The first sign my adventure in fiction writing had veered into a surreal dimension came on the day I went shopping for shackles. This was a couple of months before my photo was posted on Perez Hilton. It was before I faced a swarm of cameras, my makeup running, my eyelashes surrendering to the Miami Beach swelter, with Gloria Estefan on one side of me and Andy Garcia on the other.

It was a Saturday, a day I might have spent in the writing cave, working on my first novel in the company of two dogs, a cat and an unruly cast of characters in development. But I had finished the novel and three rounds of revisions. So, I left the cave and its calculated risks and I ventured south toward Homestead to a strip mall of retail non sequiturs. I passed the Afro-Cuban saint shop and entered a military surplus store.

The leg irons, I should explain, were props for my book promotional video. I had written a 60-second script depicting the scene where Sweet Mary, my heroine, a good girl from the suburbs, is arrested in a case of mistaken identity. But what had seemed an easy enough concept on paper turned into a scavenger hunt for locations, cameras, voices and props.

“I just called about the shackles,” I said to the woman behind the counter at the surplus store. She reached into a bin, expressionless, and she placed a small box on the counter.

“That’ll be $19.95,” she said.

“It’s for a video,” I said, feeling the need to explain. “A book video. My book.”

The surplus-store woman, who oversees an inventory that includes Kevlar vests and Israeli M-15 gas masks, knotted her brow.

“I wrote a book,” I went on.

She gave me a blasé look that sent me out the door without another word. I didn’t know it then, but the surreal express had just left the station.

After months of writing in doses of solitude, of creating imaginary bouts of conflict, traveling unmapped back roads, living vicariously through my hot, gutsy heroine, I came to realize I had no control over my creation. Yes, I could finish the novel, attempt to contain it within the proper punctuation, and go treat myself to a pedicure and a good, cathartic cry.

But I learned that typing “The End” was only a formality. Writing Sweet Mary for Atria Books/Simon & Schuster was just the beginning of my journey. I realized this the day my book editor urged me to go buy a book titled Publicize Your Book! The book, pretty much, is a reality check for authors: Your book’s success depends on you.
Somehow, that advice led me to the book video, and the shackles. And it led me to do something I had not done in all those months of solitary writing — talk about the story. Until then, I had kept it closely guarded, showing it only to my editors. It was a story inspired by the real-life case of a Miami woman, Virginia Garcia-Perez, wrongly arrested on cocaine charges in 2003. She was an upstanding citizen, a hardworking mother, mistaken for a drug queen with a similar name.

The real Sweet Mary

I didn’t know the woman, but we had a mutual friend. So, when I saw the headline in paper, I was intrigued enough to call her and ask her to meet me for coffee. As I listened to the story of how she spent days in jail before she could prove the mistake, I wondered what might have happened if she hadn’t been able to prove it. What if she had lost her job, her home, her son? Would she ever consider trying to track down the real fugitive?

No, she said, she wouldn’t. She was just happy to have her life back. But I couldn’t shake the scenario from my head. Sometime not too long after that, Sweet Mary, superwoman of the suburbs, was born. She first came to life in screenplay form, and a few years later in novel form. Determined and drop-dead gorgeous, she’s the woman who goes after her nemesis to get her own life back.

As I shared the story, it became real in a sense. It was as if Mary had escaped the writing cave. Those I shared the story with began to talk about her and her universe in terms that seemed tangible.

Mango Sours for everyone

One graphic artist friend, who grew up in Mary’s hometown of Hialeah, offered to launch a Web site. Another friend launched a Sweet Mary fan site. Another, a bartender friend, offered to re-create Sweet Mary’s signature drink, the Mango Sour. Another had T-shirts made — “Free Sweet Mary,” they said. Another agreed to direct the book video.

Team Sweet Mary, I called the small army of friends and relatives who embraced the project. Even Virginia herself joined the team. In real life, she still carries her court documents with her to prove her name was cleared. A sales rep for a water distributorship, she’s been denied access to schools because the cocaine charge still pops up on her record. Although she has a job and still lives in the house the feds raided, she has found no lasting justice and no real clarity.

“At least I can live through her,” she said to me, cradling the novel.

