Francesca Flores

Francesca Flores is a writer, traveler and linguist. Raised in Pittsburgh, she read every fantasy book she could get her hands on and started writing her own stories at a young age. She began writing Diamond City while working as a corporate travel manager. When she’s not writing or reading, Francesca enjoys traveling, dancing ballet and jazz, practicing trapeze and contortion, and visiting parks and trails around San Francisco, where she currently resides.

Recently I asked Flores about what she was reading. Her reply:

I'm not personally a 'mood' reader, so I need to organize my reading list in different ways. The way I'm going to try this year is to read by book spine color, in rainbow order, starting with white. Next month will be red, and so on. So then I have a stack of books, and I try to organize it so that I'm not reading too many of the same genre in a row. That works for a lot of people, but I sometimes get bored being in one genre for too long. This month so far I've read two fantasies (one more modern and in the US, another in an older time-period with Welsh inspiration), a craft book, and I'm currently reading a contemporary. I have a second world fantasy fantasy and a contemporary on my list for the rest of the month.

The first book I finished was Lobizona by Romina Garber, a Latinx werewolf and witch fantasy coming out in May. I love finding fantasy books by Latinx authors and this one was so fun and satisfying to read. I already know that by the end of the year, it will have been one of my favorites. I also loved The Bones Houses by Emily Lloyd-Jones. I've never read a book like it, with the risen dead that don't feel like eat-your-brains zombies but have a lot of emotional meaning to the story and are tied to Welsh mythology. One of the main characters has chronic pain, and my disabled and chronically ill friends have said it was done really well. I loved both of the main characters. The craft book I read was The Anatomy of Story, which was fantastic and I'd recommend to any fiction author. I just started The Fall of Innocence by Jenny Torres Sanchez which is starting off really well and I'm excited to read more of. This month I also hope to read Jane Anonymous by Laurie Faria Stolarz and Nevernight by Jay Kristoff.

Visit Francesca Flores's website.

--Marshal Zeringue