The first time I realised I wanted to write a dystopia was around 2018. I wanted to tell the story of a retired elite soldier, based on real events. That idea slowly began to take shape over the years, forming gradually in my mind. The soldier carried with him a certain atmosphere, but the future surrounding him remained undefined.

At the same time, I began reading Ursula K. Le Guin and immersing myself in her dystopian worlds. I wanted to read everything she had written; as often happens when I connect with an author, I end up reading their entire body of work.

I remember I was then immersed in the publication and promotion of my first noir novel, Clandestina, yet that other story beat strongly within me. Little by little, the soldier in my tale began to shift, merging with other stories I also longed to write.

Then came the lockdown Sant Jordi, and it was then — after reading Le Guin obsessively and returning to Fahrenheit 451 — that I knew, without doubt, that one day I would write a dystopian novel.

There was something missing in the soldier’s story. He alone wasn’t enough for what I needed to tell: he had to be accompanied by something more, and the story I had back then… it didn’t quite convince me. So I kept thinking about it, without writing a single word, without putting anything down on paper. It remained alive in my mind.

Months later, I stumbled upon Blade Runner, and something inside me shattered forever: the aesthetic, the melancholy, the questions around memory and what makes us real.
Dune was the next threshold: deserts, visions, lineages, fate.
And then Planet of the Apes, which I watched on repeat as if trying to remember another life — or to anticipate this one.

Years went by, and many other stories came to me, but that dystopian one stayed, trying to survive among the other novels I carried within.

Eventually, I threw myself into writing my second noir novel, one that pierced me far more deeply. I finished it, and a part of me was finally able to rest. During the creative process of that second book, I couldn’t think of anything else; the lives and suffering of those characters had taken me over completely.

Still, within me lived the thirst of that soldier, lost somewhere in the African jungle. Survival, love, exile, solitude.

At times, when I think of it, my mind returns to Blade Runner. There is something there that I find irresistible: that futuristic aesthetic, with neon lights and grimy, suburban cities at night. A future that is unreal, and yet so very real.

I let it seep into my imagination, without forcing the scene; it shapes itself, slowly, in its own time.

Until, last year, I felt it clearly: I knew what I wanted. The story now grows like an embryo inside me.

Without searching, life handed me many of the answers I had been asking for that novel. They came suddenly, all at once: scenes, primary characters, secondary ones, plot, storylines, places.

Everything.

It happened in a burst. After all those years of pulsing inside me, the novel finally dared to take form.

And that’s how I found the courage to choose one of my notebooks and begin writing that story. After receiving those first answers, I dared to write just 500 words — but they were vital. I may not include them in the final novel, but I know that’s where it all begins.

Then came more: a hundred, two hundred, and from time to time, the story slips its way into my current project. I find myself compelled to set aside the novel I’m working on now in order to write about that other, dystopian one.

That’s how I know there’s a story waiting for me. A story that already seeks me out in dreams.

I go slowly. I feel it living inside me, and I let it pulse and reveal itself while I finish writing the book I’m currently working on. I get emotional, because every day, something more unfolds.

And I’m grateful for time. I’m grateful for this strange world, this world that feels so much like a dystopia, for forcing me to look at it with different eyes.
With the eyes of someone who’s already been to the future and knows that what they dream of will take shape one day — because I know that some stories are destined to be born.