about Angelina M. Lopez
I write ferocious stories
“Romance often gets belittled for its escapism, but what Lopez offers is almost a publishing magic trick in itself. She delivers that escapist fantasy in spades…. But then she digs into the wounds and hard work underneath that fantasy, exposing the truth that a happily ever after in the context of reality is all the more rewarding.”
- Maureen Lee Lenker, Entertainment Weekly
I’ve written all my life: first as a newspaper reporter, then as a freelance writer, then to help small business owners with their digital marketing and, finally, as a novelist. I often say if there was anything else I was good at, I’d do that instead. Writing is hard. Publishing is awful.
My debut book came out in 2019 and while it wasn’t a runaway hit, readers and fellow authors and my industry reported that it was…something. It was outlandish and took big swings with a take-no-prisoner feminist heroine that some readers would die for and others loathed. This all surprised me: I was just writing what I wanted to read. In a democracy that looked like mine in 2019, I wanted to read about a woman with power who took no shit.
I kept doing it, writing novels about what I wanted to see in the world, taking bigger and bigger swings and giving happily-ever-afters to people losing more with every election: women and Latinos. My most successful and celebrated novel to date embraces the story of my family, Mexican-Americans who’ve made their home in the U.S. heartland since 1912, to repudiate the myth that people that look like us don’t belong. That novel’s also got a ghost, a treasure hunt, a superb cocktail, and a hot-like-burning sex scene in the first chapter.
Those huge swings I took in six novels have given me the courage to step away from a genre I know so well to write something new. I’m currently molding it.
Writing is hard. Publishing is awful. And I’m a liar. There is nothing I’d rather do than write.
