Novelist Wants to Rock Your Punk Heart
Nov. 25, 2014
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"The electricity he felt on the street last night returns, that sense of possibility that only happens when you strip away everything familiar." - An excerpt from Althea & Oliver
Moracho says that the key to publishing a novel is having "an enormous amount of patience and fortitude."
Publishing her first novel, Althea & Oliver (Viking Juvenile, 2014), was a hard-won victory for Cristina Moracho '08 M.F.A, who worked on it for the better part of seven years, utilizing nights and weekends, and getting little sleep, all while trying to keep her head above water financially.
'I worked the whole time I was writing my novel. I worked the whole time I was in graduate school. And I'm still working now—even after my book has been published," says Moracho. "I had a couple of office jobs, so for a long time I would write at night, after work or after class. Now I'm a freelance writer/editor/proofreader/tutor, and my schedule is a lot more flexible, so I have entire days I can dedicate to just my own work. It does require, however, that I really manage my expenses, so I'm still living a pretty shoestring existence.'
The novel details the complicated relationship of two teenagers, lifelong friends, one of whom has a debilitating illness. Set in the suburbs during '90s, with the underground indie rock music scene as backdrop, the book "will rock your punk heart," said a review the website Bustle. "Even if the book weren’t eloquent and hilarious, it'd be a must-read for all children of the '90s."
Moracho, a Queens native and a Red Hook, Brooklyn resident, enrolled in the highly competitive Brooklyn College M.F.A. Fiction Program initially for its affordability. After enrolling, Moracho was quite impressed that the program allowed her the freedom to discover her strengths and did not force her into a mold that did not suit her.
"I'm a terrible short story writer, and the most valuable lesson I learned at Brooklyn College was that I did not have to continue writing short stories in some futile effort to master the form before trying my hand at a novel," she says.
The road to publishing Althea & Oliver was not without its external challenges as well. One of those challenges included Moracho remaining true to her vision even when other professionals attempted to get her to compromise in a way that felt inauthentic to her.
"After I revised the novel a number of times, I found my first agent. We worked together for over two years until we eventually parted ways—I was happy with the version of the book I had, and she refused to send it out on submission to editors," Moracho says. "When I got together with my second agent a couple of months later, she was able to sell the same draft of the manuscript my earlier agent had said was 'unsellable.'"
That experience taught Moracho to trust her gut and her talent. It would be another two and a half years before her novel would reach bookshelves, but she took that experience as a lesson as well.
To learn more about Moracho and her work, please visit her website.
