He has picked up a run. Barely a year ago she presented The Girl with the Silver Temples and she already comes to us with the second novel…
-I took advantage of the pull of the first novel to continue with The Diamond Experience. And I have not stopped. The third is finished and in the fridge, and a fourth is in the works.
This time, action, suspense and adventure in three places as different and distant as Bilbao, New Delhi and Guatemala.
-They are places that I either know or that have great magnetism for me. In the case of Guatemala, I set the action in the jungle of El Petén, an area known for its Mayan ruins. I have tried to document myself well. Even so, I have followed the thread of fantastic literature to shape those regions at will. For example, perhaps the Bilbao of the novel is not the Bilbao of today, but it is the one we are going to: full of multinationals, skyscrapers and pedestrians walking with their heads down, looking at their cell phones. That is, a copy of so many metropolises on the planet. Without soul.
There is a point of complaint
-It is impossible to separate the social conscience from the work of an author. I wanted to touch on powerful universal themes that we can find in today’s society: impunity, commercialism, the difference between social classes, spirituality, competitiveness, the need for stimuli, anhedonia…
What readers do you think of when you write fiction?
Luckily, I feel free to write whatever I want. I don’t think of a typical reader, but I do think of transmitting and experiencing sensations while reading any of my novels. I am aware that The Diamond Experience is uncomfortable, with a high content of violence, but in this case it was essential to be raw, gritty and straight for the jugular from the first page. Violence is inherent to the human being and we must show it as it is. We spend our lives being silent witnesses and we are more afraid of love and sex than blood. We are hypocrites.
Is it reread and corrected?
-Yes. Before sending a final manuscript I can get to read it up to ten times. It is hard, long and desperate work. You have to say enough not to collapse.
Do you throw material in the trash?
-Yes. Look: between the first manuscript and the one that has been published, I eliminated between 5,000 and 8,000 words.
Is it easy for you to go from the journalistic to the literary record?
-I am a reader of novels, from best sellers to self-published or independent authors, among whom there is a lot of talent, and it is a record that I know. It’s not a big effort for me, because I think there’s a fine line between journalism and literature.
Does literature fit into the chronicle and, more specifically, into the sports chronicle?
-The purest genre of journalism is the chronicle and in it you can fit everything. More if possible, in sports. Martín Caparrós account in The chronic that the reader should not be underestimated and I agree. Literature always fits. It soaks everything and we cannot be impervious to it. It matters what you count, but also how. Even more so when immediacy passes us by.
Aren’t you tempted to write a novel about the ball?
-Not yet. You never know what the future will bring.
Igor G. Vico: “Love and sex scare us more than blood. We are hypocrites”