I was born in the 1970s—although I often feel more like a millennial than a member of Generation X—in Minatitlán, Veracruz, an oil town in southern Mexico where I grew up surrounded by tropical heat, humidity, and endless shades of green. Sitting by the roadside on a concrete wall, I would watch cars, buses, and trucks pass by, imagining the places they were headed and dreaming of the destinations I might one day reach myself.

After high school, I moved to Mexico City, which eventually became home for reasons you may discover hidden within my stories. Today, I divide my time between Mexico City, the Isthmus of Oaxaca, and wherever curiosity, an airplane ticket, or a train ride decides to take me.

For many years, I worked as an executive, refusing to admit that I wanted to write—or even allow myself to consider leaving the corporate world behind. Then a trip to Scotland disrupted my carefully arranged priorities, forced me to rethink a few things, and ultimately changed my life.

About Zenaido: The Author

Today, I try to put on paper the stories I carry with me: fragments of experiences, observations, overheard conversations, and an imagination shaped by the books I have read, the romantic comic magazines my mother used to buy, and the television shows and cartoons that filled my childhood afternoons. Many of my stories are also born while traveling—in airports, cafés, train stations, hiking trails, and unfamiliar cities where a chance conversation or a landscape can unexpectedly become the seed of a novel.

I write about men who fall in love, find each other again, complicate their lives, and, every now and then, save one another. My stories explore imperfect characters searching for their place in the world, rebuilding themselves after loss, or discovering that it is never too late to begin again.

I am the author of Los Jueves al Alba, its English adaptation Thursdays at Dawn, and Curry, Mezcal y Escocia. These are stories about love between men, travel, second chances, and those unexpected encounters that arrive when we least expect them and end up changing us forever.