Growing up in Austin, Texas, Fernanda Contreras Gomez couldn’t resist a good read -- any read, really.
“I was obsessed,” she said. “It was kind of dangerous if you left a book nearby -- because I would just grab it and read it.”
Some of them were, shall we say, advanced, and her parents politely removed those to a higher shelf. Her favorites -- Greek myths, Harry Potter, J.R.R. Tolkien -- all took her to faraway places, seeping into her consciousness, firing her imagination.
Years later, after graduating from Vanderbilt University with a rare double -- a degree in mechanical engineering and All-American status as a tennis player -- Contreras Gomez found herself in Melbourne, Australia. It was January 2022, and she was an alternate for main-draw singles qualifying with a lot of free time on her hands. Seeking the same kind of escape that books had so given her, Contreras Gomez filled those days with powerful, passionate writing.
“It didn’t feel like I was there,” she said. “It felt like I was transported into my stories. Sometimes I’d forget where I was and when someone would knock on my door and I’d be like, `Whoa … where am I?’
“Getting into that sense of flow, it was kind of addicting.”
At 26, Contreras Gomez's professional tennis career is well underway. She’s played at the grand venues of Roland Garros and Wimbledon; her doubles ranking on the Hologic WTA Tour landed her inside the Top 100 earlier this year and she’s been as high as No.139 in singles.
And now she can add another off-the-court achievement: In November, she published her first novel, “Rise of the Darkness” under the name of F.C. Gomez.
Charting a career path
Contreras Gomez was born in San Luis Potosi City, Mexico, and the family moved to Texas when she was 13. There were two major, though seemingly incongruous themes running through the family -- tennis on her father’s side and engineering via her mother. Her grandfather, Francisco Contreras Serrano, was a Mexico Davis Cup team member (he was the player/coach when Mexico lost the 1962 final to Australia), a Pan American Games medalist and a Wimbledon semifinalist in mixed doubles. Her father, Javier Contreras, is a tennis coach and Spanish teacher at St. Stephen’s Episcopal School in Austin. Her mother, Magdalena Gomez, is an engineer, as is her uncle and godfather, Luis Eduardo.
“I loved building stuff, creating things,” Contreras Gomez said. “For me, it was the natural route to take. And I was always around tennis. I guess I’m each half of my family.”
After graduating from Westlake High School, she matriculated to Vanderbilt, a prestigious institution with a rich history in both academics and athletics. Early on, engineering seemed like the best option for a career.
But in the fall of her junior year, 2017, Vanderbilt competed in the All-Americans national championships in California. Contreras Gomez was only the Commodore’s fifth- or sixth-best singles player, but she put together the tournament of a lifetime, winning nine straight matches from qualifying through the final, clinching the title on her 20th birthday.
That vaulted her into the college Top 10, secured a spot on the All-America team and prompted an invitation to play for Mexico’s Billie Jean King Cup team.
“It gave me hope that I could do it, become a professional player,” Contreras Gomez said. “My family never pressured me to turn pro. I didn’t want to involve them financially, I wanted to be more independent.
“It was a path I could see myself going down.”
Inspiration in Madrid
A few months before graduating from Vanderbilt in the spring of 2019, Contreras Gomez “got lucky,” reaching the final of her first tournament, an ITF $15,000 in Cancun, and received an exemption into the second. That enabled her to essentially skip the $15,000 events and go straight to the $25,000s.
The hardest thing about the transition was traveling alone. In high school and college, Contreras Gomez enjoyed the comradery of teammates.
“The first months were a really big struggle,” she said. “You start out with no money, no points. You have to grind it out.”
And then COVID hit, wiping out most of the 2020 season.
Contreras Gomez, understandably, was depressed and returned to the comfort of books. She loved Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons” and “The Pillars of Earth” series by Ken Follett and Stephen Fry’s “Mythos.”
