Photography: Javier Torras de Ugarte, IG profile.
Javier Torres de Ugarte He is from Madrid and writes from science fiction even historical novel. The last one posted is The purple lady. In this interview He tells us about her and several other topics. Thank you so much your kindness and time in attending me.
Javier Torras de Ugarte — Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your latest novel is titled The purple lady. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?
JAVIER TORRAS DE UGARTE: The purple lady is a novel composed like a grand opera, a Greek tragedy (pun intended) in which there is no shortage of adventures, intrigues and mysteries. Far from being a biographical novel about Irene of AthensI think it appeals more to emotions than to knowledge. Of course, the reader will find the adventures and misadventures of the young Irene since she is chosen to marry Leo IV the Khazaruntil it was considered the emperor of rome, but along the way the novel tells many other things such as the loneliness of power, the poison it produces in those who aspire to it and how a woman was able to oppose tradition from multiple perspectives: political, religious, communicative, diplomatic... The purple lady tells the story of a woman ahead of her time, but also the price to pay for power.
I met Irene in my university days, when year after year I took the subject of Art of the High Middle Ages. That was just a Affair, but years later we met on the Internet, like couples today, and the crush was one of those that make one spend all nights awake and fill corridors with rose petals. She helped it, like a modern Celestina, the Dr Judith Herrin and his fantastic book women in purple. I was looking for a little known character for the general public that would allow me to narrate a story full of passion, emotion, action and adventure, in addition to being able to reflect that history, so many centuries later, has not changed as much as many believe. Irene of Athensmy purple lady was that character.
- AL: Can you remember any of your first readings? And the first story you wrote?
JTU: I have always recognized that I am a late reader, I was never attracted to compulsory school reading or the Steam Boat, which is why almost my first free and voluntary approach to literature was with the classical. She was seventeen years old and in World Literature class we read Homer, Petrarch, Bocaccio, Becquer, Poe… How not to fall in love with books? However, the first book that I remember taking with my hands without anyone seeing me and savoring it as a forbidden pleasure was The Flanders table, Arturo Perez-Reverte. I always had the feeling that everything started with that book.
La first story that I wrote had the naive name of The hope syndrome, story partly autobiographical and in part astrological about optimism in the face of misfortune and the value of hope as a driving force in life. I said, a naive stretching from the twilight of puberty.
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
JTU: I have many, and from many times, so the apostille to the question is not even painted. Thank you very much!
Goethe and his Werther They marked an era in my life and in my way of understanding and seeing the world. Fortunately, I never liked the ending and was never tempted, but everything else, everything in its pages, became my personal Bible. I also had a phase shakespearian which, fortunately for the performing arts, did not remove the actor's soul that we all carry within me. More recently, without a doubt, Tolkien and Lovecraft have been my mentors in part, although they never knew it. Carlos Ruiz Zafón, whom I rediscover these days, taught me the absolute magic of words and books. By last, Jose Carlos Somoza, whom I always name and who I recommend most of his novels. But there are many other current novelists: falcons, King, Old people, Connolly, Reverte…
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
JTU: There are many characters that I envy in very different ways, all of them insane, why not say it. As he commented in a previous question, these days I am rereading The wind's shadow, so I get to say that I would have liked to "create" Fermin Romero de Torres, that fantastic secondary scene-stealer with an easy word and just sentence. He is an amazing character. However, he is a character for that novel, even if the stars had aligned and I had created that character, he would be clueless in my books.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
JTU: To write, silence and tranquility. Mobile turned off, or without sound and with the screen against the table. I have always been slow to concentrate, and the flight of a fly can distract me to the point of complete avoidance, so I force myself to find suitable moments for writing.
I have no mania for readingI read at home, in bed, on public transport... I love to read by the pool or on the beach in summer, the hours fly by, I withdraw from the world. I read on paper, digital, audiobook… Whatever.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
JTU: Whoops! I preempted the previous answer. Read on the beach it's amazing. At first, especially me, who is very picky, the sun, the sand, the screams of the children, the suffocating heat, the plane announcing a disco bother me… But as I read on, all that disappears, it is erased from the landscape. In the end we are left with the waves of the sea, the story that I am reading and me. It is insuperable.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
JTU: Leo many genres: historical, thriller, contemporary, science fiction, fantasy... You can't be disgusted by literature, no matter how you dress it up. As well I have written many genres. The books that I like the most are those that do not have a defined genre, but allow themselves to be impregnated by one and the other; genres are a form of classification like any other and, therefore, imperfect.
- What are you reading now? And writing?
JTU: I just passed a stage adam sanderson, the last ones I have read have been elandris y The breath of the gods.
Sometimes, when I write, I get to reread novels that I liked a lot, and I'm in those right now, with The wind's shadow.
I am currently writing another historical novel about a fascinating and little-known character, which helps me to tell how the Roman Empire was Christianized first and later separated. All this with a lot of suffering, a lot of blood and a lot of mystery. It will be a story of endings: the end of the Empire, of the gods, of antiquity, of the classical world... And of many characters.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is and what decided you to try to publish?
JTU: I don't feel very qualified to analyze the editorial panorama. I see things, like everyone else, but what I like is writing. I suppose that, like almost all sectors, the publishing world is redefining itself in the face of technological challenges, looking with a certain distrust at the new digital formats, the audiobook, interactive books... But also with great enthusiasm. New avenues open daily, new windows. In the end, a book will continue to be a book, but the way in which we consume it may change (because reading, what is said to be read, can only be done in one way).
About the books that are published right now, I'm not a news reader, so it's hard for me to follow fashions. I do read the books that my favorite authors are releasing, but I am not aware of the latest that is being carried or what is not being carried.
I have wondered many times why post, why that need is generated after writing. I imagine there are many answers, all of them partly true and partly false. Do authors need the complacency of readers? Is it for ego? For money? For vanity? For necessity? The quota of trade that writing novels has pushes us to the functional: we write for people to read us. On the contrary, that romantic soul inherent in any creative process permeates the entire process and speaks to us of less mundane needs, more associated with emotion. Why post? Art, in any of its formats, is exhibitionist. What is not seen does not exist.
- AL: Is the moment of crisis that we are experiencing being difficult for you or will you be able to keep something positive for future stories?
JTU: Times of crisis, luckily or unfortunately, are always positive for the art world. It is as if the human being squeezed his creativity in the face of suffering or the observation of suffering. Personally, in my latest writings I am looking more at the past, but I never lose my own vision of the world, as a writer of the XNUMXst century. Many of the things that happen in my historical novels have to do with our present, our permanent and decadent crisis.
When I write science fiction The same thing happens to me, but upside down. I try to explain what I perceive around me and what consecuencias could have in a future. I try not to lose perspective of where and when I write, but I love to cross the barriers of time and space and immerse myself in other times, past and yet to come. But a little tranquility and prosperity would not hurt us...