Writing as a...I'm not sure what, actually.
I been writing since I was 17. Back then, it was something I didn't understand and that I found calmed the voices in my mind.
Now mind you, perhaps I'm not stating this correctly, because it may sound as if I am insane. I may be, but in truth that's not what I mean by voices.
The voices were bits of dialogue, conversations, snippets, things like that. And the voices were always followed by images, or better yet, situations. Some fictional, some not, all pretty much interesting to me.
At the age of 18, I was into painting. Oil and acrylic were my mediums and my work could have been termed abstract expressionism.
I was into everything, really, but what captivated me always was the written word. Around 19 I began writing a story based on the recollections of my mothers youth. For obvious reasons, I had to change names, dates and so forth, but it consumed my time, and when I was finished,
I titled it; Rostoy, remembering a Cuban playboy. It's the type of story one writes at that age, and today I pretty much ignore it.
But at the time, I remember thinking, 'wow, I did it. 35,000 words!'. Of course, as the years passed, novels became longer and more detailed.
My largest work to date stands at approximately 150,000 words, and it is not finished. But back then, I thought it was wonderful. And perhaps it was.
Between the ages of 20 and 24 I really didn't do much writing. I read everything I could get a hold of, used books, library books, stuff from the thrift shop. I didn't care. I read popular fiction, philosophy, political theory, non-fiction crime story's, I read and read and discovered the world, although admittedly, rather slowly. I read Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. I studied Machiavelli's treatise on power and Sun Tzu's on strategy.
I read and was thrilled by Voltaire, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Melville and a few others. When I say I read I mean I read. Nothing was beneath me.
This reading didn't end ever...and then, in the darkness of my room, I began to see characters emerge.
The crooked businessman, the old miser, the reluctant hero, the wizened old cheat, the aspiring starlet, the desperate dreamer, the drug smuggler, the lawyer, the whore, the doctor, the lover, the hopeless romantic, the powerful and the powerless. I'd see their faces, I'd feel their angst, I'd hear them scheming and find them looking to me for some way to bring them to life and yet I waited...
At the age of 26 I started writing a story based on a real individual, who I had never met, but whose antics I found hilarious, albeit in a tragic sort of way. I gave him a dreamers soul, made him a romantic, and as all romantics, he'd be an idealist. A tragic figure trapped by his desire. He was crooked, but that only added to the beauty of this character. Honorato de Balzac said 'behind every great fortune there is a crime'.
I believe this to be true. Behind this character there was a crime, but he paid the price for the greatest crime of all. Love.
This novel was titled Savage Dreams. And into it I poured all my experience, I poured my desire, and I opened the wounds of my broken heart and let my pain onto the page. I thought it a beautiful if brief thing, this little novel.
I became obsessed with going further, becoming better at what I was doing. I had never taken a literary course, I wasn't a fellow and my studies were interrupted by having to work and attend school. Which I did, for better or worse. Cartel came around this time. I had been writing it for about five years before I decided to put it out there. The story of drugs on an international level, it was the first novel that used short hand prose mixed with my own particular style. And though I don't read it, I am aware that there are some imperfections to the text. Since they do not take from the story, I never re-wrote it. Some things are best left the way they are, I guess. And Cartel is one of these things. Despite the name, it is a story of redemption and the price one must pay for the actions taken. After Cartel, I began to explore other types of writing.
From historical fiction, to historical screenplays and everything in between, I began to push the envelope of what I could achieve. Novels began popping up one after another, Japanese Yakuza Crime lords, Homicidal strippers, Russian Kings, Porn actresses, Deranged Serial Killers, Italian Mafia dons, Opera singers, Billionaire hermits, and the list goes on and on.
During this time, I had come across an article of the Miami New Times, a paper published in Miami and owned by the Village Voice.
In it, a journalist had described the Cuban American politicians of my home state, and mentioned the various crimes they had committed while in office (some quite hilarious, others quite sickening). I found it entertaining and said to myself, 'wait up, this can make a good story'. And so Politico was born. Politico, the story of Exilio controlled politics and emotion manipulation. I figured it would make a quick disturbing tale. I figured wrong. It mushroomed and became three novels. All of which, chronicle the rise and fall and rise again of Cuba, it's political machine and the role the common man plays on the stage of life. I realized that the subject matter was controversial, but then, I've never been good at censuring myself.
