Photography: Mar Izkue, Facebook profile.
Sea Izkue He is from Pamplona. There he studied Law and speaks English, French, German and Basque. He has lived in several European countries such as the United Kingdom, Holland or Germany and now lives in Madrid. After years dedicated to international business, she decided to focus on her true passion: writing. Her debut feature is titled The attic and in this interview He tells us about her and some other topics. I really appreciate her time and kindness.
Mar Izkue—Interview
- ACTUALIDAD LITERATURA: Your debut novel is titled The attic. What do you tell us about it and where did the idea come from?
Izkue Sea: EIn the words of fellow writer Susana Rodríguez Lezaun, El ático is «a novel full of intrigue about loyalty, the mysteries of female friendship and broken dreams. An impactful literary debut».
The first paragraph tells us how Martín falls from the terrace of an attic. Mario Elizondo, the police inspector in charge of unraveling whether it is murder or suicide, he is soon trapped by the secrets and lies that weave the network around which they orbit Lucía, Marilia, Rebeca and Elena, who are his wife and her friends of childhood. All of them make up a feminine universe that, in the eyes of the policeman, is inscrutable: sometimes they seem suspicious, often accomplices, and other times rivals. The first-person accounts of these four women and the inspector will allow us to try to understand what really happened to Martín, although the truth about his death seems as kaleidoscopic and intricate as his own existence and his relationship with the women. women.
The idea arises from...I gild the attics!, and wanting to combine a story that catches the reader with the willingness to create real characters with whom to identify and that they face situations that we all face, such as getting older or the multiple faces of the truth.
- AL: Can you go back to that first book you read? And the first story you wrote?
MI: From childhood I remember reading all the books of The five, The Hollisters, The Secret Seven… I was a compulsive reader.
And the first writing that I am aware of was motivated by a very sad fact. In the first course of that GBS (we were 6 or 7 years old) a classmate died, Maria Pilar. The teacher asked us to write an essay. Some time later, her mother came to my house so that I could read her my essay, which the teacher had selected and given to her. I still remember as if it were today emotion that caused me
- AL: A head writer? You can choose more than one and from all eras.
MI: I would highlight the magical universe that Gabriel García Márquez created in each of his works. They also impacted me a lot, when I read them, Metamorphosis, of Kafka, or Death in Venice by Thomas Mann. In a very different register, I admire the capacity for entertainment that he shows in all his works Agatha Christie.
- AL: What character in a book would you have liked to meet and create?
MI: Sherlock Holmes seems to me a character that has even outlived its author, in the sense that new Sherlock Holmes stories could be written today. he is a character very attractive to a large audience, famous in almost any corner of the world and totally recognizable.
- AL: Any special habits or habits when it comes to writing or reading?
MI: I try not to have mania. If anything, I usually make myself cups of infusions that end too soon.
- AL: And your preferred place and time to do it?
MI: For read I'm just looking for one stance where i can be with comfort long time without moving, which is really not that simple. For write I always try to do it same corner, on my desk, a quiet place with good light from which from time to time I can let my eyes fly to the other side of the window. I rather write in the mornings because I am clearer and daylight brings me joy.
- AL: Are there other genres that you like?
MI: I do not limit myself to reading a specific genre, although it is true that I have read quite a lot of detective novels. I would say that the genre that I like the most is contemporary narrative.
- AL: What are you reading now? And writing?
MI: I was just recommended to the American author Elizabeth strout and I'm going to read it right away. As for writing, I'm giving the finishing touches to a novel with a more police tone which The attic and that, without being a continuation of my first novel, I think its readers would like it and would allow me to reach, I hope, new ones.
- AL: How do you think the publishing scene is and what decided you to try to publish?
MI: What made me decide to try to publish is that, without a doubt, I need to communicate to the readers the emotions that I feel when writing. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to see the reaction of the readers, to see that the emotions and the message come through, that I manage to catch them in my pages.
I think that the publishing scene, which was never easy, is more and more complicated. There is hardly any room for new voices that are not recommended, that do not already have a public profile or that have a long list of supporters on social networks.
- 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?
MI: All we try to stay with something positive for the mere desire to survive, although reality must also be accepted and not intended to mask it. The crisis affects me, materially and emotionally, but I repeat to myself that I am lucky, that there are people who are having a much worse time and whose suffering should not be silenced.