Q: What inspired you to write this book?

A: I started with the image of a woman trapped in her body through dark magic, completely unable to move or communicate. And then I wrestled with what it would take to try and break the spell and set her free, and what kinds of sacrifices might need to be made in the hopes of freeing her, and the incredible risk that this could involve. And I realized that I had a sort-of fairy tale story and a Gothic story on my hands. This was thrilling, because I love the Gothic, and here I had a chance to create the kind of protagonist I never saw in Gothic stories growing up.

Q: Can you give us an overview of what the book is about?

A: It’s about Nati, a young woman in 1968 Oakland who gets herself a job at the house where her mother used to work as a maid, because she’s heard that the family’s beautiful daughter, Violeta, has for years been paralyzed by a mysterious condition. But Nati knows a thing or two about magic, and she believes that a spell is involved. So she gets hired as Violeta’s caretaker and plans to break the spell and get a reward and go back to her old life…but of course it’s not that simple, especially when she starts falling for Violeta.

Q: What message or lessons do you hope readers take away from your book?

A: I kind of want readers to watch the characters wrestle with their moral dilemmas and with the constraints placed on them by virtue of their privilege – or lack thereof – and then figure out what they think of all of it, and ask themselves what they would do if they were in the shoes of any of these characters. I’d much rather that than any particular lesson.

Q: What makes your book unique compared to others on the same topic?

A: I don’t want to compare my work to the work of other writers who work in the same vein, because we’re all part of an ecosystem and we feed off of and flourish off of each other’s work. I’ll just say that I wrote this because I grew up reading the Gothic and I loved it, but there was also a lot missing from the texts I grew up loving. I put it like this in another piece: the stereotype of a Gothic novel is a young (white) woman running from a house, wearing a long nightgown. I was interested in: just who was washing those nightgowns?  I wanted to write a novel about the politics and the worldview of the working class that those women are part of: people who, unlike their wealthy employers, have never earned their existence from colonization or subjugation. 

Q: Were there any challenges you faced while writing this book? If so, what were they?

A: There were two scenes – one involving a tea party and the other involving two characters and a staircase – that were such logistical challenges for me. Where are the characters placed in the house, how do they get from Point A to Point B, who else might be watching from the shadows, etc etc. 

Q: What is your favorite chapter or section of the book and why?

A: Well, I came to love the tea party scene. And I also loved the scene – I’m being very vague because otherwise it would be a big spoiler – where two characters are confronting each other in front of a door, and the novel’s entire journey narrows to a single point. I love it because it’s where we get to see just how strong love is when it’s based on caring first and foremost about the other person’s autonomy, the other person’s very humanity… and how weak it is when it’s based on making decisions based on what’s best for the family, or on maintaining order and stability.

Q: How did you determine the structure and organization of the book?

A: Because I was still making the major leap from short stories to a novel, I relied heavily on a lot of the themes of a fairy tale, but a lot of the structure of a heist movie. I always knew that Nati’s plan doesn’t work the way she intends it to, and that she has to spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to regroup… during which time she comes to understand that Violeta is not just a beautiful damsel in distress but is instead her own person, and that she’s got plenty of darkness brewing inside her.  And I always knew that the tension was going to build and build towards the end, just like a good thriller does. The movie Bound was a major inspiration in a lot of ways, though Muñeca isn’t a heist movie or a thriller – it just borrows elements of both. 

Q: Can you tell us about any specific moments or stories that stood out to you while researching or writing the book?

A: I had already learned about the massive land loss and theft that happened after the U.S. stole huge swaths of land from Mexico, land that had in turn been a Spanish colony, stolen from the native Californians – but I didn’t know just how widespread and legalized that theft was. Or how common it was for white squatters to claim that land through theft. A neighborhood not terribly far from me in Oakland is actually named for one of those squatters, a fact that I’d never known, despite living in Oakland for more than 25 years.

Q: What role do you see your book playing in society or in the field you’re writing about?

A: My first and last hope for this book is that it’s entertaining and satisfying; I’ve been really happy to get feedback where people say that they read it in one sitting. That’s so gratifying to hear. I also hope that it creates more space for books that are Gothic and that also talk explicitly about race and class and gender and sexuality and color, the way that Muñeca does.

Q: Can you give us a hint about what you’re working on next?

A: It involves a possessed dress. Or is it haunted? Either way, the woman who finds it has to end the haunting (possession?) before it’s too late. It’s historical fiction and queer and Latine, like this one is. 

About the Author: Cynthia Gómez is the author of the story collection The Nightmare Box and Other Stories, and a Tin House and VONA alumn whose short fiction has been published in Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Pseudopod, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies. She resides in Oakland, California.

Click here to purchase Muñeca

Q&A with Author Bill Smoot

Q. What inspired you to write this book?

A: It’s not easy to know why we do what we do, write what we write. But I am aware of a couple of things. When the pandemic started, I had been teaching at San Quentin for eight years. I had often wondered, looking up at those forty-foot walls topped with coils of razor wire, how one might escape. That question would be the seeds of my story. I began to wonder: who would be trying to escape? Who might help? In my imagination, the characters of Allison and James began to form.
The other reason was that, because of the quarantine, I really missed the students and the classes. So writing about the prison was a way to supply what I was missing. I suppose it’s like the lonely child who imagines a pretend playmate.

Q:  Can you tell us about the main characters and their development throughout the story?

