The black-romantic genre is hitting hard with thriller readers fleeing extreme violence.
We have the privilege and pleasure of having today on our blog with David zaplana (Cartagena, 1975) and Ana Ballabriga, (Candasnos, 1977), two writers of the black genre, Amazon Indie Award winners with his novel No True Scotsman, who are now entering this new literary genre that combines the romance novel with the crime novel and that is starting to hit very hard among readers, with I am Rose Black.
Actualidad Literatura: We writers have a reputation for being lonely, shy, and even a little "weird". How do you carry on writing with four hands? Is the profile of the writer changing in the XNUMXst century?
David Zaplana and Ana Ballabriga: We already know some pairs of writers who write with four hands, although it is evident that it is not yet very common. The work of a writer is very lonely and sharing it with another person (in our case, with the couple) makes it more bearable, because you have a common project that you can talk about and face together the problems that arise. Also, when writing as a couple, promotional trips (presentations, festivals, etc.) are more entertaining.
The bad part, in quotes, is that you have to learn to negotiate, to accept criticism and to discard ideas that seem very good to you, but not to the other. However, we believe that the result that is achieved by working together is always better than alone. When you write with four hands you have to renounce your ego, you stop being an artist to become a craftsman.
AL: You started writing more than 10 years ago, making yourself known through self-publishing with great success, winning the 2016 Amazon Indie contest with No True Scotsman. What did this award mean in your literary career?
DZ AND AB: We have actually been writing for over twenty years. Our first novel (Crossed in time) was unpublished and the next two (After the sun of Cartagena y Gothic Morbid), we publish them with small publishers. The experience was very good with respect to personal treatment, but the distribution failed: the books did not reach the bookstores. This is the main problem for small publishers. So we decided that the next one we had to publish in a large publisher. Finished The Paradox of the Blind Librarian in the hardest years of the crisis and we began to send it to large publishers, but the answer was always the same: "I am sorry to inform you that your work does not fit into our editorial line." So we put it in a drawer. In 2015 we finished another novel, No True Scotsman. We started again the journey of shipments to publishers and recognized literary agencies with the same result. Witnessing our frustration, a friend (Blanca, to whom we will always be grateful) constantly insisted that the future lay in digital platforms and, specifically, in Amazon, because of how easy it was to self-publish. So we decided to give it a try. We uploaded our first three novels to see how it worked, reserving the other two in the drawer. And after several months of researching in forums, promoting on social networks and using the tools that Amazon puts at your disposal, to our surprise, the books began to be sold. Above all, After the sun of Cartagena, which held the top of the bestsellers for several months. It was then that a message came to us announcing the Amazon Indie contest and we decided to present No true scottish with which (we still do not believe it) we managed to win among more than 1400 candidates.
Winning the contest was a great boost. The first surprise was that we were invited to attend FIL in Guadalajara (Mexico) to present our novel. It was an incredible experience, but the most important thing the award has brought us was finding a good agent and publishing with Amazon Publishing. This award has given us visibility, contacts and has opened doors for us. Now, when we finish a novel, we know that it is easier to publish it.
AL: After two crime novels, hard even, in the last one you enter a new genre, halfway between the crime novel and the romantic novel. It's been a few years since the Nordic-style crime novels starring psychopathic murderers who kill for the pleasure of seeing the pain in the victim's eyes began to have a pull among readers. Are readers now asking for a sweeter crime novel?
DZ AND AB: I think there are readers of everything. Almost everyone likes mystery stories, but not everyone likes hard stories that make you have a hard time or reflect on the harshness of the reality around us. Rose Black is a comfortable story to read and therefore we believe it can reach a much wider audience than our previous books.
However, we did not decide to make Rose Black to sell more. We like to try different things and for our novels to be very different. If there is someone who follows us, we do not want to bore them by always telling them the same story. We had previously written several romantic novels that we self-published under a pseudonym. Rose Black emerged as the fusion of both worlds, pink and black, the love novel and the mystery.
AL: Tell us about your new protagonist. Her first story is titled I am Rose Black. Who is Rose Black?
DZ AND AB: Rose Black is a lawyer who turns 40 years old and (as happens to many of us when we reach this age) she wonders what she has done up to then with her life.
Rose's first boyfriend disappeared when she was twenty without a trace. Obsessed with the case, she took courses to be a private detective, but eventually began working as a lawyer and never got her license. Now a client asks her to find out if her husband is unfaithful to her and Rose sees an opportunity to resume a dream she had long since left behind. Rose does at forty what most people do not dare: she stops turning years and begins to fulfill her dreams.
On the sentimental level, Rose considers the possibility of having children, but she knows that with her current partner it will be very difficult: Pedro is a wonderful, handsome and rich man, but he is divorced and already has two girls. On the other hand, there is Marc Lobo, the policeman in charge of investigating Alex's disappearance. Marc represents the possibility of a new love.
