel, hike, play the piano, code, and generally start more projects than I have hours to finish. I’m also a medical student and work as a research assistant in ophthalmology. I drink plenty of coffee.

Describe your book poorly.

Several people work in a shop. One of them is extremely bad at making decisions. Noodles are involved.

If you met your characters in real life, what would you say to them?

No spoilers, but: “It’s going to be alright.”

(Or is it?)

Would you and your main character(s) get along?

I think Koji and I would get along very well, which is probably not an entirely reassuring thing to admit.

If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?

Dead or alive? Dostoevsky. I’d like to know what he was like when he wasn’t being Dostoevsky. I’d probably spend half the day asking him questions about his masterpieces, and the other half trying to find out whether he was actually enjoyable company.

What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?

Dostoevsky is one of my favourites, especially Notes from Underground. I also love Camus, Kafka, Beckett and Virginia Woolf. I’m drawn to absurdism, stream of consciousness writing, and contemporary Japanese writers such as Banana Yoshimoto, Sayaka Murata and Mieko Kawakami, to name a few.

What are you currently reading?

Nipponia Nippon by Kazushige Abe.

What’s the single best line you’ve ever read?

I know, I know, it’s an obvious one, but I have to go with the opening of Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

What would you do if you could live forever?

Eventually, I’d try to win every prize there is. The Nobel, an EGOT, everything. Given an infinite amount of time, even the statistically improbable is inevitable. I’d also finally have enough time for all my hobbies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

August 8, 2026

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0HDFG28SF

Koji is twenty-seven and one module short of a degree in Politics and Government. The missing module is Crisis Management. It feels appropriate.

For six years, he has worked in a tiny ramen shop with eleven seats, one dish and a broth whose flame has not gone out in thirty-two years. The noodles cook for exactly eighty-five seconds.

Then the timer fails. A stranger gives Koji his business card. Someone from his past walks into the restaurant. Around him, other people make decisions and continue with their lives.

Koji has always known what should be done.

Doing it is another matter.

Indie Spotlight: Eugene Costello

Welcome to our Indie Spotlight series, in which TNBBC gives small press authors the floor to shed some light on their writing process, publishing experiences, or whatever else they'd like to share with you, the readers!

Today's spotlight shines on Eugene Costello who released Puta Madre on August 5th.

Why I Made a Colombian Migrant and Former Sex Worker the Heroine of My Novel

I arrived in Spain to begin my new life just a couple of weeks before the country entered one of the strictest pandemic lockdowns in the world. Arrangements to connect the electricity, water, gas and Wi-Fi in my rented apartment ground to a halt. For weeks, I was permitted to leave only to walk the hundred metres to my nearest grocery store for essentials.

 

Shortly before lockdown, I had decided to employ a cleaner and, through word of mouth, found a Colombian single mother then in her late thirties, with a four-year-old son.

It proved a wise decision for reasons that had little to do with cleaning. We became immediate friends, her infectious laughter and singing filling the apartment like sunlight. When restrictions permitted, she welcomed me into her home, where I could take my laptop and work in her son’s bedroom using her Wi-Fi. Love is as love does, and she made me feel at home when I was far from my own family.

Valencia is compact enough to feel less like a metropolis than a collection of barrios and interconnected villages. It is also home to sizeable communities from Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and elsewhere in Latin America. As I applied myself to learning Spanish, my friend introduced me to people, stories and food that revealed lives very different from my own.

There was always food.

Somebody died? We’ll cook.

Won the lottery? We’ll cook.

A son scored a goal at his football match? We’ll cook.

Food marked sorrow, celebration and all the ordinary moments between them. The voices, jokes, anxieties and ambitions I encountered began crowding my imagination. Over time, elements of them were made flesh in the characters I tried to create—not as portraits of particular individuals, but as fictional people shaped by the world in which I was now living.

The story of the world is the story of migration. People leave because they are hungry, frightened, ambitious, trapped or simply convinced that another life must be possible somewhere else. Usually, it is a mixture of all five. They arrive carrying recipes, memories, obligations and expectations, and begin the exhausting business of constructing a new life.

Daniela emerged from that world, but she was never intended to represent every Colombian woman, every migrant or every mother. No character could bear that burden, and no writer should impose it. She is one woman confronting a particular set of circumstances and making choices that are sometimes courageous, sometimes questionable and always her own.

Through Sofía — whose name I have changed — I met several women whose circumstances had led them into sex work. They were among the warmest, funniest and most generous people I encountered. What also struck me was how little moral judgement they faced within their own communities. Migrant life can mean badly paid work, insecure housing, uncertain legal status and almost no employment protection. People do what they need to do to survive, and their friends understand that.

I did not want sex work to define Daniela, still less to present her as either a fallen woman or a helpless victim waiting to be rescued. It is something she does during a difficult period of her life; it is not the sum of who she is. She remains a daughter, sister, mother, friend and, eventually, entrepreneur.

That is why I gave her the idea for Empanadas de Puta Madre, the food business through which she transforms her life. She does not escape poverty through luck or the intervention of a benevolent man. She builds something from the skills, recipes and determination she already possesses. Her son’s eventual literary success extends that story into the next generation: the child of a migrant woman who was denied an education becomes an acclaimed writer.

I wanted to celebrate the contribution migrants make to the societies in which they settle without pretending that migration is easy or that every struggle produces a triumphant ending. Above all, I wanted Daniela to be permitted the same complexity that fiction has traditionally granted more privileged characters: to make mistakes, take risks, survive compromises and create a life larger than the one circumstances appeared to have allotted her.

I hope I have done her justice.

 

 

You can buy the English paperback of Puta Madre here and the Kindle version here.

The sequel Beyond Puta Madre is available in paperback and Kindle.

 Daniela Arango arrives in Valencia from Colombia with little money, limited choices and a determination to create a better life.

After surviving through sex work and cleaning jobs, she becomes a mother and begins building something of her own: Empanadas de Puta Madre, a food business rooted in the recipes, resilience and communal spirit she brought with her from home.

As Daniela’s fortunes change, so does the life of her son, Daniel, whose literary ambitions carry the family’s story into another generation.

Set against the streets, neighbourhoods and migrant communities of Valencia, Puta Madre is a novel about motherhood, migration, friendship and the stubborn human capacity for reinvention.

Eugene Costello is a British-Irish journalist and author based in Valencia, Spain. During a career spanning more than thirty years, his work has appeared in numerous British national newspapers and magazines. He is the founder and editor of Valencia Life and writes about Spain, migration, public health and the glorious absurdities of everyday life. His novels Puta Madre and Beyond Puta Madre follow a Colombian migrant who rebuilds her life in Valencia through motherhood, friendship, food and formidable determination.