Desiree Prieto Groft's Blog

As an indie author and alumna, I was honored to be interviewed by The New School!

Huge thanks to Camilla Marchese Gonzalez and Lori Lynn Turner for the opportunity to reconnect with current students and the community.

We talked about high vs. low culture, what it means to be a real writer, and my wonderful thesis advisor, Susan Cheever, who continues to inspire my work. Her new book, When All the Men Wore Hats: Susan Cheever on the Stories of John Cheever, celebrates her Pulitzer Prize-winning father.

Approx. 8-minute read

Excerpt from Chapter Nineteen of Girl, Unemployed, “A Very Booby Birthday Thanksgiving”

“Let’s just say that it’s going to be a very boob-y birthday.”

Did I just say that to my boss, the executive producer of this entire department? Was it possible I was still drunk, and did that constitute sexual harassment against a man who was married with an infant? I could see my coworker’s countenance fall, the looks of despair on Kim and Ramona’s faces. They held their breath with mine, waiting for Mr. T to break his silence.

“Wow, okay, wow, that will be some clickbait. That’s the holiday spirit! Got to keep them on their toes. Remember, four million visits by Christmas.” Mr. T turned around, unlocked his office door, and sat at his desk.

I exhaled.

“That was a close one,” Ramona whispered.

“Jess, you are so lucky it’s almost the weekend,” Kim said. “You need to sleep your life off.”

As if my work stops on the weekend, I thought. “Yeah, as soon as I post this blog. And eat some of that Thanksgiving turkey. Somebody sent an email about Puerto Rican rice. Do we still have Puerto Rican rice? And plantains? I need the carbs for my hangover. And, like, ten Cokes.”

My computer screen turned on again, and voila. Miraculously, Scarlett Johansson’s chest remained plastered in front of my face. Within a few minutes, I finished cropping the photos, edited the last paragraph, and posted the celebrity blog, A Very Boob-y Birthday: Celebrate with Scar Jo’s 27 Bustiest Moments. The blog comprised twenty-seven pictures with my pithy jokes accompanying the actress’s outstanding rack. Next to a photo of her surrounded by toddlers at the SpongeBob SquarePants premiere: Milk anyone? Showcasing her talent on the cover of W Magazine to promote The Other Boleyn Girl: Wait, wasn’t Natalie Portman supposed to be on this cover too? Oh, there she is. All dolled up for a Dolce and Gabbana makeup ad: Oh, there’s the microscopic eye shadow icon at the bottom corner, concealed by the actress’s “talent.” At her premiere for a Broadway revival: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with a Side of Boobs.

****

Want to find out what happens after Jess’s Very Booby Birthday blog goes live? Read the full chapter at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

Deleted scene from Girl, Unemployed, “J. Lo, Crystal Bowls, and the Red M&Ms”

Erica waited for acknowledgement, folding her arms tightly across her chest while anxiously tapping her foot.

“Everything okay over there?” I asked.

Erica suddenly jumped back to her feet as Missy tried desperately to salvage the mound of magazines slipping off the edge of the couch. “If Damita is so fabulous with all her singing and choreography, then why has she been living at The Winifred for so long?!”

“Do you want to say that so loud? The walls have ears.” I whispered to Missy, “and I’ve been told The Winifred is haunted.”

“I don’t care who hears me this time!” Erica’s face turned bright red.

“Oooh, can you sing that again? This time louder with a little more vibrato, and in an E flat.” I leaned back into Missy while circling my head around the ceiling. “I just love the sound in this room. It’s almost as if they really were preparing us to work with Liza Minnelli.  Perhaps you should take the piano and I—”

“I mean it!” Erica yelled. “I tried to watch TV, but Damita barged in claiming she’d reserved the room to practice. But I stood up to her like you told me too, Jess! I asked if she signed up, and she said yes!”

I scanned the room. “Don’t see her, Erica. What’s your point?”

“As soon as I left, I saw her go to the front desk.”

“Ah, there you go again, hiding out in dark corners, creepy.”

“Damita ran to the front desk and said, ‘excuse me, I need to reserve the room to practice for half an hour.’ She lied to me! She was just trying to get rid of me again! She never signed up for it! I was here first!”

