Alex Temblador

Alex Temblador is the award-winning author of Secrets of the Casa Rosada. She has an essay in Living Beyond Borders: Growing Up Mexican in America and a short story in Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology.

Temblador applied the Page 69 Test to her new novel, Half Outlaw, and reported the following:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

When my uncle called me ‘half outlaw,’ I was struck by the phrase. What makes you an outlaw, and subsequently, only part or ‘half’ of said outlaw? To me, ‘half outlaw’ sounds like someone who does good and lives in the light, but if necessary, has no trouble with the dark side, a place beyond the law. And this accurately describes Raqi, a successful lawyer who was raised by her uncle, Dodge, and his one-percenter motorcycle club, the Lawless. Even as an adult, when she has committed her life to the law, she’s continually pulled back to the past by the Lawless who pressure her to represent them in court and convince her to go on a motorcycle ride in honor of the passing of her uncle who she hasn’t talked to in 13 years.

On another level, Half Outlaw represents Raqi’s identity as half-Mexican, half white. Although she exists comfortably as a Mixed woman, she’s always pulled by society or the Lawless toward an identity that she’s not.

What's in a name?

Raqi (pronounced ‘Rocky’) is short for Raquel, which is my sister Tiffany’s middle name. Tiffany has intellectual and physical disabilities that make it so she can’t walk or communicate, but she’s the strongest, most bad ass woman that I know. It felt right to name my character, in part, after my sister, because Raqi has to be a strong woman in a world that is constantly trying to push her down. That said, I didn’t want my main character to go by Raquel because it denotes a softer type of person than Raqi is. And if you think about how Raqi is pronounced, like ‘rocky,’ then you discover another layer to her name. Life is rocky, or unstable, for Raqi in Half Outlaw, but even then, she’s made of hard stuff and won’t easily break.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your novel?

My teenage self would be pretty stoked if she read Half Outlaw. I think she would be a little concerned by how dark the story can get and wonder why the book wasn’t a fantasy novel. However, she would love the magical realism and feel seen as a Mixed girl reading a story about a Mixed woman.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

Endings are much harder for me to write. I wrote the ending to Half Outlaw four or five times, until I got it right. These days, I write outlines for my books which makes it easier, but even then, I still have difficulty wrapping up a character’s story. When you’ve been with your main character for so long, you don’t want them to go.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

When I’m crafting a main character, I take pieces of my personality, experiences, and feelings and infuse them into that character. And for people who know me well enough, they’ll be able to see that in Raqi. She is tough and determined, but also very protective of her heart which means she has a hard time opening to those around her because of the trauma from her childhood. I was very much like this in my 20s. Plus, Raqi and I are both half Mexican, half white, and we have some similarity in how we look at and experience our family and the world around us.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

Family and social justice issues are the two biggest influences of my writing. I wrote Half Outlaw specifically with the idea to explore the experiences that Mixed people can have in their families. Readers of Half Outlaw will also notice that I touch on and tackle topics like racism, sexism, violence against women, abortion, and immigration policies.

Visit Alex Temblador's website.

My Book, The Movie: Half Outlaw.

The Page 69 Test: Half Outlaw.

--Marshal Zeringue