The best part of the Barbie movie

I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about the Barbie movie. As a young girl, I didn’t see myself reflected in the Barbie world and my family couldn’t afford the Dream Houses and Cars and Campers I circled in the JCPenney catalogue.

Still, I loved Barbie. I had two Barbies, a Ken, and a bed made out of a showbox and a tissue paper, and that was all I really needed for the first romance stories I made up, where a naked, amnesiac Ken showed up in a middle of a storm, “good” Barbie placed him in her bed to recover, and her bad evil twin Barbie (you could tell she was evil because of her cut hair and marker makeup) seduced him. I didn’t know what seduction involved. I just knew it was the basis of many of the TV shows we watched.

Seeing the spirit of how young girls interacted with Barbie on the big screen was a delight. But even more thrilling, from a personal standpoint, was watching Latina move star America Ferrera talk about the impossible standards set for today’s women.

America Ferrera is the physical model for Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, my once-perfect but now struggling wife, mom, financial planner, and bruja from Full Moon Over Freedom, and that she was the one outlining how woman are made to feel that they are never enough was an absolute triumph.

You have to be thin, but not too thin. And you can never say you want to be thin. You have to say you want to be healthy, but also you have to be thin. You have to have money, but you can’t ask for money because that’s crass. You have to be a boss, but you can’t be mean. You have to lead, but you can’t squash other people’s ideas. You’re supposed to love being a mother, but don’t talk about your kids all the damn time. You have to be a career woman, but also always be looking out for other people. You have to answer for men’s bad behavior, which is insane, but if you point that out, you’re accused of complaining. You’re supposed to stay pretty for men, but not so pretty that you tempt them too much or that you threaten other women because you’re supposed to be a part of the sisterhood. But always stand out and always be grateful. But never forget that the system is rigged….I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us. (You can read the full monologue here.)

My entire writing career has been about creating heroines who show up on the page not caring about being “liked,” who worry more about achieving something meaningful to themselves than appeasing the whims of others. They have a journey, they have things they need to figure out, but fundamentally believing in their worthiness is not one of them.

These heroines have repeatedly been called “unlikeable.” Predominantly by women.

So while I enjoyed the movie and leaned into the fantasy of Barbie defeating the patriarchy, more enjoyable for me was watching a Latina heroine outlining the way it is and calling it bullshit.

My first Mexican-American romance hero

Justin-Johnson Cortez, my movie-star casting for my hero Nicky Mendoza in Full Moon Over Freedom

When I sat down to write my second book in the Milagro Street series, a series about multi-generational Mexican-Americans in small-town Kansas, I did it with the intention of making my hero Mexican-American.
 
This was no small thing. As of yet, I hadn’t written a Mexican-American hero. Outside of the books of my hard-working Latinx romance author friends, Latino heroes are missing. In the media we engage with, only seven percent of the workers (actors, writers, editors, producers) are Latinx although we make up 19 percent of the American population. 
 
We need brown heroes shown in our media. I’m thrilled that in Full Moon Over Freedom, I finally get to correct my omission.

Nicky Mendoza, my first Mexican-American hero

Nicky Mendoza, my hero in Full Moon Over Freedom, is the bad-boy-turned-successful-artist who’s returned home to Freedom, Kansas for the summer with a secret: He’d been in love with our heroine, divorced mom Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, since the moment he saw her across the lunchroom in the fifth grade. He never told the girl who was his best friend how he felt, not even when she asked him to free her of the burden of her virginity. Now adults, they meet up again in Freedom, both only intending to be there for a summer, and he is determined to help her without ever revealing how he feels about her. 

Nicky is a good, good man. I am lucky to know so many good, good brown men to base him off of.

My inspiration

I was the first grandchild of a huge multi-generational Mexican-American family all living in a small town in southeast Kansas, so I was instantly adored, not only by my tías, but by my tíos. They all called me Angie. I moved away young, so when I came back to visit, my Granpo Frank would take me out for waffles, my tíos Daniel and Jesse and Pepe would ask me how I was doing and genuinely listen, and my closest tío, Adam, would always make me feel so seen and interesting. My dad’s cousins, Danny, Robert, and Bobby were fun, sweet guys closer to my age who I always had a crush on. Younger than me, my cousins Casey, Ryan and Ross, and Michael have all turned into amazing men with amazing families. 