I wondered what this fight was really about. Lately, Erica spent most of her evenings watching TV on the couch while reciting stories she’d hoped would be her own one day—stories about Broadway, bosses who had SAG cards and awards, or bosses who at least knew people who had SAG cards and awards. Fortunately, the Broadway theater had at least promoted Erica from intern to mailroom clerk.

“Erica, calm down.” I looked around. "Clearly, you won. I didn’t see Damita at dinner, and she’s obviously not here tonight."

“No, I didn’t win! I waited for an hour! It’s Thursday.”

“Ahh, yes, Thursday. Damita must have just left for Ashford & Simpson’s Sugar Bar."

Erica stood in front of me fuming, while I, relieved to have missed Damita, took a little bit of pleasure in poking at her. I jumped up off the couch passionately, my faux Burberry throw floating above my head as I spoke. "But Erica, the show must go on! How could you keep Damita from her big break?! Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas were in the front row last time, Erica! Yes, they were, yes they were."

Missy had to bite her lip.

As usual, Erica found it difficult to catch my sarcasm. She stomped her foot at me. "But every night is her big break! She parades around here in those fake white silk robes with her name in cursive on the back, calling out the shots. She hasn’t made it yet, and she still acts like she’s Madonna."

“Well, I didn’t want to say anything, but—no, I don’t think I should say anything.”

Erica took the bait and finally stopped shouting. The tone in her voice suddenly turned down—hushed, persuasive. “What? You can tell me. I won’t tell anyone. What did you hear?”

I lowered my shoulders and head, pretending to self-consciously stake out our surroundings. “I did overhear her talking to housekeeping the other day.”

“Yeah? And?”

“She told them that her pillows needed to be fluffed three times instead of just the standard two.”

“What?” Innocent Erica started thinking, her eyes scrolling, flashing left to right. “She gets her pillows fluffed? I don’t get my pillows fluffed! Not even two times, not even one times. And I already heard she has a cappuccino maker in her guest room. They said we aren’t allowed to have appliances like that in our rooms!”

“Well, not Damita. The Winifred clearly considers her VIP.” I was enjoying it a little too much. “And, remember how we were all watching E! News in here with Damita last week?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you remember the story about how when J. Lo goes on tour she has hotel staff put three bags of M&Ms in crystal bowls by her bed?”

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, afterwards, I saw Damita go to the front desk. Can you believe she wanted four bags of M&Ms in her crystal bowls?”

“What?!” Erica’s eyebrows shot up. “I don’t have crystal bowls in my room. How did she get crystal bowls in her room?!”

“Oh, it’s even worse than that.” My voice got softer as I carefully looked around and noticed Missy holding her breath and bracing her stomach. “Apparently, the housekeepers have to pick out all of the M&Ms that aren’t red. Like J. Lo, Damita refuses to eat any of the other M&Ms.”

Erica’s jaw suddenly dropped. “I can’t believe her.”

“Yep. Apparently, one of the housekeepers even got fired. Because…” I lowered my head further as I became quieter. “One of them accidentally left a yellow M&M. It was hiding at the bottom of the bowl. And the housekeeping shift manager was at the front desk yelling at her lowly staff member like, ‘it was yellow! How could you miss the yellow M&M?’!”

Missy couldn’t help herself by then. She rolled over in laughter, the stacks of free Tilly Worth advertising on her and beside her slipping to the floor. “Jess! Stop. It. Can you just stop being so funny right now? I’m going to pee. In my pants.”

Erica threw herself back down on the couch yet again, tightly crossing her arms against her chest. I finally laughed too and lied down, grabbing the faux Burberry blanket from the floor to throw over me. My work here was done.

Missy started to sit up. “The red M&Ms. Everyone’s favorite. Erica, what’s your favorite?” Missy rearranged two piles of stacked magazines, sifting through the important Tilly ones that had dog ears halfway through them. “Oh, I bet you’re a Skittles kind of a gal? Oh, that’s it. You are so Skittles. But the pinks and the purples, I bet!”

Suddenly, Erica was crying. She threw her head into her hands. “It was…It was…” Erica’s sniffles became fuller with the practice room echo.

“Erica? Erica?” Missy scooted over while trying to juggle the magazines on her lap. “Jess was just kidding, you know Jess.”

“Erica, I’m sorry.” I hopped to the other side of Erica to squat down on the couch beside her.

****

Read the final cut at Amazon and Barnes & Noble

It has been such a dream to see Girl, Unemployed listed at Barnes & Noble as well!