At the prompting of her aunt, Daryl Lyon, she took it a step further while quarantining -- writing. Contreras Gomez had taken a creative writing class at Vanderbilt and enjoyed it immensely. This was far freer and more enjoyable than the concise, non-descriptive prose required for engineering.
A few years later, at the end of 2019, she had a breakthrough.
“My sister [Magdalena Contreras-Davis] had just graduated from Manchester University in England and we traveled around Europe. We were at the Museo Prado in Madrid looking at artwork and I was letting my mind wander.
“We stopped to look at Antonio Canova’s sculpture of Mars and Venus. I was smitten. I had never understood the words 'being inspired by art,' but this time I was hit in the face. Who are they? How did they get here? What if these people woke up?”
It all came together during the global pandemic. Beginning to understand character development, motifs and themes, Contreras Gomez wrote a number of short stories and got started on a first novel. Lyon, an English teacher for more than three decades in California, worked closely with her.
“I didn’t know how to write a book but she taught me how,” Contreras Gomez said. “I never considered it being published -- it was more of an outlet. At the beginning of the process, I’d write a chapter, we’d read it together and then fix whatever needed fixing. We did that for a year and I finished it up in [the spring of] 2022.”
Meanwhile, her best tennis proved elusive. Contreras Gomez played qualifying at Roland Garros and Wimbledon, but a ligament tear in her wrist sidelined her for a spell. The season ended, perhaps appropriately, with surgery after a bout of appendicitis in Guadalajara.
Into the mainstream
At this year’s French Open, “Rise of the Darkness” had been read only by members of Contreras Gomez's family.
But talking with a friend and financial mentor of Danielle Collins, Marty Schneider, convinced her to share it with the world. When agents suggested changes, however, she resisted.
“It felt like the story was changing -- that kind of bummed me out,” Contreras Gomez said. “My characters to me are real. Changing anything felt like I was betraying them. I wanted to retain the rights, so I decided to self-publish. It’s a lot of work. But for me, as a hyperactive person, it was very calming.”
The first step was hiring a professional book editor, Leslie Wells, then sending the book out to four beta testers, independent readers who are paid to critique it. Contreras Gomez hired an artist Rafał Kucharczuk, whose style she thought captured the essence of her story, made font and formatting decisions -- and on Nov. 13, “Rise of the Darkness” was out there.
It runs 344 pages and falls solidly into the action/adventure fantasy genre. The protagonist, Leo Clarkson, is a museum curator in today’s London and, through the swirling plot, finds himself forming an alliance with Athena, the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, in the fight against evil.
“Amidst the tumultuous fires, pollution, and violence that rage in our world,” the introduction asks, “the interplay between chaos and the human condition begs the question: Are we sculpted by the hand of fate or the chisel of choice?”
There’s a website, FCGomez.net, and the book is available from Amazon, IngramSpark, OverDrive, Apple Books and Google Play. It’s also in the local Austin bookstore, Book Woman. The hardcover is $18.99, paperback $11.99 and e-book $8.99. Two weeks in, Contreras Gomez had already sold 66 books and was hoping word of mouth would start a holiday flurry. She estimates she’ll have to sell between 1,000 and 2,000 books to break even.
And, there’s a sequel in the works.
“Yeah,” she said, “I left it hanging. “Honestly, I have nothing to lose in this. For my book, I have low expectations. Not in a way that I think it won’t succeed, but in a way that acknowledges that it’s a hard business to succeed in.
For the moment, anyway, engineering has been bumped to Plan C. This year, Contreras Gomez will keep an eye on book sales while attempting to re-establish herself in tennis, particularly in doubles. She’s leaning toward starting the season at the Vietnam WTA 125 and, depending on her ranking, mixing in some ITF and WTA events after that.
“It would be my dream if it got popular enough that HBO or Amazon Prime or Netflix would want to make an adaptation of this,” Contreras Gomez said. “I would be so, so excited. If anybody from HBO is reading this -- hit me up.”
