About the Author

My Story - A.M. Gonzalez

So exactly how did this book series come to be?    

I'd say the Lola Dérez books were born on Christmas morning, 1976...

I was in my first year of middle school. I don't know what inspired my parents with the idea, but that Christmas they gifted me a chemistry set. The kind that was designed and sold to the public before health and safety concerns were invented. I don't recall the kit coming with goggles or safety gloves. The instructions might have mentioned warnings to use only with the supervision of an adult, but my parents not being scientists or engineers, might not have thought about that aspect of the gift.

I do remember sitting at our patio table behind our house in Ontario, California. Dad was with me when we unwrapped it for the first time. If I were to embellish the event into a fictional version, here is where I'd insert the appearance of angelic heavenly hosts and bright rays of white light gloriously shining down on me and the kit! I immediately fell in love. I was captivated by the idea that I could cause chemical reactions to occur in a controlled way. I could predict what might happen in a test tube, try it, and see if I was right! I could follow a recipe or tweak it and get a reaction that I intended. Or I could take something unknown (usually rocks and minerals in those early years...), investigate it with chemical tests, and learn something about it that I didn't know before! From that instant, I was hooked on science! I knew chemistry was going to be in my future in some form.

I'll never know what path my life might have taken without that old chemistry set. I won't get a Clarence the Angel to guide me through an alternate reality, like George Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life. [Not sure I'd want to, if offered the chance, now that I think about it.] I might have eventually learned my life's calling, but maybe not until late high school or early college. Maybe after some false starts or taking well-meaning but misdirected advice. I do know that having that early start on my true path gave me two things I desperately needed as a late middle school, early high school, student: confidence. I had a focus to hang my energies on, and I had the seeds of an identity that was fairly unique among my peers. My high school career was fairly sheltered by following the gifted and talented education track with a small group of ~20 similarly blessed students. But I was the only one who dazzled my junior-year high school chemistry teacher with my 100 pages of experiment notes and reports that I'd generated all through middle school and early high school! His exact words (...if I recall) were: "No one does things like this any more! Wow!"

The following story gives a hint of where my life's trajectory might have led. I went to Chaffee (pronounced chay-fee) H.S. in Ontario, CA. At the time, that part of San Bernardino County was not as populated as it is today. Our city and one or two just east of it were essentially the eastern edge of the Los Angeles "sprawl" for which it's famous. Because of that, all students from the middle and intermediate schools in the large area around it fed into Chaffee H.S. During my four years there, the total student population was up in the several thousands! My senior class was about 550. But I, being an insecure, quiet, passive, compliant young person, never thought about asking for help or guidance about what to do after graduation. Based solely on my home experience, I assumed (as my dad and uncles had done...) I would go to the local community college. Then, another significant "plot-point" in my life's story occurred. Mr. Dennis Ruiz, a student guidance councilor (I finally found his name in my senior year book) called me into the office one afternoon in the fall of my senior year. Of course I assumed I was in trouble, which I never had been before. But Mr. Ruiz simply wanted to learn what my plans were for after graduation. I shrugged my shoulders and with a 17-year-old vocabulary basically explained what I just explained to you above.

I remember him staring at me for a moment, his eyebrows scrunched together. Then he said "Are you kidding? You're ranked number 1 in your graduating class! Why are you going to community college??" As another indication of my ignorance and naiveté at the time, I remember thinking what's a class rank? I didn't pay much attention to my GPA. He continued, "You can go to any college you want!" Then I revealed more of my sheltered ignorance by telling him my parents can't afford anything other than community college. From that point on, my guidance councilor took the reins of my future. He introduced me to something called scholarships and state/federal grants, and laid out dozens of college/university brochures from the likes of Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Harvey Mudd, Pomona College, etc. So, next to Christmas 1976, that day was the second significant turning point in my life's path. I ended up staying local to Mom and Dad and went to Pomona College, a fine four-year liberal arts college. However, that was after getting acceptance letters from Cal-Tech, Harvey Mudd Engineering College, and Princeton University! Again, my insecurity and ignorance prevented me from making a choice for my good.

So, as I explain in the next section, below, my mission for some time has been to do something to have young teens suffer from ignorance and insecurity as I almost did. If I can introduce them to a world they'd never get to see otherwise, and if some take a step and make choices to better themselves based on what advice or guidance I have provided, I'll consider my life as being a success!!!