This interview originally appeared in the January/February 2022 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: Diverse Books Spotlight, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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The Time Villains here include Blackbeard, showing up in Javi’s house when a time travel–enabling table gets into mischief.

1. As Javi’s homework assignment says, “Imagine you’re hosting a dinner party. If you could invite any three people, living or dead, who would you invite?”

Mae Jemison, Jacques Cousteau, and Robert Wright. If outer space, the depths of the ocean, and the human brain are the final frontiers, I’d love to watch their greatest explorers compare notes. (This answer changes daily, though.)

2. What is your favorite time-travel novel? Film?

I love the goofiness of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, the romantic fantasy of Midnight in Paris, and the way Groundhog Day’s time loop has become an entire subgenre in pop culture. I prefer time-travel stories that don’t dwell on science and instead use the mechanics to subvert the genre they’re in, like A Christmas Carol or even The Time Traveler’s Wife.

3. When someone tells you it’s Talk like a Pirate Day, do you join in enthusiastically or hide like me?

I absolutely hide. I never went through a pirate phase and am still shocked that my debut novel is full of them. But as I was researching the most infamous villains of all time, Blackbeard demanded my attention. He was the most feared person in the Western Hemisphere, while hardly ever resorting to violence. The guy practically lit his beard on fire before going into battle. You can’t beat that.

4. Who was your Aunt Nancy?

Abuela Hilda. She was a legend in our family and our town in Puerto Rico. She balanced mysticism and heroism with a wicked sense of humor, and her past was steeped in myth. Like folklore’s Aunt Nancy/Anansi, she was a trickster, but like the Time Villains version, she was also a guardian angel watching over us nietos.

5. What piece of furniture in your home is most likely to be sentient?

We’re only a few years away from them all going sentient! I have friends who develop personalities for Alexa and Google Assistant. It’s fascinating to hear them talk about how they’re anthropomorphizing our fridges and laundry machines. Maybe time-traveling appliances are next?

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Photo: Sydney Tomer.