Part of Series
Better listen to your mother. Kiki Fonseca finally has a shot at her lead singer for a Latin band at the Hollywood Palladium. It’s the day before Christmas Eve, 1949, in the old neighborhoods of Chavez Ravine high in the hills above Los Angeles. The young mother needs to make a dress and tamales too, but her eight-year-old son, Rudy, equal parts angel and hellion, has other ideas. When Rudy pushes Kiki to the brink, she falls back on an age-old scare behave, or the Cucuy will get you! Kiki doesn’t really believe in the boogeyman until a gust of wind whips up the dirt roads of La Loma and a hooded nightmare appears.
Author
Debra Castaneda is an award-winning horror and dark fiction author based on the central coast of California. Her works include "The Devil’s Shallows," "The Root Witch", and "The Copper Man," which comprise the Dark Earth Rising series of standalone novels, and "The Monsters of Chavez Ravine," an International Latino Book Awards gold medal winner. Debra loves writing character-driven stories about people who experience scary things, and how they react when confronted with the unexpected. She’s committed to representing Latinas and Latinos in her books. For inspiration, she draws from her experience as a TV and radio journalist, and as a third-generation Mexican American. Over the years, she’s lived in Los Angeles, Dallas, Chicago, Salt Lake City, Portland, and the San Francisco Bay area. Debra now lives in Capitola, California with her husband. She enjoys rediscovering the Mexican dishes of her childhood and texting her two daughters about her latest binge-watch. ~Subscribe to her newsletter for the occasional giveaway and the latest news at www.debracastaneda.com; ~Stay in touch with her at: @castanedawrites on Facebook & @castanedawrites on Instagram .