Of all my works, I enjoyed writing this most. Perhaps because it shows us for what we really are, or perhaps because the hero is a rich-boy loser who can't do anything right. I'm not sure. All I am sure about is that The Exilio Trilogy paints a vivid, all too visceral image of my home town, told by someone who has lived it firsthand, A Cuban-American native Miamian who despises mendacity.
I am 38 years old, I found my voice at the cost of great hardship, hard work and dedication. I found it at the cost of near madness, brutal self-criticism and angst beyond belief. I was once ashamed to admit I had no formal education worthy of my writing, I am no longer ashamed of this fact.
There are two types of writers in the world. Those who write because they feel it is outside their control and those who study it and learn the correct and incorrect way to structure a novel. The latter are soulless drones to me. And no writing without a soul is worth a damn. I never learned how.
I write from the heart. I write in a way that makes sense to me, I write because I enjoy creating something from nothing. There is no illusion in me.
I write because I can not not write. Having tasted poverty, desperation and want, I understand my fellow man in a way no coddled person ever will.
I am the broken heart of my generation, the only solace I find are in the words that flow from my pen.
I have written verse, short stories, true stories, translations, screenplays, stage plays, and touched on topics that many would consider taboo.
I am constantly exploring. Learning from the snippets of a somewhat limited life. I've traveled the world, and never once left my room to do so.
I invite the reader into this sampling of my life. I invite criticism. I look forward to suggestions, but in the end, I'll continue to do what I please, and write what I want to write.
Fame is not something I willfully seek. Fame and recognition find us, either in life or in death. I am what I am, in a world that has never permitted me a place to be otherwise. And the writings within this simple webpage will offer a glimpse of the madness, humor, sadness and hope that lives in me to this day. John Claire said, 'Language has not the power to speak what love indites, the soul lies buried in the ink that writes.' With this, I welcome you to apart of my soul.
Antonio Armenteros
June, 25, 2015
Miami, Florida
Now mind you, perhaps I'm not stating this correctly, because it may sound as if I am insane. I may be, but in truth that's not what I mean by voices.
The voices were bits of dialogue, conversations, snippets, things like that. And the voices were always followed by images, or better yet, situations. Some fictional, some not, all pretty much interesting to me.
At the age of 18, I was into painting. Oil and acrylic were my mediums and my work could have been termed abstract expressionism.
I was into everything, really, but what captivated me always was the written word. Around 19 I began writing a story based on the recollections of my mothers youth. For obvious reasons, I had to change names, dates and so forth, but it consumed my time, and when I was finished,
I titled it; Rostoy, remembering a Cuban playboy. It's the type of story one writes at that age, and today I pretty much ignore it.
But at the time, I remember thinking, 'wow, I did it. 35,000 words!'. Of course, as the years passed, novels became longer and more detailed.
My largest work to date stands at approximately 150,000 words, and it is not finished. But back then, I thought it was wonderful. And perhaps it was.
Between the ages of 20 and 24 I really didn't do much writing. I read everything I could get a hold of, used books, library books, stuff from the thrift shop. I didn't care. I read popular fiction, philosophy, political theory, non-fiction crime story's, I read and read and discovered the world, although admittedly, rather slowly. I read Kant, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche. I studied Machiavelli's treatise on power and Sun Tzu's on strategy.
I read and was thrilled by Voltaire, Dostoyevsky, Dickens, Melville and a few others. When I say I read I mean I read. Nothing was beneath me.
This reading didn't end ever...and then, in the darkness of my room, I began to see characters emerge.
The crooked businessman, the old miser, the reluctant hero, the wizened old cheat, the aspiring starlet, the desperate dreamer, the drug smuggler, the lawyer, the whore, the doctor, the lover, the hopeless romantic, the powerful and the powerless. I'd see their faces, I'd feel their angst, I'd hear them scheming and find them looking to me for some way to bring them to life and yet I waited...
