Fucking life, magical destiny
«Clandestina» of writing when publishing or this fucking life, this magical destiny
Life is very fucking and although it puts us intelligently, in the end, it causes us to have bad times with a goal very clearly determined by it, and that is when we believe that the world ends at those moments, that there is already more light beyond that darkness is when destiny comes and gives us magic, that magic so surprising and unexpected and sometimes almost unreal, that makes us smile and although that smile is only for a moment, it gives us enough strength to make us believe so, that getting what we set out is very possible and that, although at first, we see everything complicated, then that same magic makes us see everything easy and attainable.
The process of publishing my first black novel Clandestina published in Caligrama Editorial (Penguin Random House) has been the same as I just told you about life. In short: writing is my life and publishing is my destiny.
I had never published a novel before Clandestina, so, like many other young authors, you can imagine the years I have lived with two jobs. My employment as a wage earner who, despite the precariousness, we should be correct and say that she fed me: that of more than eight hours of office, and then the employment that fed the soul and fed me emotionally: literature. Punctually I had to add other jobs, extra collaborations to survive in both endeavours, that’s why I say that life is very fucking sometimes, and it costs us too expensive, sometimes, to survive it. After all, I have lived, sometimes it is difficult for me to discern which of all the jobs carried out are the most important for surviving life, the fucking life.
Undoubtedly, those were hard days, many hours of work alone and diverse uncertainties about the most immediate future.
First, it was an exhaustive work with the writing: I needed to write, and write in a professional way being a novel author without publishing, it is very, very complicated. It is not easy to write at the end of the endless and intense office hours when returning home after hours of traffic jam on the highway and after getting up very early to avoid the inevitable damn queues on the highway, although after days this is really when you need it most to write.
And those of us who write, we need to write for many indescribable reasons, as many as there are in life and of course, sometimes, for all the magical moments that destiny also gives us. We would never finish saying because writers need to write, I would dare to say that it is something inexplicable.
I wrote, wrote a lot and continued writing, even in the most difficult and tiring moments, there I was, writing on my laptop, because it was what I needed, what my heart was crying for, what my hands needed to do and in the end I gave myself account that, after writing so much, he had a novel.
I was not premeditated, nor did I follow any strategy, I simply wrote, I wanted it to be a cool story based on current intrigues and spying because I like the black genre. I have always been very active, and reading books of those who catch, whether by dynamic action or by good literature, and after so much reading books of all kinds, I needed to write the story that caught me, because neither I wanted to let myself escape among the recesses of dreams, and that’s how Irina Paulova and I met. After a difficult day of work in the office, as I remember every day they were at that time, late in the morning that Russian spy appeared in my life, with a psychopathic intelligence, a little hard, and totally criminal slipped by the neurons of my mind until I reached the keyboard of my computer by the fingertips of my fingers, that is how Irina Paulova came to my life, accompanied by the rest of the international spy team: Ingrid Freya, Lea and Piero became part of my lifetime.
All of them accompanied me during many nights in which, of course together, we killed corrupt politicians, we evidenced mediocre bosses, and we made motorcycle chases at full speed, and while, at dawn, the hours of retention with the car on the highway on the way to the office followed, my mind moved through the sunsets of Venezia, the beach of Barcelona or the streets of Amsterdam and Brussels next to my spies. Sometimes unconnected, with a clear intention, sometimes, of denunciation of unjust and corrupt power, of the injustices that many women experience, of the sensation of lies and relief, of sexual and political scandals, of the strategies of power and of the vanity games that followed, one after the other, and quickly in my novel.
I wrote continuously: at night and during the weekends, sometimes on my computer, sometimes in a notebook, sometimes on the mobile I wrote down fast details, impetuous inspirations. For months, and months, some couple of years, my life was writing about Irina, Lea, Ingrid and Piero, about Marc Llach, Pol Rivelles, in a “Clandestine” way, like many of the plots of my first novel, because, even I started to make it public on my social networks, few people knew that I wrote and wrote seriously, with the intention of continuing to write, with the intention of publishing and continuing to publish.
I wrote until I believed the finished story. I sent her to some literary agents, hoping she would like it, and as always happens when you are a “Don Nadie” that Galeano would say, a novel author in this case: the days happened without response. Until the entrepreneurial writer inside me shouted at me from the inside that I no longer expected and self-published, but that she abandoned me, and since I do not want to lose that brave and enterprising writer who lives in me, this is how she came to My magic of destiny: publish with Caligrama Editorial, for many reasons, among them and perhaps the most important: professionalism.
We begin the arduous journey of the professional publication: that if a literary report, that if to rewrite, that if correction, what if to deliver, what if correction, that if another literary report more and rewrite again, and to correct and dot again, and that I do not forget: then the galleys and more galleys, endless galleys one night and another and another, and, in parallel: that if the book trailer and that if the communication and that if the cover and the back cover that yes … what do I know! anything else? Oh, sure! I wanted to do my website and communication well, and also professional photographs for the entire launch campaign, and what else … of course! The presentation that was great in the Club Natación Terrassa and how grateful I am with them, and then the whole promotion with the press from the hand of We Are Centric, all from the hand of Jesus Oliver and Carlos Parrot: that yes radio, yes television, yes magazines and newspapers yes … What do I know? That is the magic of destiny, I was referring to all those moments when talking about magic.
Clandestina really likes all who have read it: family, friends, readers and journalists, what more could I ask for?
And Katiuscia Daricci also arrived, translating Clandestina into Italian, which we have in our hands, and that is that Alvar Masllorens has already translated it into Catalan, now he plays Italian and also English, that we are there.
And I know that the second one of Clandestina will arrive, which is still to be “baptized”, and the third one that I already hear the engines roar in my mind.
Because it was worth it Clandestina, now I continue to write with pleasure, but also, it is now that my readers, my reading friends, and also, this fucking life, this magical destination.