Thank you to every reader who has supported this wry story about messy jobs, resilience, and second chances. You can find the Girl, Unemployed paperback and ebook online now at Barnes and Noble. Keep an eye on my social media and website for readings in the new year.

Excerpt from Chapter Eighteen of Girl, Unemployed, “After the Halloween Hurricane”

I pulled hard and fast until the fat wooden blinds reached the top of the windowsill.

“Huh!” Conchita struggled to inch out of bed. She moved forward in slow motion like a zombie in a trance. Then, she clasped her hands together again to make a prayer across her lips.

“Oh, come on, Conchita, it’s not that—” I swung my head back. “Ma—je—s—t—i—c.” But it was. It was majestic. It was magic. It was magnificent.

“Yessica,” she whispered. “It’s the high highs and the low lows. Last night, the hurricane, and now—” Conchita kept her praying hands together and turned her head back and forth in disbelief.

The harsh wind and rains of the hurricane had ceased. But not without ushering in the first quiet snow of the season, the complete opposite of the storm’s chaos and destruction. Like confetti, the snow sprinkled and scattered along the water towers, rooftops, and skyscrapers above us. The sun had not risen, but we didn’t need it. Instead, the snow cast a white light, a blanket, a canvas across the city.  It took its time flying and spreading across the sky. Like the still-dark windows of the city’s tall buildings, the snow postponed the morning and its eventual landing; a million little specks crossed our window, spinning in circles and coalescing together in a cloud of peace above us before finally landing below like a fluffy pillow.

“Another performance.” More flurries pirouetted in front of us, painting our Midtown postcard white. A few rested on the windowsill. “It’s rare. To get snow after a hurricane, you know. The likelihood of that happening is…” I turned to Conchita and laughed. “I guess that’s about as likely as you and me ending up together in New York.”

“I get it now. You have to be here to see it. And to understand it. To see is to believe.” A small tear moseyed down her face. “Oh, Yessica, how can I—how can anyone—ever go back home after all this?”

“Another note to add to that book?” I was concerned for Conchita, but it wasn’t time to say anything, so I put my arm around her shoulder. She lowered her head against my neck. “Welcome to New York.”

Conchita unlocked the window and pried at the bottom to open it.

I thought of Gloria Grace but tried to hide my sad face. “It only opens a quarter of the way now. You know, so you can be bad and smoke a smooth Dunhill every once in a while.”

Conchita’s stunned eyes jumped to mine. “What?”

“Not that I would know or anything.”

I went to wash my face over the sink. Wiping off my forehead and cheeks with a hand towel, I grabbed a crumpled envelope under the door. “It seems the power, water, and subways below Thirtieth Street are down. How about that?”

I thought it remarkable that residing four blocks north meant that we had every necessity and even the excesses of Forty-Second Street. Work and school were canceled since power below Thirty-Fourth Street was out. But since the hurricane postponed Halloween the night before, many of us marched north toward the lights in our costumes and coats. Conchita had been quiet since the snow at my window, so I put my arms inside hers like a chain as we walked east and north toward Fifth Avenue and Forty-Second Street.

I began first with small talk. “Thank you for your pink ballerina costume. I do love all the sequins and frills. But are you sure you’re allowed to wear your Miss Fiesta dress and crown during non-official Fiesta events?”

Conchita kept silent. Then, she finally responded in a low monotone. “It is to take pictures in front of the sites for the Fiesta Commission.”

“You mean to tell me you’re like one of those army guys who wear their uniform on the plane?” I slowed. “Oh, you should wear it on the plane. Cause you also serve the community.” I made a big salute. “Thank you for your service, Miss Fiesta.”

Conchita laughed softly, then quickly reeled in her smile as a snowplow scratched against the street.

“Out of my way,” a young voice yelled. Dressed as a mummy, a teenage skateboarder crashed through us, briefly breaking up our chain.

“Say excuse me, next time,” I yelled, looping my arm through Conchita’s again, as I noticed the skater had yet to phase her.

“And skateboarders.” Conchita finally spoke in the low monotone of a muffle.

“Skateboarders?” I questioned.

“You said that roller-skates, no, rollerblades, are making a comeback in the city. But you forgot to mention the skateboarders.”

I played along. “Oh, sorry about that. We can add that to our lessons. Be on the lookout for the sixteen-year-old mummy skateboarders that just arose from the dead. They are making a comeback.”