A: Once I had Allison and James thinking about a prison escape, I imagined their backstories, all the way back to childhood. Allison is a girl in suburban Indianapolis. She discovers, and soon becomes obsessed with, Nancy Drew novels. When an Olympic athlete visits her school, she feels the first stirrings of an attraction for women.
James has a happy childhood in Sacramento with two loving parents. But his father dies, and he moves to Oakland, where his mother finds a job. A good boy by nature, he is traumatized by the mean streets of Oakland in the 80s, develops a loving friendship with a pit bull he saves from dogfighting, and plans to attend a local college. Then things go to hell.
So the core of their characters has been formed—the helper-sleuth and the good boy- survivor. As Heraclitus said, character is destiny.

Q:  Did you have any challenges while writing this book? If so, what were they?

A: Aside from the fact that writing is a challenge in itself, I was in a good situation. I had an income and lots of free time, and I was very grateful for that. Free time is key. Besides writing, the only things I did were mask up, go to the grocery, and hike with my dog. I wrote the first draft in six months.

Q: What is your favorite scene in the book and why?

A: I like the scene where Allison and her partner, Meagan, arrive at Meagan’s family’s dairy farm at milking time. Though Allison is out of her element, they pitch in and help. It told me that their relationship would thrive. I know that sounds like I observed the characters rather than created them, but that’s the way it feels. I just settle into the imaginative part of my mind and let them come alive. And of course, I like the scene of the escape attempt.

Q: Were there any specific books or authors that influenced your writing of this book?

A: Probably many books have influenced me in ways I barely recognize. But one in particular, Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See, provided an example of a book composed of short mini-chapters. I went to school on him and built my novel in that way.

Q: Can you talk about your writing process and how you approach writing a novel?

A: I never have problems with motivation or writer’s block. I like writing, so I don’t need a schedule. Mostly, I compose on the computer, though sometimes I write longhand and then type it later. I don’t use outlines. I just start writing and created it from beginning to end. Then I do a lot of revision—which I love. I like revising more than composing the first draft.

Q: What was the most difficult part of writing this book?

A: One difficulty was that I reference a number of real historical events in the novel (the OJ trial, the Felix Mitchell funeral in Oakland, the pandemic, etc.), so I had to write in a way that the dates of those things are accurate. That can feel like the tail wagging the dog.

Q: Do you have any favorite quotes from the book?

I like when James says, on the last page, “I’m not saying it’s enough. But it’s all I’ve got.”

Q: Can you give us a hint about what you’re working on next?

A: I have a completed novel for which I am seeking a publisher. It’s about a classics professor obsessed with the Eleusinian mystery religion. He’s working on an archaeological dig in Greece during the reign of the fascist dictatorship. Currently, I’m writing short stories.

Q: How do you hope readers will feel after finishing your book?

I hope they will be in love with the same characters I love: James, Allison, Meagan, Mama, and of course, Spike. I hope they will have felt the fierce humanity of the incarcerated men they have met in the novel. And I hope they will believe.

About the author:

Bill Smoot grew up in Maysville, Kentucky, and received a BA in philosophy at Purdue and a PhD in philosophy at Northwestern. He has published fiction in such periodicals as Ninth Letter, Orchid, Crab Orchard Review, Barely South Review, Narrative, and Literary Review. He has published a non-fiction book, Conversations with Great Teachers (Indiana University Press, 2010). His non-fiction short pieces have appeared in The Nation, Salon, Medium, USA Today, The Ohio Review, Western Humanities Review, and others. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his dog Artemis.

Read the review for San Quentin Exodus here.

More information HERE

You write a book. You edit it, format it, launch it. Then you realize: no one outside your immediate circle knows it exists.

That’s where professional reviews come in. And in the Bay Area, this conversation has some local texture worth knowing.

Why Regional Reviews Carry Different Weight

A review on a nationally recognized outlet matters. But a review written specifically for Bay Area readers, by someone who knows this literary community, travels differently.

SF has one of the most active indie reading cultures in the country. City Lights, 826 Valencia, the thriving debut fiction scene around West Coast indie presses. A review placed in a regional publication reaches readers who are already primed for what you’re doing.

The case for regional coverage is made well at getmybookreviewed.com/why-regional-book-reviews-matter, which walks through why city-specific placement builds a different kind of credibility than a generic national review. Worth reading if you’re deciding where to put your submission budget.

The Free vs. Paid Question

Some strong review programs accept free submissions. City Book Review accepts free submissions for books published within the last 90 days, with about a 40% acceptance rate. Those are real odds.

Paid services start around $199. What you’re paying for isn’t a guaranteed positive review. You’re paying for a professional’s time, an editorial process, and publication on a domain with real search history. The review keeps working for your book long after launch.

What Makes a Review Credible in 2026

Reviewer qualifications matter. So does where the review is published. A review on a site with established search authority shows up when someone searches your name, your title, or your genre.

It also enters the AI citation pool. When a reader asks ChatGPT or Perplexity for recommendations in your category, those tools pull from indexed professional reviews. A credible review from a named outlet keeps answering that question indefinitely.

Before You Submit

Read the submission guidelines carefully. Know your genre. Have a tight, specific description of your book ready. And confirm you have full rights to quote the review on your Amazon listing and in press materials. Most services grant this.

San Francisco Book Review is at sanfranciscobookreview.com. The Bay Area literary community is unusually well connected. A strong review travels through it in ways a self-published description page won’t.