My dad passed away in 2015 and one thing my brother Roman said at the funeral was my dad’s smile was one you could see across the room. That was true. I loved my dad. Everyone loved my dad.

My cousin Favian Hernandez is an incredible artist living in Laramie, Wyoming. His astonishing paper mache animal sculptures, inspired by the piñatas he would make with his mom, are displayed in art galleries. I interviewed Favian about being a Mexican-American artist and, more than anyone else, he inspired the creative ethic of my artist, Nicky Mendoza.

Inspiration from Hollywood

Once I decided on the heart of my Mexican-American hero, I needed a real-world, heartbreaker face to attach to him. My family comes from the indigenous people of Guanajuato, Mexico, and that darker skin, dark hair, and shorter height can still be seen in us. I wanted that for my hero. But searching for a young brown Latino leading man made me realize the lack of them. 

Fortunately, I discovered Justin Johnson-Cortez.

Justin is an actor, director, and writer who starred in the groundbreaking western TV show, “Walker: Independence.” When I included him in a social media post, it turned into one of the loveliest moments of my publishing career.

Soon after posting, I got a message from his wife. He’d sent her my post because she’d been, in that moment, reading After Hours on Milagro Street!!!! It was as surprising and satisfying as being recognized in the airport.

Since that moment, Justin, his wife, and I have all become friendly on social media and I’m so grateful to them both for their enthusiasm about using Justin as a positive representation of proud, brown heroes. 

Paying attention to inspiration

(Author’s note: I originally provided this article to my Hyperromantic Patreon subscribers at the $5/month tier. To read the full article, subscribe to my Hyperromantic Writers.)

The most common question I get as a multi-published romance author is “Where do you get your ideas from?”

It can seem so mystifying how a writer pulls thoughts and words from the air and turns them into a 100,000-word book, a book that can feel so real in reader’s minds. An author thought up REDRUM. An author thought up Hobbits. An author thought up a priest during truly filthy things with sacramental oil (and you know who you are, you naughty woman!). Every thought and every word and every book sprouts from a single moment of inspiration.

During a four-hour drive to Dallas last weekend, I listened to the phenomenal book The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. It’s not a spoiler to mention an early moment of inspiration for an author in the book. Houses remember, she writes in her journal. She instantly recognizes, as do we all, that it’s a fabulous line. Houses remember. It feels good on the tongue. The writer in the book isn’t sure how she’s going to use the line, isn’t even entirely sure what it’s referring to. She just knows it’s fabulous.

Listen to the hindbrain, not the muse

As an author who’s enjoyed my own moments of inspiration, I love this description of the hindbrain at work. Muses are flighty, too personified as something that can come and go, that can escape from you or that you must appease. The hindbrain is always there. In reality, the hindbrain regulates our automatic functions, like breathing and sleeping. The creative hindbrain works the same way, always back there, churning, working, processing your day through the lens of the stories you have to tell, sending up inspiration and character development and dialogue and, when the flow is right, whole pages of words.

You’re not shackled to the hindbrain. Your goal is to give it space to think it thoughts; the built skill is recognizing when it sends up creative gold.

Inspiration that launched my career

A gift from my hindbrain helped launched my publishing career. At the end of 2015, I’d been a longtime freelance writer, digital content consultant, and aspiring romance author. I was looking through books on my phone and thought I saw one titled “The Billionaire’s Prince.” (I tell this story a lot, so feel free to skip this part if you’ve already heard it.) I assumed this title was for a male/male book. In an instant, I realized that I assumed the billionaire in the title was a man. Deeply ashamed of myself for assuming a woman couldn’t be the billionaire, I realized just as quickly that that was the story I had to write: a story of a bad-ass billionaire businesswoman who had all the smarts, power, and resources to possess a prince.

From that hindbrain lightning strike, my debut book Lush Money was born.

Dialogue before characters

In my most recent release, After Hours on Milagro Street, my hindbrain delivered twice.

Before I even started the book, I wrote this down in my writing journal:

“I want you to understand something. My pussy...she’s not very discriminating. She’s attracted to most men. If we do anything, it’ll be hot. And memorable and interesting. But it won’t be special. It won’t be about you.”

