Current Project
TO BECOME
THE MOON
When Itotia’s ritual binds their lives together, deity Metztli grapples with mortality & pious Itotia learns the gods aren’t as benevolent as she thought.
#PosterPit pitch graphic designed by Argelia
A Word From The Author
By day, Argelia (arr-hey-lee-ah) is a psychology student at La Universidad Tecnológica de México, the owner of Mystic Design, and a medical assistant at a neurodiversity-affirming clinic. She is a Salvadoran-Canadian who drew from her direct Pipil ancestry when crafting TO BECOME THE MOON, and she pulls from her Latin heritage when creating atmospheric, speculative fiction. Nestled in the mountains in small-town BC, she can be found with a cat on her shoulder and a coffee in hand. Like so many of the characters in her stories, she is a proud member of the LGBTQ+ and ND communities. Argelia is represented by Ciara Smith at Spencerhill Associates Literary Agency.
Argelia E. Mann
Current Project
TO BECOME THE MOON
Itotia’s a healer’s apprentice struggling to meet her mentor’s expectations. Metztli is a deity who despises worship. When Itotia’s ritual binds their lives together, Metztli grapples with mortality while Itotia learns the gods aren’t as benevolent as she’d thought.
Steeped in Nahua (Pipil) culture and set against the lush backdrop of precolonial Central America, TO BECOME THE MOON is an adult romantasy, complete at 90,000 words.
Writing Excerpts
Where humans regarded earth-given gifts as currency, gods traded in favours.
Perhaps that was the reason they mistook us for desiring hand-carved trinkets and the cacao beans that splattered on the jungle floor with as much allure as the droppings of a bird. They hurled them to the ground, made some demands, then slapped their hands together a few times and called it divinity.
— Metztli
To Become the Moon, Chapter 20
I float naked in the decorative pond in Parque México’s centre, and tourists are staring. The water’s tepid and slimy and smells like sulphur. I do, too, now. I am minerals best left to mountain caverns and chemicals best rolled in cigarettes. Dark blends, light blends. Rich Marlboros and rough Faros and mouldy tobacco hugged by bible paper. It was Jacinto’s idea first, but he’s not here. He flicked the lighter. He put the misshapen lump to my lips and I parted for him and inhaled because I have always and will always breathe him in.
— Dámaso
MuseWip, Chapter 31
I walk into a store in the belly of an apartment and buy a twenty-pack of Dunhills—not that I smoke, of course—and continue to a bridge I don’t know the name of but that Dámaso would, where I flick a lighter and think of him, inhale and think of him, and blow a ragged tuft of poisoned air and think of him some more. We’ve stood here before, together, at a different time or several different times, his back to the railing and his arms braced on either side, head tipped so far back he might’ve fallen, throat to the sky because he wanted himself to, elegant and deadly in the way only Dámaso can be, and refined in his chaos in a way I will never achieve.
— Jacinto
MuseWIP, Interlude II
Upcoming Projects
MuseWIP
Art destroys.
Dámaso’s obsessive bond to his muse turns lethal after their collaborative art murders their law school’s president, forcing the boys to represent opposite sides of the case and risk exposure for their crime, all while their toxic devotion consumes them.
MUSE! is an upmarket speculative thriller with tragic romance elements, set in Mexico City.