TRANSLATION

Both Cuba on My Mind and Secuestro are about Cuba, the island where I was born. Cuba on My Mind is before Castro when sugar was king and Las Vegas and Chicago mobsters ran the casinos in Havana. Secuestro takes place during the revolution. The third and final book will be about the exodus.
So where did all the Cubans go? Mostly Miami. They took over the place.
The biggest international book fair takes place in Miami in November. I
want my books there in Spanish. No point taking them in English, when most of the population no speeky de Ingles. 
Because I'm under contract to Livingston Press, a small university outfit, I get to do most everything myself with their blessing. I start looking for a translator, talking to people who know people, and get prices ranging from $10,000 to $5 per page, way out of my SS check range.
Livingston Press informs me translators don't get paid, they share in the royalties. My royalty is approximatly $1.44 a book, and it seems a sin to split that, plus no one volunteers to step up to the plate on those terms.  
Herta, a Chilean, is on her way to Valdivia near the Antartic, and she'll have time on her hands and offers to take Cuba on My Mind and translate it. My options are limited. I accept.
A year later she returns with six notebooks written in long hand. Never look a gift horse in the face.
Carmena, a Panamanian offers to type the long hand and I'm truly grateful. It's Thanksgiving, Christmas and everybody's got stuff to do and the handwriting isn't that easy to read and I'm imposing on this nice woman and that's not fair. I get the notebooks back. She's typed two chapters and January is gone tomorrow.
I solve any problem by going out to lunch and if the problem is really problematic I do breakfast, lunch, and supper. Eating somehow helps, ask us fat people. I drive to Berry Town to get one of their great lunches for $6.95, entree and two sides, enough for two meals, and I see down the block there's a place called My Tierra, obviously a Latin outfit.
What harm can it do to duck in there and ask if they know a translator. That's when I met
Nancy, the Mexican. Nancy says no problem she can do it in a couple of days and gives me her card. She's a disenadora, ilustradora and traductora, all the bases covered. By now, I'm leery. We agree she'll do a chapter and see how it works out. I'm now anxiously awaiting the results.
This endeavor has become international in scope, a Cuban, Chilean, Panamanian and Mexican co-op, and all I want, as Miss Universe contestants say, is World Peace.