cali1102

cali1102

Language: English
Total entries: 9
Followers: 0

About:

Cali Castillo a.k.a. Charli Cole is a novelist
who currently resides in Merced, California. She
writes commercial fiction that is usually plot-
driven, and always true to her own life. In
other words, her fiction is actually non-fiction
with a twist.

She has a penchant for the portrayal of
multiracial protagonists that aren’t often
portrayed in today’s market, and it’s her
intention to create an ongoing series that
follows the day-to-day lives of a prominent Afro-
Latino family—the series being based on
fictionalized accounts of the lives of her and
her family members.

As a child, Cali turned to writing as a
productive means of expressing herself. She also
ventured off into poetry, songwriting, and
writing skits for an evening Sunday school class
for her peers, which she was appointed to teach—
a very precocious child. And it became her dream
to either become a playwright, novelist, or
screenwriter. She’s even thought about becoming
all three.

She was told by an educational superior that
being a writer wasn’t a realistic career choice
and, therefore, chose to continue writing as a
hobby. However, after she earned her college
degree, she decided to pursue it, feeling she
had something to fall back on in case the
writing stint didn’t work out.

She began working on her first novel, Imperial
Affairs: Conformations, in May of 2005 and
completed it in July of the same year. When her
aunt, Yvonne Cole, discovered she had written a
book, she saw a wonderful business opportunity.

In November of 2005, Cali parted with New York
literary agent, Toni Lopopolo on good terms and
joined forces with Yvonne in order to help
establish Cole Talent Agency, which was created
in inspiration of her cousin, R&B singer,
Keyshia Cole. It's based in the Central Valley
of California and is dedicated to finding those
with literary and musical gifts. Her aunt is the
talent manager of the agency and also serves as
her agent.

Imperial Affairs: Conformations was Cali’s first
completed, full-length work of fiction. Imperial
Affairs: Homecomings was her second. However,
after writing her third, Eyes of Gray (the first
novel of her Valley Affairs Series) she came to
a creative decision.

She felt she’d truly evolved as a writer and
came into her own voice while writing Eyes of
Gray, so she decided to get rid of the Imperial
Affairs Series and mesh the storylines within
her Valley Affairs Series. She saw no need to
panic because when she first began writing her
Valley Affairs Series, she structured it in a
way that would make this transition easy. She
had her reasons for doing so, and she was happy
she followed her instincts.

This gave her a total of fourteen books for the
Valley Affairs Series. And she had over a 100-
page start on all but three, primarily needing
to convert the stories from third to first
person point of view. She completed what she
calls the Prologue Project, which includes the
prologues/first chapters of all fourteen books,
their synopses, and temporary cover art in order
to prove the Valley Affairs Series was no joke.
She also saw it as a wonderful means of
marketing the series as well.

She’s working hard on getting her third
installment of the Valley Affairs Series,
Wandering Affection, in order. And as far as her
novels go, she has every intention of writing as
many books for the series as she possibly can.