The Book of Laments

A novel about the priest who fought the Spanish conquest: Fray Bartolomé de las Casas

A historian working in the Archivo General de Indias examines an uncatalogued manuscript from a private donation — what may be an autograph manuscript of Bartolomé de las Casas's Historia de las Indias, organized not as the published version scholars have relied on for a century and a half, but as a series of probanzas or legal testimonies, gathered from witnesses across five decades of Spanish colonization in the Americas.

The testimonies span the full arc of Las Casas's life and conscience: Hispaniola, 1502–1511. Cuba, 1513. Spain, 1515–1522. Guatemala, 1537. Mexico, the 1540s. Valladolid, 1550 and 1563. The witnesses include a Taíno woman on Hispaniola who watches her world disappear; a Mayan priest in Guatemala who receives Dominican friars into his community; an Aztec elder in Mexico; and the Spanish colonists, priests, and crown officials who carried out, argued over, and occasionally resisted what was being done. At the center of all of them is Las Casas himself — the young priest who arrived in the New World with an encomienda and a clear conscience, and who spent the next fifty years becoming the most sustained indictment that any participant in the colonial enterprise ever produced.

Title in Spanish: El Libro de los Lamentos

Paperback, ebook

→ English: https://mybook.to/BookOfLaments 

→ Spanish: https://mybook.to/LibroDeLamentos  

Papacito

Valentina, a documentary filmmaker, arrives at her grandparents' house with a camcorder and a canvas tote full of objects she has taken from their storage rooms: photographs, a notebook in an unfamiliar hand, and a typescript biography of the man she is there to understand. Her grandmother Julia Inés, Tita, is eighty-four. The famous painter died years ago. The paintings have spread through the house like water filling a vessel.

What follows is a story told object by object, memory by memory, across three generations of a Colombian family: Tita's childhood in Pasto at the foot of the Andes, with a father whose absences were so regular they acquired the weight of a presence; the years in Brazil, where her husband — el Maestro — found the subject that would define his career; and the long decades in Bogotá, where the family built something that was part household, part art enterprise, part mythology. Papacito is the word Tita used for her own father, gone more than he was home, enormous in the doorways, unforgettable. It is also the word her children used for the painter. The book asks what it means when that word carries both the longing and the loss.

A novel about fathers — their greatness, their absences, and the women who held everything together while they were away.

English · Kindle · Paperback

https://mybook.to/Papacito  

Your Story Matters: 

A Friendly Guide to Writing Your Memoir with Ai

Your grandchildren deserve to know your story. Now there's an easier way to tell it.

You've lived a life worth remembering — the struggles and joys, the people you loved, the lessons learned the hard way. But writing it all down? That's where most people get stuck: the blank page, the fear of not being a "real writer," the overwhelming question of where to even start.

Your Story Matters shows you how to use AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude as patient interviewers, helpful editors, and encouraging writing partners. No tech expertise required. No special skills. Just your memories and the desire to preserve them. Inside: step-by-step guidance from first conversation to finished book, the "tight leash" method that keeps AI from taking over your voice, 100+ memory prompts to get started immediately, and complete instructions for self-publishing through Amazon KDP.

Title in Spanish: Ponlo en Palabras

English: https://mybook.to/YourStoryMatters  

Spanish: https://mybook.to/PonloEnPalabras