In other words, Rose is torn between a love from the past, a present love and a possible future love.
AL: Rose Black is here to stay? Do you bet on a protagonist that lasts through your novels?
DZ AND AB: Yes, Rose Black was born with the intention of becoming a saga. In fact, we are already finishing the second part, which will surely be published after the summer. Each novel is self-concluding, although there are certain plots that remain open until the end of the saga.
Another thing that interested us a lot was metal literature. That's why we made up that Rose is the daughter of a well-known crime novel writer, Benjamin Black, and that one of her friends wants to be a romance writer. It gave us a game to talk about the world of writers and even laugh at ourselves.
AL: First novel by a publisher: Versatile. Before that, both of them already known in the literary sector, assiduous to meetings of great relevance in the genre such as the Black Week of Gijón and many others. How do you now experience the change from self-publishing to conventional publishing?
DZ AND AB: Each world has its good and bad things. When you self-publish, you have to take care of everything: writing, corrections, layout, cover design, marketing ... The good thing about having a publisher behind is that it takes away many of these tasks and, above all, the distribution in bookstores.
The best thing about self-publishing, at least with Amazon, is that you can know your sales figures instantly and charge after two months, while with a traditional publisher you have to wait a full year.
AL: How are David and Ana as readers? Similar in tastes or different? What are the books in your library that you reread every few years? Any author that you are passionate about, one of those from whom one buys their novels as soon as they are published?
I am Rose Black, a story that combines the noir genre and the romance novel.
DZ AND AB: In general we quite agree on tastes (I suppose it is because we have been together for many years) and just as we are interested in the same topics when writing, we agree when reading. I think we both learned to tell stories by reading Agatha Christie, Jules Verne or Stephen King, for example. Now we have some reference writers, like Dennis Lehane, who in some of his stories raises moral dilemmas capable of shaking you from the inside. We really liked the plot of Dirty and wicked by Juanjo Braulio; and we follow Almudena Grandes for her careful style or Javier Cercas for his intelligent way of presenting stories.
AL: Despite the traditional image of the introverted writer, locked up and without social exposure, there is a new generation of writers who tweet every day and upload photos to Instagram, for whom social networks are their communication window to the world. How is your relationship with social networks?
DZ AND AB: When the book is published you are immersed in a series of interviews, presentations, round tables, festivals, etc. in which you have to be able to entertain and win over the public. If people see you there and think that you cannot speak, they will also think that you cannot write, even if it has nothing to do with it.
Today the writer has to be a showman, like it or not, and social media is part of that Show. Ana is more active in networks, but it is evident that nowadays they are an essential part of the promotion. A tweet a an influencer with millions of followers you can place a book in the top of all sales rankings. I remember the case of The girl on the train which became a bestseller after Stephen King wrote on Twitter that he hadn't been able to put it down all night.
AL: Literary piracy: A platform for new writers to make themselves known or irreparable damage to literary production?
DZ AND AB: I am against platforms that offer pirated books (or movies or music) and profit from the work of others through advertising or other means. However, I am not against people who cannot afford to pay for a book downloading it and reading it. Although, in reality, they can also do it in the library. There are already libraries that allow you to download the ebook completely legal and free.
Hacking is there and you have to live with it. For me it has a good part: it involves the democratization of culture. But I also believe that each person should be responsible for their actions and this can only be achieved through education. If you can afford to pay to read a book, pay for it, because if not, the writers will not be able to continue writing, nor the publishers publishing.
AL: Paper or digital format? Do you agree?
DZ AND AB: Yes, we agree. Before we got into the world of Amazon, we were very averse to digital. But since we bought the e-reader, we practically read only in ebook. Once you get used to it, it is much more comfortable, although it also has its drawbacks, such as that you do not see the cover of the book every time you pick it up or that it is more difficult to go back, if you need to look for something.
AL: Entrepreneurs, parents, married couple and professional writers, what is your formula?
DZ AND AB: Sleep little, hahaha. We get up at 6 in the morning to make an hour to write and read at night, after putting the children to bed. The rest of the day we spent busy between work and parenting.
AL: To finish, I ask you to give readers a little more of yourselves: What things have happened in your lives and what things do you want to happen from now on? Dreams fulfilled and yet to be fulfilled?
DZ AND AB: Our children and our books have been our greatest achievements so far. Winning the Amazon award was a dream come true. By continuing to dream, we would like, one day, to be able to make a living from literature. And on a personal level, getting our children to become good people, people of benefit.
Thank you, David Zaplana and Ana Ballabriga, we wish you to continue collecting successes in each new challenge and that I'm rose black be the first of a great series of magnificent novels that make us enjoy your readers.