Rudolfo Anaya emerges from his writing room late one cold and rainy morning, a windbreaker shielding him from the dampness that has crept into his rambling adobe home.
"I was wrapped up in my writing," he says, crumpling newspapers for a fire and lamenting that so many cold and rainy mornings have depleted his kindling stock.From "Bless Me, Ultima," his first novel that partly recounted his boyhood in the open country of east-central New Mexico, to "Alburquerque," his most recent book, which opens with a middle-aged writer in an urban setting, Anaya has planted himself firmly among his trademark magic realism.
"Probably every author writes part of himself into part of a novel," Anaya says. "It's some creative persona or a mask to hide behind."
Anaya's books are peppered with Spanish words and phrases - a tribute, in a way, to the teachings of his ancestors and pride in his culture.
"I write using the background of my experience and my way of life," he says. "A great deal of the values of our world view have either gone underground or have been lost through the process of assimilation into the Anglo-American society. It's natural for me to search into the values of my ancestors and what I learned growing up and talk about those values and use those values in my stories."
That's apparent even in the title of "Alburquerque." Yes, there's an extra "r" in the city's name, Anaya's not-so-subtle way of trying to set things straight.
Legend has it an Anglo stationmaster left out the letter when he painted "Albuquerque" on a railroad sign in the 1880s because he couldn't trill the first "r."
"The intention of every writer is to stir things up a bit," Anaya says. "You go to anyone who speaks Spanish and you'll hear the `r.' History tells us that is the correct spelling. . . . I think people reclaim their identity by reclaiming their language. Why be the only misspelled city from El Paso to Taos?"
"Alburquerque" marks a departure from the more poetic style found in Anaya's most famous book, "Bless Me, Ultima," the first of an autobiographical trilogy.
"With `Alburquerque' my style began to change," he says. "I was writing it for 10 years, and over the course of revisions I began to go to a less lyrical and more straightforward style of telling a story."
The story centers on a young man's search for his father, but also touches on a love tryst, fights and friendships. There's also political satire - a mayoral candidate dreams of turning the city's downtown into a desert Venice by rechanneling the waters of the Rio Grande.
At 55, the author of four novels and two novellas, two dozen short stories, three plays and 13 children's stories says he's at the most creative point in his life.
Anaya has a contract with Warner Books to mass market "Alburquerque" sometime after spring 1994. The novel also has brought a few movie inquiries, though nothing firm enough to discuss.
Warner Books also plans to publish a new hard-cover edition of the 20-year-old "Bless Me, Ultima" in April 1994, and to simultaneously mass market the book.
"Books are just like a child - you don't know what they're going to do years later," Anaya says. "Mine has been a good child."
As Anaya travels out-of-state to book signings, judges writing contests and accepts invitations to read from his novels and discuss his work, he says he continues to marvel that people have taken such an interest in his stories.
"It never ceases to amaze me because I think I'm doing a very simple thing by being a storyteller," he says.