ENTERTAINMENT

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez jump-started the Latina chick-lit movement when she published the best-selling Dirty Girls Social Club five years ago.

Anna Pena

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez is author of the Dirty Girls books.

Now she's back with a sequel, Dirty Girls on Top, which follows Lauren, Usnavys, Rebecca, Amber, Sara and Elizabeth as they navigate through marriage, kids, careers and boyfriends during their mid-30s.

It's easy to want to call the breezy, sexy book a Latina version of Sex and the City. But Ms. Valdes-Rodriguez says she doesn't like that comparison.

"It's good; it's just very different from what I do," she said recently. "With the first Dirty Girls, I was the Latina Terry McMillan. And with the second one, I'm the Latina Candace Bushnell. Hopefully by the third Dirty Girls book, I can just be me."

Here's more from the 39-year-old author, who'll sign copies of the new book tonight at Borders.

Lesley Téllez

The first Dirty Girls book seemed to end on a pretty final note. Why did you want to write a sequel?

I did leave some story lines open, actually, by design in that book. I didn't feel like I was finished with those characters. I felt like I could just keep writing. I immediately wanted to do the sequel but was advised by my publisher to do a few books in between. Which in retrospect, I'm not sure was the best choice.

It seems as if there's a lot more sex in this book. Is that true, and if so, why?

I'm not sure that there is, actually.

Or maybe I haven't read a sexy book in a while.

I don't know. I was more at ease with writing about it. I think that happens as you get older. One of the edits I get with every book I've turned in for St. Martin's – it's actually twofold, and I think that has partly to do with the genre that I'm in – it's always, "More sex and more shopping." It's like, "OK. I'll add that." But [wish] this one, I did want to explore the idea of sex as a metaphor for all that is going on with them personally. I think a lot of times society will detach one from the other. But they're pretty interrelated. Sex with the right person, or with the wrong person, being unfaithful – just trying to explore it in a lot of different contexts with women in their mid-30s.

Going back to you immediately wanting to write a sequel: Did your ideas change since then? Is this book totally different than what you originally had in mind?

That's such a good question. I actually wrote a sequel right away that is nothing like this one. I've actually written three novels since the first book that all got the same reaction that the first Dirty Girls sequel did, which is that it was too dark and too literary. ... There's a part of me that's always tugged to the dark side and literary side, and I have to kind of keep it in check for now.

What's the chance this will be made into a movie?

It's a complicated story, and I don't know how much you have time for or want to hear, but the short version is yes, it's going to be a movie. And this week we're getting the paperwork from Paramount Pictures in the next couple of days, to finalize the legal stuff with them.

So there will be a third book?

Yeah. What I want to do now is focus on just one of the characters, whose story is totally unresolved at the end of this book, which is Lauren. She's quitting her job at the end of this book and going to find herself. So I want to do a book that's kind of Under the Tuscan Sun - y. You know? In the book, she was planning to maybe go to Mexico, at the end of this one. But I'm thinking maybe Portugal. I just want to take her somewhere totally different, where she can be alone for the first time in her life and not focus on having men in her life.

Plan your life

Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez will read and sign copies of Dirty Girls on Top at 7 tonight at Borders, Preston Road at Royal Lane.