The bionic blotting incident

The momentum built in a way I never had expected. And on 07/08/09, the stars aligned. Literally so. There is no way to write this without sounding like a giant name-dropper, but Gloria Estefan, my friend of nearly 17 years, threw a party at the Eden Roc hotel in Miami Beach to celebrate the release of Sweet Mary. The guest list included Andy Garcia, who was a mentor and friend when I first wrote the story as a screenplay. I had collaborated closely with him when I worked as an associate producer and writing consultant on HBO’s For Love Or Country: The Arturo Sandoval Story in 2000.

Their celebrity status aside, both Gloria and Andy are solid. And under different circumstances we might have chatted for hours in private. But that was the night of a million cameras and lights. What I remember most clearly is the swelter, melting in the hot lights of the cameras.

“Oh my God, you’re schvitzing like crazy,” barked a TV producer friend who raced over with cocktail napkins. With harsh strokes of a napkin, she proceeded to wipe off all my makeup. She yanked the napkin across my eyes and loosened one of my faux eyelashes, the first false lashes I’ve ever worn.

I could hear the photographers call out to the celebs and me, “On the left … look to the right … in the middle!” But I couldn’t see them. Thanks to the bionic blotting skills of my friend, I was looking at the world through a black feathered boa.

“Yank it off already,” I hissed at her.

“What?” she said.

“The eyelash. Yank it off.”

And she did. I think that’s when a camera snapped the photo that would appear on Perez Hilton’s blog, festooned with one of his trademark, handwritten captions: “All Together!” About 20 minutes later, I pulled off the other eyelash.

Gloria, Andy, Perez and me

Schvitzing aside, it was a magical night. My favorite high school teacher came, as did some old classmates. My book editor was there. My cousins were there. My nephew got his picture taken with Cindy Taylor, the model and TV hostess. The “rum sponsor,” Atlantico, served Sweet Mary Mango Sours in fancy glasses.

Even Steven Bauer, of Scarface fame, was there. He came to the party with the entire cast of a reality show called Work of Genius, which is shot on location at the hotel. Yes, there was a reality show angle. Isn’t there always? For a moment, I wondered what Sweet Mary might do at such a party. She’d work the room, I suspect. And unlike the author, she’d never let anyone see her sweat.

~liz_balmaseda@pbpost.com

The real sweet Mary

Sweet Mary, the novel, tells the ripped-from-the-headlines story of an upstanding citizen falsely accused of cocaine-trafficking. It is inspired by the true story of a suburban Miami mother who was the victim of a mistaken identity raid. With nothing more to lose, the book’s heroine embarks on a search for justice after the fugitive drug queen.

The real-life “Mary,” Virginia Garcia-Perez, has yet to find definitive justice. Six years after she was led away from her house in shackles — in front of her young son — she lives under a cloud of suspicion, even after a federal judge quashed the arrest. She carries her court papers everywhere she goes. She’s grown used to getting turned down for jobs — her false charges pop up each time she applies for new work. She still lives in the house the feds raided, bracing for the next rejection.

Liz Balmaseda’s first novel, Sweet Mary ($24.95, Atria Books), hit book stores on Tuesday.

AN EXCERPT:

But just as I cracked the door open, something yanked it open from the other side with a THWACK. In a blinding instant, three men in black jackets stormed into my house, guns pointed. They tore through the living room at hurricane speed, firing orders I could not decipher. Chairs and cushions went flying. Books cascaded off the shelves.

“Take what you want and get out of my house!” I pleaded.

Two of the invaders barreled upstairs to the bedrooms. The third one sped toward me, pointing his gun at my chest. I was afraid to call my son’s name… The third invader spun me around and shoved me against the wall.

“Hands up! Don’t move!” he ordered, pressing the barrel of his gun into my back.

I heard a thunder of boots and a crash of glass coming from one of the rooms upstairs.

“Jesus God, what do you want?”

“Are you Maria?” the third invader demanded.

“What do you want?” I snapped back in a booming, a voice I didn’t recognize, the voice of a woman who has nothing to lose. I wasn’t that woman. I was petrified that the invaders would find my son and shoot us both right then and there.

The third invader shoved the gun barrel toward my head. I was trembling, but managed to glance back and take a good look at him. Trim, athletic build, late 30s, meticulously pressed black jeans. I was determined to remember him in case I had to pick him out of a lineup.

“Hands on the wall!” he shoved me again.

But then I noticed something else about him, something glinting on his belt, and I realized this was no ordinary home invasion.

The third intruder wore a badge….