Mercedes Santos Mats presents his new novel, Besieged, which is already on sale. Will be on Aranjuez, next day 24. The journalist and writer riverside, whom I have the pleasure to meet and read, come back with another history of a historical nature, its genre, where there is no lack of adventures, intrigue and love. I really appreciate this interview where he talks about his career, favorite books and authors, writer's hobbies and much more.
Interview with Mercedes Santos
Actualidad Literatura: Do you remember the first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
mercedes santos: No i guess stories, but yes with what reading I became fond of reading. With the comics of Mortadelo and Filemon. And they still keep making me laugh, something few other books do. Humor is the most difficult. Making people cry is easy, making people laugh is very complicated.
Regarding the stories I wrote, I have to say that unlike other authors who say they always felt that urge, I loved to write, but as a journalist, as a novelist I didn't think about it until much later, until about fourteen or fifteen years ago. It's true that when I was little I went to sleep readjusting the movies I saw, changing the ending or adding plots that I would have liked to have. The same happened to me with the books I read. But it was a few days, as a way of catching sleep, and then left them.
AL: What was the first book that struck you and why?
MS: The first were comics and those that my father had on his shelves like those of Frank Jerby and his work While the city slept or my grandmother's romance novels, some of which I still have as gold on cloth. The obligatory texts of the school always, by forced, were boring.
Although I remember books like The verdict on the Savolta case, of Mendoza in narrative, or The house is on, by Luis Rosales, that got deep inside me. It is also true that if you read those books today, you would surely not feel the same way. It has happened to me before. But then they connected with me. Like Bomarzo, a historical novel set in Renaissance Italy, by Múgica Laínez, or one by Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice.
AL: Who is your favorite writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras
MS: I have muchos. I don't know ... In historical novels, which is my genre, I would highlight Spanish Javier Negrete. His novel Salamina, about Themistocles and the first clash between East and West, with the Greeks and the Persians at war, I found it wonderful. I have also read a lot to Ken follet, classics, Lope de Vega I love it, many tests, some of poetry....
AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
MS: Those of Bernard Cornwell. It has the ability to present seemingly normal scenarios or characters that suddenly catapult you to another place. Your Merlin is magical.
AL: Any mania when it comes to writing or reading?
MS: Many. Only, with time or the different books, they change. But overall I read what I feel like. I have many books started that I finish — or not — when I want to. I can mix a political essay with a book of poems with no problem. To write, I like to have breakfast alone a couple of times a week to clarify my ideas that sometimes advance so fast that they escape me.
AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
MS: I read and write anywhere. Sometimes with my children around, in the living room, with the TV on and my dog carrying the ball to play. But to write I prefer to do it on the laptop, next to the living room window. I used to do it in my room, but as I say, tastes keep changing. Reflecting on the plots I prefer to do it outside the home, having a coffee anywhere, usually in the McDonalds. I love its giant windows and its landscaped views. At 9 o'clock, when I go, I am almost alone, nobody bothers me.
AL: What writer or book has influenced your work as an author?
MS: A lots of. Like I said before, I love how Cornwell characterizes his characters, I like the magic of austen or bronte, the lyricism of Annie dillard, the setting of sweig...
AL: Your favorite genres?
MS: Novela History, tests —Of science, philosophy, social, historical—, biographies, memoirs...
AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
MS: I'm reading Bad encounter in the moonlightby W Stanley Moss for Cliff. I liked it a lot 14 July by the French Eric Vouillard. And writing, I am immersed in the World War II.
AL: How do you think the publishing scene is for as many authors as there are or want to publish?
MS: It is difficult to publish so what . quite a few titles are published every year. But unlike other countries in our environment, where most of what is published is by their authors and only a minimum are translated from foreigners, here it is done the other way around. A lot of foreigners are published that are not always good works. The publishing world is quite closed and impenetrable. But if you love to write, you have to keep trying.