Those who’ve read the book already know it’s what my heroine Alex tells our hero Jeremiah in a dark hallway before an angry reunion. The inspiration for this book sprang from multiple sources, but my concept for my furious heroine, the best bitch in bartending, sprang from this quote that came to me out of nowhere while I was sitting at my computer. I craved to write a heroine as self-possessed, as proud, as feral, and as giving as little fucks as the heroine in this quote.

My hindbrain gave me Alex and I thank it immensely.

Inspiration for the next book

In September, the second book in the Milagro Street series, Full Moon Over Freedom, will be released. It’s a second-chance romance book about a Gillian Armstead-Bancroft, a once-perfect wife and mom who’s lost her perfection, and Nicky Mendoza, the former bad-boy-turned-successful-artist who she hopes can help her get her groove back. She thinks of him as a very sexy long-lost friend and he, unfortunately, thinks of her as the girl he’s loved almost his whole life. The pining in this books is heart pumping!

Full Moon is an iteration of the first book I ever finished, in 2009. That first iteration wasn’t published for a reason (it was awful) but, while re-reading it in preparation for this book, I wrote down a passage from that original book:

"Why didn’t you ever ask me out?"

"You would have said ‘no.’ You were walking out of Freedom when we were in grade school. You had no time to waste on a boy who’d probably end up working at the plant….

Also, I was afraid you would just use me for sex."

In the 2009 installment, they’d never had sex and it’s now all they can think about. But in the current iteration, he’d been her “sex teacher” the summer after her freshman year in college. Unaware of his feelings, my very practical heroine viewed him as a practical solution to the problem of her virginity.

That line-- I was afraid you would just use me for sex—was the crux of the modern iteration, I realized. The original Nicky had better self-preservation instincts than the new Nicky, and that desire to protect himself now is one of the wedges keeping these two apart, although he can barely keep his hands off of her.

You never know when inspiration may strike. Listen to that hindbrain. Cultivate trusting it. And write down the treasures it sends you.

Preorder Full Moon Over Freedom now

Inspired by her own upbringing as a Mexican American in Kansas, Lopez offers a steamy love story that is also a repudiation of whitewashing history for the sake of upholding narrow definitions of what it is to be American…. It’s her ability to balance these lascivious passages with pointed, meaningful storytelling that sets her work apart and makes her a writer worth returning to again and again.

— Maureen Lee Lenker on After Hours on Milagro Street, Entertainment Weekly

Announcing next book in Filthy Rich series...

In Lush Money, book 1 of my Filthy Rich series — about powerful, wealthy women who get what they want because they’ve earned it — we met self-made Mexican-American billionaire, Roxanne Medina.

In book 2, Hate Crush, coming June 29, you’ll get to read about millionaire winemaking princesa, Sofia de Esperanza y Santos.

Now, I’m thrilled to introduce you to Mexican heiress-turned-CEO, Cenobia “Cen” Trujillo, in book 3, Serving Sin. Serving Sin will be available early 2021.

Serving Sin is about Roman Sheppard, the half-brother of the royal family of the Monte del Vino Real, who we met in Lush Money and Hate Crush. He’s a decorated ex-Army Ranger raised in a Texas trailer park. Thirteen years ago, he became internationally famous for rescuing a kidnapped Mexican teenage heiress. Now, he's the head of a successful security firm and, although he's been named advisor to his kingly brother, he's known in the media as the "reluctant prince," unwilling to fully accept his place in his family and the small wine-growing kingdom in Northern Spain.

The teen heiress, Cenobia Trujillo, is now a 30-year-old CEO of the largest automobile manufacturer in Mexico who needs Roman's help again. There have been serious threats against her, and with a month until the launch of her car that will change the Mexican auto industry for the better, she doesn’t have the time to be distracted. She asks him to come to Mexico to protect her.

Protection isn’t the only reason Cenobia – who asks people to call her “Cen” – wants Roman around. She’s ready to dispel the teenage fantasy notion that he’s her “one” with some womanly real-life pleasure. And there’s a reason Roman has stayed a continent away. He’d been a 26-year-old soldier who knew better than to be fascinated by the girl on the cusp of 18. He’ll go and protect her. But the last thing he’s ever going to call her is “Cen.”

Serving Sin will be available from Carina Press early 2021.

Inspiration for Roman Sheppard and Cenobia Trujillo. To see more inspiration, check out my Pinterest board

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