Candelora Versace and I have never met, though we have mutual friends in Santa Fe. So I read her debut book, Traveling Light: a novelita, last year with keen interest. Here’s what I commented about it in an Amazon review:
“Unput-downable until the final-page plot twist! Versace gets the details right on Santa Fe culture and ambience as she pulls the reader along with her rich prose. Appealing, though broken, characters pursue mezcal-fueled dreams from New Mexico to Oaxaca, abandoning their pasts like so much loose change. I can't help wondering, though, how things might have turned out had Camelia actually eaten her green chile breakfast at Tortilla Flats. THAT is la medicina.”
Ramona: Where are you from? How did you happen to move to Santa Fe?
Candelora: I was born and raised in Detroit. In my twenties, I bounced around quite a bit: Key West, Ann Arbor, East Village, Brooklyn. In the late ’80s I was in Seattle, and a friend of a friend of a friend mentioned Santa Fe; this was right about the time Santa Fe Style was hitting the mass consciousness, and I was smitten. Eventually some tenuous connections were made, and I packed up my car and drove to New Mexico. To be honest, I thought it would be like Tucson. I was ready for that hot dry air and the wide open spaces of the desert. I was surprised to find myself in the Rocky Mountains. (I have since become an ace googler on everything I ever even think of doing before I even leave the house, but in those days I was just kind of “go with the flow, figure it out when you get there.” I never even cracked a guide book.)
I have always been attracted to fringy, counterculture types of towns, and on first glance Santa Fe felt a lot like Key West had been for me a decade before, minus the palm trees and the ocean.
Ramona: Back of your book cover says you covered SF arts and culture as a freelance journalist. What publications did you write for?
Candelora:For a while there my byline was everywhere; I wrote consistently for several years for the Santa Fe New Mexican, as well as New Mexico Magazine, the Santa Fean, GuestLIfe, Albuquerque Journal, and a bunch of local independent papers and tourism publications, and I collected a few New Mexico and National Press Women awards. I did a lot of arts writing for regional art magazines, the occasional newsletter article for local colleges and art galleries, all kinds of stuff. I also founded and published a book review quarterly, Southwest BookViews, from 2001 to 2005, and did some ghostwriting for a couple of nutrition and wellness books.
Editor’s Note: I was arts and entertainment editor of the SF Reporter around 1987-1990. We probably crossed paths more than once back in the day!
Ramona:In your acknowledgments, you mention you learned to “travel light” from several women friends. What does this phrase mean to you?
Candelora:It feels like my daily quest these days, to lighten up not only from the deeply serious and often despairing and melancholic take I tend to have on life in general, but also to feel less weighted down and sometimes burdened by my attachments to place, to people, to things. I long for the kind of simplicity in living situations that lets you make fast decisions, pivot to new adventures, pack up and go in a moment’s notice. Note I say this as someone who has been in one place now for 30 years.
Ramona:The acknowledgments also allude to the book being a long time in the making. Can you say more about how the book was born and grew?
Candelora:I started noodling around with some ideas about these characters and the locations many many years ago after multiple visits to Oaxaca, both the city and its coastline, which made a big impression on me on a number of levels. The writing, though, was mostly bits and pieces that I dipped into now and then but didn’t have time or focus to really finesse in any way. I was so absorbed in the way the characters and the locations evolved that it took a long time for a plot to gel; I’m just not that interested in classic plot arcs and twists in storytelling, I much prefer figuring out the characters, their motivations, their responses, and letting the story sort of develop organically out of that. Needless to say, it’s kind of a backasswards way to write a novel.
Ramona:What was the hardest part of writing it? The easiest?
Candelora:I went through a bunch of life changes—got married, had a child, started a business, etc.—all in a short period of time, and it took me quite a while to find my footing again with my writing, which had always been part of a very solitary life. I also find 21st century life—9/11, wars, recession, the rapidity of technological changes—to be exceedingly draining. Writing my little stories seemed at the very bottom of the list of daily priorities, even as I tried to carve out time and space (internal and external) for it. It was hard to stay focused on it when my life was so full.
