Javier Alandes. Photography: author's IG profile.
Javier Alandes He is Valencian and graduated in Economics. His professional career developed between deed and initial and continuous in addition to conferences on entrepreneurship, storytelling and transversal skills. He has published the novels Game of return, The Ballad of David Crowe o The three lives of the painter of light. In this interview tells us about the most recent, Goya's last look. I thank you very much for your time and kindness.
Javier Alandes — Interview
- CURRENT LITERATURE: Your new published novel is titled Goya's last look. What do you tell us in it?
JAVIER ALANDES: In 1888, after long negotiations, Joaquín Pereyra, Spanish consul in Bordeaux, obtained permission to exhume the remains of Francisco de Goya from the La Chartreuse cemetery in Bordeaux and repatriate them to Spain. The universal Spanish painter had died there sixty years ago. What was going to be a great diplomatic triumph collapsed when, upon opening the crypt, they discovered that there was two bodies —the second one they did not know at first who it belonged to—, and that Goya's skeleton was missing its skull.
This is one absolutely true story, and when I met it I was interested in what could have happened to Goya's head and where it could be found. Those two questions are a great mystery that still have no answer, and I decided to give a possible explanation to both.
So, in an adventure novel in the purest classic style, we will know the last months of Goya's life in Bordeaux —exiled due to Ferdinand VII's reprisals against liberal thinkers—, a plot to assassinate the painter, the people who have the mission of defending him and his search for immortality. And, at the same time, once its crypt was opened, the investigation of a peculiar pair of detectives to try to find out where the skull may be.
- AL: Can you go back to that first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
JA: I was born in 1974 and, of course, the leisure options we had in childhood were far from what we have now. Therefore, reading was a fundamental activity. I remember devouring the comics Mortadelo and Filemon, those of Asterix, those of Clink… But The first book I remember reading was Fray Perico y su donkey. That first time when you finish a story in which almost everything is text and you feel that you have understood and assimilated it is a moment that remains etched in your memory.
Then they fell into my hands illustrated books by Bruguera, and at barely ten years old I was able to read Robinson Crusoe, Treasure Island, A Fifteen Year Old Captain or The Three Musketeers. They were common readings of our generation. And stories that have remained forever marked inside us.
But to create a story and be able to tell it from beginning to end requires many readings and many accumulated stories. Yes I was able to write short stories from the age of twelve. But it wasn't until I was eighteen, already in college, when I was able to tell something that had a certain meaning.
Writers and characters
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
JA: I always say that I am not a writer, but that I am a reader who occasionally writes a novel. There are two genres that mark my reading life: adventures and detective stories.
In this way, and from my first readings, Joseph Conrad, Melville, Stevenson o Verne They are those writers to whom you always return. Like Agatha Christie, Conan Doyle or Georges Simenon. But if I have to call someone a reference, it is Arturo Perez-Reverte.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
JA: We writers pay a lot of attention to what the writers we admire are technically like. How they create the structure, the main plot and the subplots and, above all, the characters.
Sherlock Holmes He is my main character to whom Conan Doyle, in addition to giving him a complex personality, built a deductive method around him that continues to be an inspiration even today. So, Holmes is the character I would have liked to meet.
And as for the character I would have liked to create, I am left with Fermin Romero de Torres, the secondary character he created Carlos Ruiz Zafón en The wind's shadow. Hustler, scoundrel, with a past that he hides but with a huge heart. With a very particular way of speaking and bulletproof stoicism.
Customs
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
JA: More than quirks, I would say "customs." All of us who write acquire habits as we get to know each other.
My main "hobby" is start and finish a chapter in a single writing session. Since my chapters are about 3.000 words, between reading a couple of previous chapters, writing the chapter in question and reviewing it, it takes me about five hours. So, if I don't have five hours, I don't start writing.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
JA: I don't have a favorite time, since I can't always schedule the five hours I dedicate to my sessions at the same time. but I feel very comfortable in my home office, surrounded by books, posters and my collection of movie objects, which give me a lot of inspiration.
My chair, my computer and a ginger infusion.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
JA: As I mentioned before, the gender of adventure and the detective they're my favorites. But I also read a lot science fiction. Without going any further, I just reread the three books of the Three Body Trilogy, by Cixin Liu.
I also like some fantasy, and I live waiting for the closing of the Kingslayer Trilogy, by Patrick Rothfuss (which is taking longer than expected).
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
JA: I'm not writing all year round. Write a novel is a very demanding process, of which I end up exhausted, and I dedicate about four months a year to a first draft. And I am in it, in the process of writing a new novel. Keep trying about , keep trying adventure, keep trying a mystery (I can read that far).
As I write, my readings are documentation of the novel. So, for example, these days I am with The blood of the father, Alfonso de Goizueta, which tangentially touches on an aspect of my new novel. In addition to being the finalist novel for the Planeta Prize, Alfonso is a literary representation agency partner.
Javier Alandes — Current panorama
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is?
JA: I think we are in the moment of greatest democratization in history when it comes to the literary industry. There are many publishers, of all types of sizes, and there are alternatives, even at zero cost, for people who want to self-publish. So, today, anyone who wants to get their hands on their own novel, go to fairs or make presentations has it more within their reach than ever.
This means that there are many new editorial releases a year – it is said that there are around sixty thousand – and, therefore, sales are very fragmented, very segmented. Trying to sell a thousand copies has become something within the reach of very few. So, as I always say in courses and talks, no one should get into writing for financial returns.
- AL: How do you feel about the cultural and social moment we are experiencing?
JA: I think that I am not the right person to generally assess cultural and social situations. But I am in contact with the literary world, and I think that lliterature is having a great moment.
In my city, Valencia, new bookstores open, there are daily presentations, and a rich and diverse literary environment. And what is also true is that the book sales are on the rise, of all types of genres, that television platforms adapt national authors and that the best-seller list is dominated by stories by Spanish authors.
Finding a place in the market is very difficult., but by working hard and creating a community of readers interested in our stories, it is possible.