Interview with Roberto Martínez Guzmán, author of the black series starring Eva Santiago.

We are pleased to have today on our blog with Roberto Martinez Guzman, Orense, 1969, author of the crime novel series starring Eva Santiago, and the best seller of non-fiction Letters from Abuse.

«For me, each reader who chooses one of my books is a privilege, because he dedicates his time and trust to me. It is in my hands that I want to repeat. And convincing him is a challenge. "

Actualidad Literatura: Four books, two genres and two protagonists, one fictional, Eva Santiago, National Police inspector, for your crime series, and a real one, Montse, with a fictitious name, for your first work, a non-fiction story with a background intense social, Letters from the abuse. What connection is there between the two? How does the transition from one to the other take place?

Roberto Martinez Guzman: There is no connection or, basically, a specific step from one to the other. Letters from abuse is a train that passes once in a lifetime. A project that needs a series of conditions that are very difficult to occur at the same time: a diary written in such a situation and the will of the protagonist to come to light, even if it is anonymity. He put it in my hands and it seemed to me that I should not let it pass because a unique document would be lost. The reason that it was my first book for sale is that until that moment I had not considered publishing anything I wrote, nor would I have done so if Amazon had not settled in Spain shortly thereafter. I mean that my career as a novelist does not depend on that book, but on the possibility of self-publishing with guarantees of reaching a large number of readers. I wrote before and I continued writing later, that was only a paragraph.

AL: Writers mix and centrifuge their memories and the stories they have heard to create characters and situations. Other times, like in your first book, they voice a true story. What moves Roberto Martínez Guzmán? What do you want to generate in your readers?

RMG: In my first book, I was moved by the possibility of placing the reader in the shoes of a woman who is being abused by her partner. I understood that my job was to put the newspaper in the hands of the reader as I had been writing it and I would stand next to him to point out the possible gaps left by letters that had not been written to be published. Also that my job was not to judge what was reflected in them, but to focus only on completing the story, seeking that the reader lived the story in the first person and, in the end, it was he who judged the facts.

On the other hand, in my novels I always want the reader to meet characters that could well belong to their daily life. I think it is a way that the story generates greater interest in the reader and that, on the other hand, he can identify with it more easily. I don't like characters that we would never meet on the street. And yes, I recognize that I create many characters from a real person.

AL: Your latest book, Seven Books for Eva, published in 2016, is the third in the saga, but, in reality, it is the first, it is the one that tells the story of your protagonist before deciding to become a policeman. Will we continue to live adventures of Eva Santiago? Will we go back to where it left off after Coffee and Cigarettes for a funeral? Will you go back to non-fiction?

RMG: First of all, no, I will not go back to non-fiction: it is a very specific train that happened once in a lifetime. I don't wait for a second time.

Regarding the inspector Eva Santiago, from the beginning I thought that all the novels were self-concluding, independent of each other and that they could be read in any order, so that the reader would not feel trapped in a saga, and that, if they continued it, they would be It was because he really liked them. From that point on, I don't feel tied to it either, and maybe that's why I haven't decided yet if there will be more deliveries. Rather, I have not decided when. In principle, I do hope to dedicate more novels to it, but I don't know if it will be the next book or in a few years. Nor how many will there be. What I can say is that they will all be cases of Inspector Eva Santiago, except one, which will be a closing novel. In other words, if Seven Books for Eva is the origin of Eva Santiago, it is possible that there is a delivery that is the end of Eva Santiago.

AL: The first book in Eva Santiago's series, Death without Resurrection, It is translated into Italian and English, and is a bestseller in Mexico, one of the main markets of the genre. Does the crime novel set Orense work in the foreign market? Does Galicia sell outside our borders?

RMG: It is not that Galicia sells, it is that it sells any place that is well set and is faithful to its characteristics. That was clear to me from the beginning, that if I wanted a reader, who did not even know where Galicia was, interested in history and identified with the place, he had to be very faithful to its geography, customs and mentality from the people. I am one of those who believes in the saying that there is nothing more universal than what is strictly local. And yes, I suppose that few people know Galicia in Mexico and yet, in its day it was a leader in ebook downloads for a long time.

AL: One of your books, Coffee and Cigarettes for a Funeral, the second in Eva Santiago's series, you published it in installments for free, with Serial Books, available on your blog and on various platforms. As you posted it, you interacted with readers, you even ran a contest to guess who the killer was. How was the experience after the sales success of Death and Resurrection? What came out of that experiment for Roberto Martínez Guzmán?

RMG: I remember that I faced it with a lot of fear. Because of the fact that it could be liked less, but above all, because of the danger that the first novel would eat up the second. Death without Resurrection sold very well and for a long time, and it often happens that, in these cases, many readers continue to identify with the first novel. It seems silly, but that ends up assuming a long shadow that obscures everything you post afterwards. In this sense, perhaps the fact that Coffee and Cigarettes for a Funeral was published in installments and over a couple of months mitigated this danger. In this sense, the contest to guess the murderer also aimed to withdraw the attention of the readers of the first one and focus them on that new story, in which there was a murderer who had to be discovered.

AL: Does literary piracy hurt you? Do you think we'll end him one day?

RMG: No, it doesn't hurt me, because I don't listen to it. Seriously, I have never given it much importance. I am convinced that people who download pirated books, in reality, if they could not do so, they would not legally buy it from you either. On the contrary, I do believe that whoever downloads a pirated book today, in a while will get tired of broken files, camouflaged viruses and so on and will switch to legal ebooks. And at that time, you will remember the authors you have read hacked and liked.

