With the release of “Clandestina“, it is almost impossible for me to have a moment to write calmly, although I always take any unexpected coffee to get pen and notebook, or to write down ideas, which I hope can materialize and develop, then, with calm that requires literary creation, that calm that all writers need to write better texts.
Now I remember that after lifetime writing poems, stories and professional articles, I started writing what was going to be my first black novel “Clandestina” with a “And why not?” That was towards 2011.
And that’s how I started writing, for the first time and without being aware of it, a novel. The story was initially going to be a story about private detectives, but as I was writing I realized that many of the things I was writing contained many literary licenses and I did not want the private research sector to be affected. The group of private investigators has always welcomed me with open arms and I would not like to harm the sector with my creativity. That’s why I turned my characters into something more unknown: spies. It is a much more distant world for the majority, and, therefore, it allowed me a greater creative game.
As a woman, I was excited that my protagonists were also women, at least in what seemed to take the form of being a novel. That’s why I created that female universe. All of them strong women, who fight against adversity. On the one hand, I created Irina Paulova, a girl of indeterminate age, neither young nor very old, who tries to overcome the tragic loss of her family through the thirst for revenge, and unwittingly discovers the rest as a psychopathic character, cold and smart. On the other hand, there is Ingrid, her friend, who tries, tenaciously, not to fall back into the same mistakes of the past, and in the end, she grows by overcoming those mistakes. Then we find Marta, a woman who must assume a professional background so that her husband can obtain leadership in her professional projection, while she takes care of her son. I also wanted to add an older woman, an adult in the final stage of life, who at the unexpected death of her husband, suddenly feels the weight of loneliness on their backs, but not the loneliness that remains for living in the widowhood, but of the loneliness that already lived during his marriage. In this feminine universe, I also believe Lea, a mature woman, strong professionally but who had to renounce her motherhood in exchange for her professional success.
They are all profiles that we easily find in today’s society, even. As much as it struggles not to make evident those social failures, in which women can lose out, they still continue and also in any country in the world, and I have wanted to make them even more visible in my novel.
On the other hand, I also wanted to talk about the anxiety and vanity of power, and the strategies that the games of power provoke in the destinies of people and governments. To describe these moments, I have been inspired by all the political and economic news of the media, not only national but also international. These power games that I describe in my novel can occur in any country in the world, not only in European governments. That’s why I thought it convenient and interesting to introduce them to my novel as if they were happening in a city as close to me as Barcelona.
The locations of the trips comes a little given also by my passion to travel, and because, at some moments, the history required it. On the one hand, I had fun creating an International Intelligence Center inside a luxury hotel in the centre of Venice. Venice is a city that I adore, and I also wanted it to be present in the novel. On the other hand, Barcelona as the nerve centre of power, and show how in the most unexpected places of Barcelona, ​​could be closed large businesses that affect the entire population, without it barely perceived it. Amsterdam as an urban city, and modern, where some “friends” cyber-detectives solve the problem and then Brussels as the capital of politics, where political vanity should be eradicated, that’s why it sounds “Sweet Dream” versioned by Marilyn Manson during this moment of the novel, because it’s like a sweet dream that we all want. This song, I must say, that has accompanied me obsessively throughout the writing of the novel, in a loop, helped me to concentrate and I could not stop listening to it while writing “Clandestina” ( in Social Media: #Clandestina_CR).
Pain is something present in the whole plot of the novel. We feel the pain of Irina for her family misfortune, we feel Ingrid’s pain to avoid falling into the same mistakes of the past, Marta’s pain for her marital problems, Marc’s pain for falling in love with who should not … The pain is in definitive, one of the central axes of the novel, and, that from my point of view, makes the story much more intense and attractive to the reader.
“Clandestina” has been the first black novel that I have written, a short but intense suspense story, with several parallel plots full of dynamism and emotion, with literary descriptions but also very cinematographic scenes for literary licenses.
There is a second part of “Clandestina” in which I have been working for a year, more or less, related to the world of art, classical music and beauty, which, for various reasons, I do not know when I will finish it. One of the main reasons is that I want it to be well written, my readers, they deserve it, that’s why I will take my time. I also plan the third part of Clandestina, which I already know how to guide it. I do not know what any of them will be called, I’m evaluating different options, for now, I just want to have fun writing them and doing a good job as a writer.
At the same time, I feel a strong impetus to write a very dark story that has nothing to do with “Clandestina”, but with the world of sports, and I am currently structuring and making some notes on it, I even have some beginning of a novel already written.
Honestly, my mind is full of black plots to narrate, but I want to do it well, calmly and with the premeditation of who knows is only at the beginning of the road and there is still a lot left until you reach your destination.