Domingo Martinez burst upon the literary scene with his masterful 2012 memoir “The Boy Kings of Texas.”

The tragicomic autobiography, which detailed the author’s rough experiences growing up in the oppressive and all-too-often violent world of the Rio Grande Valley, became a finalist for the National Book Award.

With its highly original take on border issues and the plight of young Latinos pressured by a tradition of machismo, the book quickly caught the eye of Salma Hayek, who met with the author to express her respect for his work. She then put "The Boy Kings of Texas" forward to become an original HBO series.

“The Boy Kings of Texas,” with its unabashed accounts of drinking, generational family drama, jail time, and poisonous love affairs, was a brave and brazen first book to write. But for Martinez, confronting the upsetting facts of his life was the essence of his art.

“My life was repressed memories and denial," he told the Texas Observer in 2012, “If I wasn’t brave enough to bring it all up, then I had no business writing.”

Since the publication of “The Boy Kings of Texas,” a second memoir, “My Heart Is a Drunken Compass,” has been published, and Martinez has been busy giving guest lectures, writing new stories and trying to adapt his first memoir to the small screen.

Latin Post recently caught up with the author about his life and his current projects.

A Cookbook Next?

In his last memoir, Martinez seemed to joke that, due to the soul-taxing nature of autobiography, his next book would be a cookbook. The author revealed he is actually pondering this as a possible project.

“Just last week I was thinking about writing one for alcoholic cooks, called 'Cooking for Drunks,'" Martinez said. "The idea would be to make up these huge, elaborate, terrible meals from stuff you have lying around your pantry, and when you're done, the food just kind of sits there on the stove.”

The point of the book would actually delve deeper, past simple cooking instructions, to promote a kind of introspection about the consequences of inebriation.

“The real idea being, it's for the next day: You reheat it while everyone is hung over and people are ashamed about who they slept with and they can quietly, guiltily do their ‘gnosh of shame,’ while waiting for their Uber. It's a Christmas book, obviously. Alternate title: 'Cooking Leftovers, You Terrible Bastards,'" Martinez explained.

Struggling With Drinking

Outside of his plans for some future comedic cookbook, binge drinking and the ramifications of an alcoholic lifestyle heavily figure in both of Martinez’s memoirs. In “My Heart Is a Drunken Compass,” he hints he may one day give up drinking altogether. Has Martinez become a teetotaler now?

"That’s something I struggle with every day. I clearly have the addiction gene and habits, and I’m sure it’s something I’ll be living with until the very end," Martinez said.

For the time being, the writer said he is simply trying to manage his tendency to get tanked and admits some weeks are better than others.

"I’m seeing a psychiatrist and I’ve started a new medication that is intended to curb the desire for drink," he said. "But then, so is apparently an AA meeting and nothing makes me want to drink more than sitting around a room for an hour talking about drinking.”

Salma Hayek and the Memoir

Days before he spoke at the 2013 Texas Book Festival, Martinez met with Hayek, who had read "The Boy Kings of Texas" and wanted to discuss the potential for a screen project.

According to Martinez, the actress was especially excited about his depiction of Latino male behavior.

“She told me that the description of machismo from the inside by someone who doesn’t participate in it was a book she had been waiting to read for 10 years,” he said.

Though the prospect of turning his memoir into a series may seem like a writer’s dream come true, Martinez described his experience of working on his first HBO script as the most frightening thing he has ever done. Coming from a man who has written two memoirs teeming with life-threatening scenarios along the U.S.-Mexico border, that is a strong statement.

Aside from the stress of script-writing, Martinez has found that naming Hayek an employer is not the best conversation starter.

“Believe me, you don’t repeat that after a while,” Martinez said. “People have way too many questions and you get locked into the same conversations. After a few weeks, I started telling people I was a graphic designer again.”

What Next for Martinez and Chicano Literature

During Martinez's time working on an HBO script, he started writing a collection of short stories that he is now finalizing. The forthcoming collection is called “Certain Distant Sons,” and the stories center around the theme of separation from mothers and fathers. Martinez described the scope of the new collection as "pretty broad," and he called the work an exercise in fear.

Martinez was never the biggest fan of Chicano literature. He told the Texas Observer that as a young man he was more inspired by the literary possibilities he discovered in William Goldman’s ironic pastiche “The Princess Bride.” His brand of self-deprecating autobiography has more in common with William Saroyan than Sandra Cisneros. But whatever influence Chicano literature did or did not have on his writing, Martinez is now one of the genre's stars.

He said he has come to regard the category as deriving strength from location.

"I think the marketplace is bearing itself out west of the Mississippi, where people actually know the difference between, say, a Puerto Rican and a Mexican," the author said. "East of the Mississippi, though, I don’t think the population at large can discern the carbohydrate difference between a fried banana and a corn tortilla, or they don’t really care."

Martinez added he feels Chicano literature is changing and adapting to reflect the complexity of the times.

"Previously, it was a sort of grab-bag, loose utensil drawer," he said. "Now the stories are becoming more specific and personal, and our writers more liberated. And hopefully, we can carry off this new liberation and remain relevant."

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