Summer is for IMAGINERS by Jen Cervantes

Growing up in California, I spent time at the beach, riding the waves, making up chants to call bigger waves, basking in the sun, leaping from my roof into the pool and spending glorious, lazy hours reading and imagining! Then came one summer I had to go see my grandmother in New Mexico. Tell a twelve year old girl she has to give up all of the above for the desert. Now mind you, this was back in the day of a much larger world with no Internet or smart phones so trust me when I say NM felt as far away as Siberia.  

I’d like to tell you I have great memories of the trip, that I had been wrong about NM, that my world expanded and I went back to California a changed person.  No, none of that would happen for another twenty plus years when I sat down to pen TORTILLA SUN. During the writing of my first novel, I drew upon those days of summer spent so long ago, reached back for that longing I felt when I had to go to a new place that was different from what I had always known. Ah, but boredom breeds imgination and imagine I did.

Sometimes we can’t see beyond the road we're traveling. We can’t possibly know that some experience today is going to be a turning point in the future. 

But imagine if we could…