I am A. Y. Stratton, and I am delighted to be a guest blogger on Emma’s web site.
My book has been out for barely a month now, and I’ve discovered something: I really like being a published author! I like the buzz around me. I like finding my name on the internet. I like having people introduce me as “that woman I told you about who wrote a book.”
I got the idea for Buried Heart a long time ago, when my husband and I were on a trip to Mexico to see my aunt and uncle and they took us to TEOTIHUACAN
Much later, trip to Mayan sites in Honduras, Guatemala, Belize and Mexico—visited amazing ruins
One afternoon, while we were surrounded by the expansive archeological site of Copan, in Honduras, we stood admiring the famous stairway.
The archeologist explained how the maya recorded their scientific and historic data by drawing hieroglyphs on paper they made from tree bark, folded like an accordion to form a book, a codex.
In the 16th C most of the books were burned by the Spanish conquistadores, at the dictates of the Inquisition.
Luckily, our guide told us, a few of the codices survived, because they had been carried back to Europe by the Spanish, as souvenirs. For 300 years those books lay forgotten in the vaults of the aristocracy until 20th c archeologists discovered them anew.
The idea that a codex from pre-Columbian times had survived the fires of the Inquisition thrilled me.
I imagined that a modern-day Mexican American prof of archeology, Luis (notoriously attractive, of course), had inherited a map that might lead him to one of those ancient documents. Bad guys would try to steal his map and nearly kill him. I pictured a woman, Lauren, (feisty and independent) who would meet the archeologist and become entangled by passion and intrigue.
Contrast of weather
The story would begin on a winter day in Milwaukee and continue in Mayan ruins deep in the rain forest.
Everywhere I go now, someone comes up to tell me she really liked my book, or that she couldn’t put it down until she finished it, or that she enjoyed my book talk at the local book shop, or that she bought my book and can’t wait to read it.
I want you to know how someone from middle America (aka “the flyover zone”) can become somewhat famous.
My husband and I have lived in the same house in a suburb of Milwaukee long enough to have a basement so jammed with stuff that even the furnace repair man says things like, “Hey, I remember playing with a GI Joe camper like that. So, who plays hockey? Whoa, check out those old drums.” Our kids went to a school seven minutes from our house. My husband grew up about fifteen minutes from here. His father, siblings, grandnieces, grandnephews and cousins did too. Even his grandparents’ home was just a few miles away.
We know lots of people. And those people have always known me as the homeroom-helper mom, the volunteer fund-raiser for various organizations or as the woman who wrote a column for the local papers.
Now they are surprised, amazed and maybe even a bit shocked to discover my little secret.
All these years, I’ve been writing mysteries and, gasp, romances. Romances with love scenes in them, for heaven’s sake!
If people look at me differently now, it is because I am not what they thought.
It’s fun to be that other woman, the one who has piles of rejections stacked in her son’s closet, next to his skateboard parts. The one whose daughter blushes, when one of her book club members reads aloud a “racy” scene from Buried Heart. The one who can finally hold a copy of a book with a great cover and “A. Y. Stratton” across the bottom.
I am glad people ask me how long it took to write this book, because that allows me to explain I have written LOTS of manuscripts, LOTS of stories, all of which have been rejected at least once. But I kept writing, because the stories are in my head and must get out.
My new motto is: "I am multiply rejected, but poised to be an overnight success.”
I’d like to share with you a little bit of my story, Buried Heart by A. Y. Stratton The Wild Rose Press, 2009.
“As I said last night, I was lucky someone like you showed up, someone with guts.” He lifted one eyebrow and glanced at her sideways. “You’re a nice surprise.”
“Why?”
“I didn’t, uh, expect you to look so, um—.” His knee began to bounce, and he glanced over at the fireplace.
“You have to finish that sentence. You didn’t expect me to look so what?”
He faced her and stroked the bristles on his chin. “Last night you were a mystery of contrasts. All I could see was a gorgeous pair of legs beneath a giant coat and a pair of big eyes peaking through a huge wooly thing wrapped around your head.” His eyelashes lowered as he grinned. “Brave and beautiful—that’s the surprise.”
Lauren had to look away from his admiring eyes. The jolt of power she’d felt in the parking garage filled her chest once more. “Thank you,” she said, as if men always showered her with such compliments.
She wished she could touch his wrist right where the hairs began on his arm. She also wished she could feel the muscle of his forearm and wondered whether his eyebrows were stiff or soft. If he didn’t start talking again soon, she’d have to fill the vacuum. “Um, I um, last night?” She looked up as Luis resettled himself closer to her. “Last night I heard you talk about your search for a mysterious codex. It sounded pretty exciting.”
Luis nodded and jiggled his foot. “It is.”
Lauren noticed his bootlaces had been broken and knotted in several places as she waited for him to say more, while he watched her with a hint of a smile.
“I think you said a codex is a primitive sort of book?”
The smile faded as he nodded. “Actually codex is the term for any ancient manuscript. The Mayans, my ancestors by the way, made paper from fig bark or deer hide and then they coated it with stucco. Instead of binding sheets together like our books, they folded the long pieces of bark like an accordion.” He demonstrated by opening his palm to the ceiling and then to the floor. “They used the paper to record their history and their scientific discoveries, particularly astronomy.” His voice took on the tone of the teacher. “Unfortunately for us, the Spanish burned most of them.”
“You mean the Conquistadors?”
Luis’s dark eyes came alive. “They’re the ones.”
“We never studied that in school. What did the writing look like?”
Luis ran his fingers back and forth through his hair, making some clumps stand up and matting the rest. “They used symbols, glyphs, drawings of animals, both real and imaginary in bright colors.” He waved his hand toward the fireplace where Lauren had hung her mother’s painting of an orange and red sunset. “Colors even brighter than those. To the Sixteenth Century Conquistadores it looked like the work of the devil.” His eyebrows slid up, and he shot a sideways grin at her. “I have to admit the first time I saw markings like them they gave me the creeps.”
“But the Spaniards tried to burn them all?”
He nodded. “And nearly succeeded.” The words shot out like bullets, and Lauren jumped. A muscle flexed in his jaw. “King Philip the Second ordered the extermination of the so-called ‘heresy’ in his realm. In the mid-sixteenth century the Bishop of Yucatan ordered his men to burn all Mayan records.” Luis’s voice faded away like the first rumble of a thunderstorm as he touched her elbow. “Imagine how you’d feel watching invaders burn all the books from the Library of Congress.”
“But some were saved?”
You can purchase a copy of Buried Heart at
The Wild Rose Press.
Visit me at my website:
http://aystratton.com/
My first novella, “Burning Love”, is scheduled for release with The Wild Rose Press on 
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