“Yes.” She dragged me forward, periodically slowing down to stare up at the skyscrapers.

I looked at her. “The buildings climb higher the farther you make it into Midtown. Supposedly, a skyscraper is anything above forty stories.”

Conchita stopped to finally get a full view of the Empire State Building behind us. She scanned the icon, up, down, then back up again. 

“Forty stories for a skyscraper doesn’t seem that high of a standard.” We spun our heads back north. “But it does feel good to know that…” I trailed off, considering she wasn’t listening.

Except that she was. “It feels good to know that what, Yessica?”

“That even though there are skyscrapers in the world as tall as mountains, that doesn’t mean the rest of us still can’t touch the clouds—.”

“At just forty stories.”

****

Read more at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A huge thank you to The Twig Book Shop at The Pearl in downtown San Antonio for giving such a warm welcome to Girl, Unemployed!

Jeanne Miers and Michele Hernandez — you two have been such a joy to work with.

If you’re at The Pearl, stop by The Twig to pick up Girl, Unemployed!

Spoiler alert — the first chapter of my novel is actually set nearby, off the 281 Highway near the airport. What a dream that Girl, Unemployed gets to meet readers here in real life.

And…exciting news! I’ll be doing a sit-and-sign at The Twig during the Pearl Farmers Market in the new year. Stay tuned for more details soon!

The Twig Book Shop

Historic Pearl

There are many breakthroughs that come from writing novels and the writing process in general. Joan Didion may have famously said, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down,” but it has long been known that writing, along with speaking and reading, is a tool for deep thinking—a practice explored by greats like Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, and Montaigne.

Getting our thoughts on paper can also lead to profound conclusions about our lives, shared struggles, and ways forward. It can even provide closure.

While writing some of that closure for my own novel—spoiler alert—one of my characters states, “They say it takes a village to raise a child. I think it takes a village to raise an adult.” Since publishing the novel, readers have repeatedly quoted that line back to me.

Without spoiling too much more, one of the final chapters of the novel includes some "real talk" about tragically falling behind in childhood due to heartbreaking family circumstances. It was such a heavy chapter to write. I cried through it so many times. I didn’t want to include it in the novel.

But that real talk illustrates character motivations—essentially how and why we do the things we do and how our childhood can affect our future, our own sad and happy endings, our own heroes’ or heroines’ journeys.

Since publishing the novel, I’ve been thinking even more about the deeper meaning of childhood. Maybe that's because I published Girl, Unemployed a year after my own daughter was born, and now I’m responsible for someone else’s childhood and for building someone else’s village. But here’s the thought I want to leave you with, one I keep coming back to:

Children who play catch-up as children become adults who play catch-up as adults.

Maybe to move forward and embrace our purpose, we need to give ourselves—and our past—grace. We weren’t always given the tools to navigate life, and that’s okay. But what if we keep going anyway and allow ourselves the chance to catch up, so we can fully step into the life we are meant to live?

Go on and build that village as an adult.

I'm excited to share an upcoming event in downtown San Antonio!

Come join Girl, Unemployed for an afternoon of "Drafts and Drinks"  to celebrate San Antonio Startup Week 🚀

We'll discuss epic fails and all those rough drafts and rewrites on the way to something great.

Link to RSVP below 👇

https://tinyurl.com/DraftsandDrinks

It’s Hispanic Heritage Month, and I want to get real with you.

We’re told to use this time for celebration, visibility, and pride—to honor the stories that make up our shared history. So here is innocent me with my brother Evan—smiling, unaware, before I even knew what ‘Hispanic Heritage Month’ was supposed to mean.

But like I ask my students when we read literature: what is this about? And also, what is this really about?

One answer is surface-level. The other is layered.

For example, Girl, Unemployed is about messy jobs and second chances. But it’s also about so much more—success and systemic hurdles, lack of opportunities, money, community, and family. It’s about how all those forces can collide to lift us up or pull us down.

Similarly, my main character confronts our concerns on race relations—are they sincere, or just hot-button topics that play on our emotions and consumer culture? Somehow, it always ties back to money and jobs. All roads lead to jobs.

Below is a cutting one-page excerpt from my book about a Hispanic origin story. After reading it, tell me: what does Hispanic Heritage Month mean to you? For me, it’s not just about visibility. It’s about wrestling with complicated truths that don’t always look like the colorful flowers, streamers, or nostalgic childhood photos often used to tell our stories this month.