I also realized I lacked a certain kind of technical knowledge about how to get from point A to point B and beyond, so a lot of it was kind of shooting in the dark. The easy part was that no matter how long it was between committed work periods—and sometimes it would be years before I could pull it out of a drawer again—I found that I still loved the characters and the overall cycle of the story, and it became easier to go deeper and to find the authenticity and the truths about what I was trying to do after coming back to it.
Ramona:Your voice as a writer comes through well in Traveling Light. How hard was that to achieve?
Candelora:Thank you. Coming back to it as a work in progress periodically over time was really interesting, because as I matured and changed and worked over time, so did my approach to my writing on the page. I ripped it apart multiple times over the years, and in the last few years before I published it, I really began to feel a gelling of my voice and my self-editing style that was a much cleaner, much more direct, more focused version. I’m very comfortable with my voice as a writer now, appreciating it for being less clever and tortured, perhaps, and more authentic.
Ramona:The characters seem to make it up as they go along, without a clear idea of how to be adults. They have options but they don’t use them in a mature way. Do you think this quality is typical of many people in their early thirties, or just a set of bohemian types? Do you think Santa Fe attracts this type of person?
Candelora:I think it’s maybe reflective of the sort of people who don’t follow the mainstream canon, who live a bit outside the norm and therefore don’t have the underpinnings of some kind of externally imposed structure to keep them on track. It’s probably less about their age than about that bohemian streak or maybe just a lack of maturity regardless of age. And yes, Santa Fe does seem to attract its share of dreamers and schemers and people who have a hard time being realistic.
Ramona:Did you live in San Miguel de Allende? If so, when? Did it influence Traveling Light?
Candelora:No, I’ve never been to San Miguel; I had visited Oaxaca several times in the early 1990s and had some interesting experiences there, which I drew on for the book. But my experience living in Key West in 1979 when I was 20, on a solo extended break from college at Michigan State University, was a major influence on the novel and also on the trajectory my adult life has taken. The idea of walking away from whatever your life has become and into something entirely new is a lifelong fascination for me, and I continue to believe that we all have the power to change our lives in the extreme with that one decision. And I love hearing about people who have created second chapters in their lives, who move across the country or across the globe, who leave stability and predictability in favor of adventure and spontaneity. Of course, you can also see in the book that I make a pretty thorough exploration of the dark side of that decision, its potential consequences and collateral damage.
Ramona:What has the book’s public reception been like?
Candelora:I’ve been thrilled to read really amazing and wonderful reviews, especially on my Amazon page, and many many people have told me particularly how deeply the characters and their situations touched them. Overall it’s been very positive, including the requests for a sequel.
Ramona:Do you have a sense of who your readers are?
Candelora:Hahaha, not at all!
Ramona:Do you think some non-New Mexicans have a tendency to romanticize Santa Fe? (Note: I’ve been accused of this!)
Candelora:The contemporary manufactured image of Santa Fe is explicitly designed for non-New Mexicans to romanticize it. Part of my frustration and challenge with this book was to try to see this mythical, tourism-industry “Santa Fe” with the kind of critical clarity that someone who came here with that romanticized vision in mind might have and over time learned to see beyond the illusion, complete with regrets and self-blame.
Ramona:Are you thinking of writing another novel?
Candelora:Not at this time. The lure of revisiting the characters with a “what happens next” openness is sometimes compelling, but I’m more interested in why people do what they do than in what happens to them, so I’d have to really work on that sequel plot. I do have a couple of other little projects that have been tucked away for a long time and perhaps someday when my life feels less complex I might find my way back to them. All my writing now is mainly about me working out some deep questions about life, using character and story to explore and explain things to myself. So that of course means it’ll happen when it happens and it’ll take as long as it takes. I worked on deadline for a long time and I don’t want to do that anymore, even self-imposed. It’s not a race.
Note: Traveling Light is available in Santa Fe at Collected Works and Op.Cit book stores. Also at any indie book store by asking them to order from IndieBound.org. Readers can also order via GoodReads and Amazon.