An Author's Two Paths To Happiness

Photo by Cara Lopez Lee

I’m living a double life: promoting the new edition of my memoir while also pitching my novel to agents. In one life, I’ve arrived at a pinnacle. In the other, I’m standing breathless on a false summit, staring up the steep slope ahead, wondering if I’ll ever reach the top. The view always promises to be better up there, but I find it important to pause and appreciate the climb.

Back in 2006 to 2007, I began researching my historical novel. I explored East LA and El Paso from my grandmother’s and father’s point of view; interviewed family, locals, and historians; read books about Chinese-American and Mexican-American history; and studied archival photos and articles. That same year, I sent fifty queries to agents to pitch my recently completed memoir, They Only Eat Their Husbands.

In 2007, I registered a synopsis of the novel I planned to write, Daughter on the Borderline, with the Writers Guild of America, West. That same year, I landed an agent for my memoir. We soon had a nibble from a major publisher. I naively told my husband, “Our lives are going to change!”

By 2008, no publishers had bitten, but something did change: I wised up to the fact that I was writing for love, not money or fame. I spent the next year pitching my memoir to two-dozen small presses. I also took my novel research to China, where I found my great-grandfather’s village and interviewed a ninety-nine-year-old cousin.  

In 2009, I began actually writing my novel, renamed Tortillas from the Chung King Café. That same year at Denver’s Lighthouse LitFest, I landed a contract with Ghost Road Press for my memoir. I called my husband, jumping like a cheerleader, shrieking, “I have a publisher!”

In 2010, every time I sat down to write my novel, I felt like a castaway floating in a small boat in a vast ocean. Although my memoir read like a novel, it had not prepared me for the challenge of fiction. I took classes at Lighthouse Writers Workshop, and discovered how much I didn’t know. I also realized how much I didn’t know about China, and returned for more research. That same year, my memoir came out, and I gave talks on writing and travel.

In 2011, I traveled to Chihuahua, Mexico, infamous for its drug war, to do more research for the novel, then called Tortillas from the Canton Café (I worried that Chung King sounded like a canned food company). I completed about 100 pages, That same year, I drove around the West on a book tour for my memoir.

In 2012, I accepted what fellow authors had warned me about: my novel had the wrong protagonist. I had to rewrite half my pages. By the end of that year, at page 171, my characters had just reached America, which I had originally expected to happen around page 21. 

By 2013, I accepted what my memoir’s editor had warned me about: Ghost Road Press was going out of business. I had to find a new publisher. 

Last year, I finished a first draft of my novel. At more than 500 pages, it only told half the story I intended, but the dramatic arc felt perfect. I decided to split my original idea into two books. Meanwhile, also last year, Conundrum Press published a second edition of my memoir.

Today, I’m still rewriting the novel, but closing in on the finish. This week, I’m going to another LitFest, where my memoir will be for sale in the book tent while I meet with an agent to pitch my novel, now called The Candlelight Bridge. Here’s the basic pitch:

In 1910 a Mexican girl and a Chinese man flee revolutions and devastating losses in their two countries. In El Paso, Texas they meet and marry, but his lust for her thirteen-year-old sister threatens to destroy their lives.  

I’m nervous about the pitch, much like I was the first time, with one big difference: this time it’s just as important to me that I be excited about the agent as it is for the agent to be excited about me. I’ve trekked far enough up this mountain to believe I’m not seeking a rescuer but a partner.

Who knows if I’ll ever reach the top? They’re all false summits, aren’t they? That’s fine because I love the climb, and the unique opportunity I have as an author to walk more than one trail at a time.

Cara Lopez Lee is the author of the memoir They Only Eat Their Husbands. Her stories have appeared in such publications as The Los Angeles Times, Denver Post, Connotation Press, and Rivet Journal. She’s a book editor, a writing coach, and a faculty member at Lighthouse Writers Workshop. She was a journalist in Alaska and North Carolina, and a writer for HGTV and Food Network. An avid traveler, she has explored twenty countries and most of the fifty United States. She and her husband live in Denver.