The ranches and their history at the crux of the U.S.-Mexico War play a palpable role in my novels. The ranches have personalities of their own. Caja… - Rudy Ruiz

So strong had his voice become that people on neighboring ranches and farms would drag their rocking chairs onto their patios on the nights they knew he was visiting and listen to the corridos he and Fernando Cisneros sang, their voices carried on the gentle breezes of the Gulf for miles on end.

She remembered her father's words one day as they sat alone in the drugstore. He had said, waving his arms in a grand gesture, 'It took me years to figure out that what truly heals is not all these drugs and medicines. No, no señorita. Only love can heal. The love of between two people. The love of family and home. The love you hear in a song or see in a painting or design. El amor vive eterno.' Love lives eternal.

In a way, diving into that Western and horror aspect of it, it felt like it freed me. It freed me up to have more fun with it in a way, maybe because I wasn't taking myself or my writing as seriously and I was just having fun within those genres. I found it liberating. It's weird to say, because you're putting some constraints around yourself. But then within those constraints, you just opened up this universe within which I could have a lot of fun.