At the age of 26 I started writing a story based on a real individual, who I had never met, but whose antics I found hilarious, albeit in a tragic sort of way. I gave him a dreamers soul, made him a romantic, and as all romantics, he'd be an idealist. A tragic figure trapped by his desire. He was crooked, but that only added to the beauty of this character. Honorato de Balzac said 'behind every great fortune there is a crime'.
I believe this to be true. Behind this character there was a crime, but he paid the price for the greatest crime of all. Love.
This novel was titled Savage Dreams. And into it I poured all my experience, I poured my desire, and I opened the wounds of my broken heart and let my pain onto the page. I thought it a beautiful if brief thing, this little novel.
I became obsessed with going further, becoming better at what I was doing. I had never taken a literary course, I wasn't a fellow and my studies were interrupted by having to work and attend school. Which I did, for better or worse. Cartel came around this time. I had been writing it for about five years before I decided to put it out there. The story of drugs on an international level, it was the first novel that used short hand prose mixed with my own particular style. And though I don't read it, I am aware that there are some imperfections to the text. Since they do not take from the story, I never re-wrote it. Some things are best left the way they are, I guess. And Cartel is one of these things. Despite the name, it is a story of redemption and the price one must pay for the actions taken. After Cartel, I began to explore other types of writing.
From historical fiction, to historical screenplays and everything in between, I began to push the envelope of what I could achieve. Novels began popping up one after another, Japanese Yakuza Crime lords, Homicidal strippers, Russian Kings, Porn actresses, Deranged Serial Killers, Italian Mafia dons, Opera singers, Billionaire hermits, and the list goes on and on.
During this time, I had come across an article of the Miami New Times, a paper published in Miami and owned by the Village Voice.
In it, a journalist had described the Cuban American politicians of my home state, and mentioned the various crimes they had committed while in office (some quite hilarious, others quite sickening). I found it entertaining and said to myself, 'wait up, this can make a good story'. And so Politico was born. Politico, the story of Exilio controlled politics and emotion manipulation. I figured it would make a quick disturbing tale. I figured wrong. It mushroomed and became three novels. All of which, chronicle the rise and fall and rise again of Cuba, it's political machine and the role the common man plays on the stage of life. I realized that the subject matter was controversial, but then, I've never been good at censuring myself.
Of all my works, I enjoyed writing this most. Perhaps because it shows us for what we really are, or perhaps because the hero is a rich-boy loser who can't do anything right. I'm not sure. All I am sure about is that The Exilio Trilogy paints a vivid, all too visceral image of my home town, told by someone who has lived it firsthand, A Cuban-American native Miamian who despises mendacity.
I am 38 years old, I found my voice at the cost of great hardship, hard work and dedication. I found it at the cost of near madness, brutal self-criticism and angst beyond belief. I was once ashamed to admit I had no formal education worthy of my writing, I am no longer ashamed of this fact.
There are two types of writers in the world. Those who write because they feel it is outside their control and those who study it and learn the correct and incorrect way to structure a novel. The latter are soulless drones to me. And no writing without a soul is worth a damn. I never learned how.
I write from the heart. I write in a way that makes sense to me, I write because I enjoy creating something from nothing. There is no illusion in me.
I write because I can not not write. Having tasted poverty, desperation and want, I understand my fellow man in a way no coddled person ever will.
I am the broken heart of my generation, the only solace I find are in the words that flow from my pen.
I have written verse, short stories, true stories, translations, screenplays, stage plays, and touched on topics that many would consider taboo.
I am constantly exploring. Learning from the snippets of a somewhat limited life. I've traveled the world, and never once left my room to do so.
I invite the reader into this sampling of my life. I invite criticism. I look forward to suggestions, but in the end, I'll continue to do what I please, and write what I want to write.
Fame is not something I willfully seek. Fame and recognition find us, either in life or in death. I am what I am, in a world that has never permitted me a place to be otherwise. And the writings within this simple webpage will offer a glimpse of the madness, humor, sadness and hope that lives in me to this day. John Claire said, 'Language has not the power to speak what love indites, the soul lies buried in the ink that writes.' With this, I welcome you to apart of my soul.
Antonio Armenteros
June, 25, 2015
Miami, Florida