Interview with I. Biggi, winner of the Cerros de Úbeda prize for historical novels

The Basque writer Inaki Biggi has won the prize Hills of Úbeda of historical novel with your most recent title, Valkyries. Author also of The Sanctuary y The Stradivarius formula, today dedicates us this interview I thank you very much for your kindness, time and dedication. eskerrik asko.

Actualidad Literatura: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?

I.Biggie: Not the first book, but it would be a novel by The Three Investigators, magnificent series to attract children to reading. I recently reread one of them to try to find that alchemical formula with which I was able to do it. And of course how not to mention Salgari with Sandokan o The Black Corsair.

Nor do I remember what was the first thing I wrote. Many things, all of them lost. But the first thing I wrote with a little foundation it was my first novel, The Sanctuary, which started as a short story and ended with more than 300 pages.

AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?

I.Biggie: Perhaps The Godfather. I think it is the novel that more times I have read, surely a score. The characters he draws Mario Puzo they seem almost insurmountable to me. Vito Corleone it is a monstrous being but it has its own dignity. That mix fascinates me.

AL: Who is your favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.

I.Biggie: Tolkien, Maalouf. But I have laughed mucho with Sharpe, Pratchett, Mendoza… I have traveled to the stars with Asimov. And spent sooo scared with Stephen King. Agatha Christie and his Hercule Poirot. As I think about it I remember more and more.

AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?

I.Biggie: Inigo Montoya de The engaged princess. Fight, torture, revenge, giants, miracles, persecutions, true love. What else can you ask a book for?

AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?

I.Biggie: To read I think No.. I do it in any position and at any time. I get abstract easily. Write is already another story: silence and space to move. If I'm in full frenzy, and with how nervous I am, I was immediately overwhelmed and everything bothers me.

AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?

I.Biggie: Where there is a computer, tranquility, time and space. I'm not asking for much, am I?

AL: What writer or book has influenced your work as an author?

I.Biggie: My first novels I wrote them at a time when I was immersed in any historical novel reading with conspiracy plots that fell into my hands, and they marked me a lot. So I guess I should say Philip Van Den Bergen and The Sistine Conjuration, Ken Follet and The pillars of the earth, Amin Maalouf and Baldassare's Journey, Umberto Eco and The name of the rose...

AL: Your favorite genres?

I.Biggie: Obviously the historical novel. But also, and a lot, the black novel and many works of science fiction or fantasy. There are some genres, not many, that I am not used to reading, but I have always been one of those they are read until the colacao label every time you eat breakfast.

AL: What are you reading now? And writing?

I.Biggie: Now i'm with Times of Hope, the latest novel by Emilio laraAnd with cataca from Frank thilliez.

Regarding writing I am with the corrections of my fifth novel, waiting for himat the exit of the fourth, which will appear in spring, and finishing preparing one sixth which has already entered the writing phase, once the documentation has been compiled. They are independent novels each other and I usually like to reserve their plots, in case they win.

AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?

I.Biggie: Well, why are we going to fool ourselves. As you said quite well, there are many authors and we all want to see our works in bookstores, which have cost us so many hours, joys and suffering, and not enough demand to absorb it all. Publishers take financial risks and sometimes it doesn't pay. We all try to make the works visible. When you publish a novel, you are already nervous about sales because a future one depends on them. If you still haven't gotten it published, you go from door to door ... Is not easy.


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