A Cuchifrita By Any Other Name...

...would still smell like sofrito cooking in the kitchen! Or for my Puerto Rican fellow writers and readers, that'd be recaito. ;D

New writers (which we all are at one time or another) starting out always face questions for their fledgling careers, not the least of which would be, "What name should I write under?" Since I hadn't been Consuelo Vazquez in a long time, having been married for some years when I began writing professionally, I originally wanted to use the pen name "C.A. Keenan." I never got to go that route because Connie Keenan went on the first manuscript to which an editor finally said, "Yeah, okay, we'll publish this!" and Connie Keenan, the name I've been known by since I married Bill Keenan, just stuck.

But then Kensington Books launched Encanto, a line of romances featuring heroines who are spicy and Latina (or do you prefer Hispanic? I'm not personally fussy about stuff like that, FYI). It just so happens that I'm Cuban and I also had written a good amount of romance short stories that featured those same spicy ladies for the women's magazines. On the advice of writer friends I sent in a proposal...and Consuelo (my real name--Connie's a nickname) Vazquez was born.

That was an exciting ride! Short, too. It was fun seeing your work translated and published in other countries, where the cover for Salsa Kiss looked like this:

and/or like this (the original, my favorite one!)

Second Chance Fiance (aka Segunda Oportunidad) had THREE covers, though I can only find these two:

Encanto was fun. A bunch of us authors got the chance to do lots of promo for it in Chicago and in New York and on Univision's website.

But romance novel lines come and go--and that's okay. Encanto folded sometime in 2001. Writers often fret that the end of a line is, well...the end of the line. In over a decade of writing, I've seen lines and publishers fold. Writers who continue to believe in themselves and in their work, who keep going because they still have stories to tell, go on finding homes for their work.

Fun rides are great. Just remember there are more rides out there, right around the corner!