I am convinced of this, or I want to be, because it seems like a lost war and that it is very difficult for it to end. Much more when Latin America is a very, very reader-friendly continent and does not have too many resources to buy them (in countries like Venezuela it is directly impossible). That creates an enormous facility to access pirated ebooks. But not only pirates, also legal free downloads. To give you an idea Coffee and cigarettes for a funeral is published in the Play Store. One week I priced it, a dollar, to quantify the difference, and sold four or five copies. Very, very far from its figures, because as a free download, in a week, it usually has between two thousand and five thousand downloads. That is the situation.

AL: Any hobbies or habits when writing? Do you have people to whom you deliver your novels before making a final correction with their suggestions?

RMG: More than mania, it is a habit. I usually write on the computer, correct, print, correct on paper, go to the computer file, correct it on the mobile, reprint it, and again, give it a pass on paper. In that order and being able to repeat a step. All the corrections I need until I sit down on a terrace, with the sheets resting on my lap, and I don't find anything that I could express better. That is my habit, correcting what I write sitting on a terrace, without haste, with the text printed on paper and a coffee in front of it.

And yes, of course I have authors who serve as zero readers. They to me and I to them, out of simple friendship and companionship.

AL: I never ask a writer to choose between his novels, but I do ask to know you as a reader. What is that book that you remember with special affection, that it comforts you to see it on your shelf? Any author that you are passionate about, the kind that you buy the only ones that are published?

RMG: I fondly remember the first novel I read in my life, even as a child: Another Turn of the Screw, by Henry James. I liked it so much that it sparked my interest in writing stories. These days, I usually buy everything Karin Slaughter publishes.

AL: What are the special moments of your professional career as a writer? Those that you will tell your grandchildren.

RMG: I have my son threatened so that he will not give me grandchildren, because I am not psychologically prepared to be a grandfather. At least for now. So I hope that when I find myself in that situation, I have many more future moments to tell you. Of those experienced so far, I may be left with two: the day that Death without Resurrection reached the top of the sales position in Amazon Spain, and another that I did not expect by a long shot, when the Institute of Knowledge Engineering of the UAM published last year his study on the repercussion in Spain of the Day of the Book and ruled that Seven books for Eva had been the crime novel most recommended by readers on Twitter. Honestly, I was very excited.

AL: Number one in sales on Amazon, consecrated writer of crime fiction, rubbing shoulders with the greatest, you have opted for desktop publishing, ... Is it your own decision or is it so difficult for a large publisher to bet on a writer, even if one is already as established as Is it Roberto Martínez Guzmán?

RMG: Years ago I thought that a publisher would never publish an unknown author like me, without a presence in the media and who lives in a small city like Ourense. And that's why I never considered publishing what I wrote, because I didn't want my sales to depend on engaging my friends to read me. No, I do not sell to my friends, nor do I ask them to buy any of my books. I've never done it, nor do I want to. Today, everything has changed, the ebook has become widespread and an author can access readers, whether they have the support of a large, small or self-publishing publisher. Death without resurrection I did not offer it to any, but as it gained relevance in the sales listings, it soon aroused interest in some. I did not want to publish it, because at that moment I thought it was already quite burned. Seven books for Eva was going to go out with a publisher. In fact, his interest was born when he had just started to write it, but in the end we did not reach an agreement and I did not mind publishing it myself. Instead, Coffee and cigarettes for a funeral came out with Serial Books, at heart, a publishing house that was just starting and that offered me a project that appealed to me.

The reality is that if you self-publish and sell, it is the publishers that approach you and offer you their edition. Something logical, since his business is to sell books. Whether I can accept or not depends on the promotion they offer me, because for me, today, it is the key for you to opt for them or for self-publishing. It is a bit like when a person does not have a partner, but it is very good alone. She does not need to have it, and if one day she agrees to commit, it is because she feels confident that she will be better.

AL: The social media phenomenon creates two types of writers, those who reject them and those who adore them. You seem to have a great relationship with them. 136.000 followers on Twitter. What do you get from social media? What do they bring positive in your life, in your profession? Do they outweigh the inconvenience?

RMG: 136.000 followers in many years that I have been on Twitter. It is logical since all the promotion depends on me. You have to squeeze social networks much more than you would like. And Twitter was a time when it was the best escape. Today it is quite disused. The good thing about social networks is that you can make yourself known without depending on third parties and also that you are in direct contact with all the readers who wish to do so. It is also a source of satisfaction, when someone tells you that you have taken hours of sleep or, as a reader told me one day, that you have made him go reading on the street. It really is one of the great satisfactions that writing gives you and that compensates for all the troubles, which there are also. The bad part of the networks is that they rob you of a lot of time that you have to write.

AL: Is it possible, in these times, to live by writing?

RMG: Yes, there are people who do. But of course, apart from liking it, you need a more or less extensive career, a certain guaranteed promotion and I would even dare to say that it is necessary that your books have been translated into several languages. In any case, it also depends on what each one needs to live. There are people who settle for little and find it easier to make the jump and there are other people who need more income and find it difficult to give up charging in two ways.

AL: Digital book or paper?

RMG: On paper, although in the end, I always end up choosing the ebook for convenience.

AL: To close, as always, I am going to ask you the most intimate question you can ask a writer: Why do you write?

RMG: Because I like to tell stories. I said one day on Twitter that each novel was an invitation to readers to take a walk through the deepest part of our minds; see our way of understanding people, what we consider important and interesting, the circumstances that can happen to us in life and the way we interpret them. It is that the reader offers to take him by the hand to live a situation that he has never imagined. That is why, for me, each reader who chooses one of my books is a privilege, because he dedicates his time and trust to me. It is in my hands that I want to repeat. And convincing him is a challenge.

 Thank you Roberto Martinez Guzman, wish you many successes, that the streak does not stop, and that you continue to surprise us with each new novel.