Excerpt from Chapter 2, Jess’s “origin story,” Girl, Unemployed

“You know, I was talking to Elsa today,” my mother said, as if Hazelnut wasn’t all over her, crouched along the carpet. “And Elsa said my kids are boomerangs. Have you heard of this? Boomerangs?” My mother huffed with each scrub her hand made against the carpet. “We called it late bloomers in my day, but it makes sense. Elsa says, 'like a boomerang, Ariana. You throw a boomerang out in the air, and it comes right back.’”

“Thanks, Mom. Lots of insight on my birthday and super helpful. It motivates me to get off the couch, I mean, out of your kitchen, like all the women who came before you. Oh, look at that. I come home to find you still in the kitchen.”

My mother ignored me, as she usually did when I got all feministy. She stopped mid-scrub like she had a premonition, glaring off into the distance. “Elsa says, your home is a revolving door, Ariana, a revolving door. I know you love your kids, but you should make them pay some rent.”

“Mom! Who has Elsa been hanging around with in her Sharpie eyebrows? I’m paying for utilities and groceries, as agreed. Plus gas, insurance, and a new lease on a car so Missy can stop driving me everywhere. How much do you think I get for unemployment?”

 “I know. Can you believe that? I said to Elsa, ‘Elsa, where did you get this from?’ She said, ‘the other ladies that work with me at the new Southwest Airlines Call Center.’”

“I see San Antonio is still vying for those competitive, blue-collared call center jobs. Wait, will you tell her I’m looking for a temp job and that I have travel experience?”

“It’s a bilingual call center job, so you must speak fluent Spanish.”

“Your fault, Mom,” I said in a tongue-in-cheek tone.

When my parents were growing up on the border, society taught their generation that they and their children would never prosper in the U.S. if they spoke Spanish. Being white had equaled economic prosperity, power, and wealth in the U.S. As a punishment, the nuns at my parents’ school would charge them up to a quarter for every Spanish word they accidentally spoke in class. So, when my parents grew up and started their family, they raised my brothers and me to speak only English, even though Spanish was their first language. But enter the 1990s with Selena, J. Lo., and Ricky Martin. Big corporations like McDonald's, Proctor & Gamble, and Liz Claiborne began to see the Hispanic market as an untapped resource. They started spending their advertising dollars in markets like Telemundo and Univision. We became re-branded as “Latino.” That word made me feel like I needed big J. Lo Hoop earrings, dark purple lipstick, and those trending Homies T-shirts with a picture of a big, souped-up hooptie.

“So basically, Mom, I spent the first half of my life shamed not to speak Spanish, and now I’m going to spend the rest of my life shamed by both Hispanics and non-Hispanics—sorry, Latinos—because I don’t speak Spanish? Why aren’t ‘Anglos’ shamed for not speaking Gaelic, Finnish, or whatever language that is consistent with their ancestry? Because it’s about money, Mother, just so you know. I promise you, the world doesn’t suddenly care about Hispanics or Latinos, but money does.”

Something I discussed on The Inside Story Podcast was how to give ourselves grace and space to grieve during times of failure, hardship, and loss.

Let me emphasize that so it’s loud and clear: we need to give ourselves the gift of the grieving process.

Grieving can take many forms. For example, while sometimes cringe, my main character in Girl, Unemployed had to own her anger, frustration, bitterness, and resentment. All those feelings were real—they came from the sting of an epic fail and the realization that even though she thought she had done everything “right” in school and the workforce, she was still left with nothing—less than nothing—buried under a mountain of debt.

Of course, it’s never healthy to stay in a negative headspace for too long, but it’s important to let those feelings out. During my own grieving process after losing my travel job with a luxury European tour operator, I turned to books that spoke directly to that mindset of anger, frustration, bitterness, and resentment.

One of my favorites was Jen Lancaster’s Bitter Is the New Black, because the protagonist gave voice to the anger I was feeling—but in a funny, ironic, and ultimately hopeful way. What began as a journey through anger and bitterness ended with a promising way forward.

If you’re in that space today, here’s the book—with its ridiculous but spot-on subtitle:

Bitter is the New Black: Confessions of a Condescending, Egomaniacal, Self-Centered Smart-Ass, or Why You Should Never Carry a Prada Bag to the Unemployment Office

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