Luis Melgar. Photography courtesy of the author.
Luis Melgar He is from Madrid and has worked as diplomatic in several countries. He has also given classes and lectures. She has published more than twenty titles of children's and youth literature and reference books, entre ellos My terrible ghosts, They come from outer space, Anthology of ingenuity, The hidden truth of the Book of the Dead, The Holy Grail and Political Issues.
He is also the author of Dante's Riddles of Hell, You White People Are Crazy, The Stork Came from Miami and The Pilgrim Girl of Aten. His last work is The Valley of the Kings Plot and in this interview He tells us about her and much more. I am very grateful for the time and kindness she has given me.
Luis Melgar — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled The Valley of the Kings Plot. What do you tell us in it?
LUIS MELGAR: It is the story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Egyptologist Howard Carter, as well as Lady Evelyn's investigation into the mysterious death of her father, attributed to the famous curse of the pharaoh. It is a historical novel and, at the same time, a research novel, a who did it in the purest style of Agatha Christie.
One of the fundamental themes that I address is the personality of Howard Carter, a person who belonged to the autism spectrum and who, in his time, had great difficulties relating to a world that did not yet understand this type of personality. Carter also had to struggle with his repressed homosexuality and with a series of complexes that he had carried since childhood, so his success as an archaeologist has, in my opinion, double merit. He didn't have it easy at all.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
LM: Of course I remember! I started in the world of reading with the help of Clink. The first "real" novel I read was The Neverending Story, which definitely marked my childhood. Then I had a streak where I loved science fiction. My two favorite books in this genre are Ender's Game y Dune, , both marked my adolescence. And then I started reading everything.
The first story I wrote was called Miguel the worker, and it has a funny story. I would have some six years, if I remember correctly. They gave me a copy of the magazine Super pop that came with a folder to store collectible tokens. It had several sections: movies, songs, books... and biographies. I didn't really know what a biography was, so I asked and they explained it to me.
Since I didn't have any biography on hand to put in my brand new folder, I decided to write one myself and chose as the protagonist a bricklayer named Miguel who was doing some renovations in my house. I dedicated myself to following him all day and writing down everything he did: Miguel puts a brick, Miguel sits down, lights a cigarette, drinks a beer, gives himself a pass, puts another brick again, goes to the bathroom, sit again... When I showed it to my parents, they concluded that poor Miguel wasn't doing anything, so they fired him! I was very sad, as you can imagine.
Writers and customs
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
LM: My favorite writer is Truman Capote, Especially in Cold-blooded. Other writers who have served as a reference for me, in no specific order, are Patricia highsmith, Agathe Christie, Isabel Allende, Tennessee Williams, Gabriel García Márquez, Federico García Lorca, William Shakespeare,Christopher isherwood...
- AL: What character would you have liked to meet and create?
LM: Oh, in the world of fiction I will undoubtedly stick with the characters from my childhood and adolescence: Clink, Ender and the protagonist of Dune, , Paul Atreides. They have been with me for so long that it is as if they were part of me. Other emblematic characters that are part of my particular mythology are Hamlet, bernard alba, Hercules Poirot or the child of the Romance of the moon, moon.
As historical figures, I feel absolute fascination for Alexander the Great. I am also very interested in Queen Hatshepsut (which is the one I am writing about now), Ludwig II of Bavaria, himself Lorca...
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
LM: I'm quite unmanic when it comes to writing, to be honest—for other things, I don't know what to tell you anymore—but I am capable of writing almost anywhere and under any circumstance. For my work I usually travel a lot, so I write in airports, trains, planes, hotels… I also write a lot during vacations, in front of the beach or by the pool.
I do have a small hobby when it comes to reading, and that is that I always need to read when I go to bed, before falling asleep, even if it's only for five minutes. No matter how late it is or how tired you are: I always read before going to sleep.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
LM: I don't have a favorite place to write, they are all equally useful to me. It helps that the chair is comfortable, yes. To read, I admit that I am a bedside reader. I like to read lying down.
- AL: What genres do you like?
LM: All: magical realism, historical novel, thriller, police, horror, science fiction... I also don't say no to a romantic novel or even youth literature. What matters to me is quality: that the plot is well constructed, the characters well developed, that there is a good conflict. With those ingredients, I don't care about the gender.
Current outlook
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
LM: I'm reading several things at once, all in service of the novel I'm writing: Crocodile on the sandback, by Elizabeth Peters (it is the first novel in a saga starring an archaeologist named Amelia Peabody, set in the late XNUMXth century and early XNUMXth century), Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, On this side of paradise, by Scott Fitzgerald, and spring fire, by Vin Packer, an example of a genre called lesbian pulp fiction and that I just discovered.
and I'm writing one historical novel about Queen Hatshepsut with three timelines and three different protagonists: the queen herself in Ancient Egypt, the XNUMXth-century English aristocrat and Egyptologist Lady May Amherst, and the XNUMXth-century American archaeologist Elizabeth Thomas.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is?
LM: I think we are at a time when leisure is consumed instantly and almost compulsively, possibly due to the influence of platforms such as Netflix, mobile phones and social networks. That has influenced the publishing landscape and now books are also designed to have a very short life, they go on the market, they are distributed and in a couple of months at most, they disappear.
Before, an editor could spend years working on a novel with an author, and might only release four or five books a year. Now, publishers are forced to release books almost like hotcakesAnd, obviously, they do not have the time to dedicate the same care as before to each one. This throwaway book culture contributes to people buying more and more, almost at the click of a button, but you read less and less, because reading requires time that fewer and fewer people are willing to invest.
- AL: How are you handling the current moment we live in?
LM: The truth is that, if I get philosophical, I find it difficult to remain optimistic. The war in Ukraine, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the rise of populism, the specter of COVID, climate change... Thank goodness we have literature to take refuge! I also tell you that we must not give up. I have an almost six-year-old daughter and, as a father, I firmly believe that we must do everything we can to leave the best possible world for the next generation.