2025 has not been the best year of my life; on the contrary, it has been one of the most difficult and challenging.
Nevertheless, this year has also been important for me in certain aspects of personal growth and development, and for that alone I feel grateful for the path I have walked during 2025. They say that when one ventures into the storm, one is not the same upon emerging from it, and whether I have emerged or not, in these moments, what a wise reflection that is.
One positive aspect of this year is that I have managed to complete what will be my second novel. It took me several attempts to open and close it. The last time I closed it was the most significant: the grief for my friend Cesc Sales made me reflect on many aspects that I wanted to include and expand in the novel, and that reason, among many others experienced during the writing process, has made the work I did in writing it transform me as a writer and helped me grow narratively. I hope to find the right publisher soon… and the readers. They say that books find their readers, but I believe, after writing this novel, that it is the story that finds the writer to be told. At least that is how I have felt with this book.
In 2025, I also began writing the manuscript of my third novel. The writing is already very different from the previous two books I have written. My critical gaze upon society returns, but this time much sharper and more direct. Writing as I want to write is difficult, but I enjoy it; perhaps because I have always liked challenges. This year has once again shown me that I am bored by trivial and simple situations, and I end up abandoning anything that is repetitive and does not present a challenge for me.
Irina Paulova continues to beat within me, but this time another thing I have understood is that she does not want to star in another noir novel. I want to work the character thoroughly, the environment, the world around her, her motivations; that is why I stopped the second part of Irina Paulova, which I had begun working on in 2024. I realised that each book has its moment to be created, and that moment had not yet arrived. It is not now either, but nevertheless, she beats, she vibrates, I feel her, and she tells me things she wants to happen in her next story; she takes me to places she wants to explore, to situations she wants to live, to characters she wants to inhabit the book with, and that is, sincerely, magical.
Literature offers many experiences to the reader, but writing gives the writer a whole parallel world that is worth creating, transmitting, and sharing with them.
Perhaps that is why I write; although, honestly, I have so many reasons that I would not dare to choose only one.
2025 has not been easy, not at all. But I feel grateful to be where I am today and to have the capacity to plan and move forward as I would like 2026 to be. I will miss many people who remain in my 2025. It has been a year of many losses, but one in particular will accompany me for a long time in my writing, I know.
The catharsis of grief is this harsh and sincere, emotional and meaningful, transformative and real.
I need not say anything more, because otherwise, I will become emotional.
Merry Christmas. Happy 2026.