The Asturian Ana Lena Rivera Muniz and the Tenerife Fatima Martin Rodriguez were the winners of the XXIX Torrente Ballester Prize 2017, granted for the first time equally the last December. Their respective novels What the dead are silent y The angle of the haze they deserved the award for "their literary quality", according to the jury of the contest.

We are lucky to have Ana Lena Rivera Muñiz in this humble team of writers de Actualidad Literatura. Today We spoke with both authors about the award, their works, careers and future projects.

In the past XXIX edition of the Torrente Ballester Award narrative in Spanish, a total of 411 unpublished works by authors from more than 18 countries participated. This award was born in 1989 and is endowed with 25.000 euros and the edition of the winning copy.

Fatima Martin Rodriguez (Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1968)

Canaria, Bachelor of Information Sciences, at the Complutense University of Madrid, and with initiated studies in Fine Arts, at the University of La Laguna. The author of The angle of the haze, a novel awarded with the Torrente Ballester Prize 2017, has been trained at the Canary School of Literary Creation. He has received the Orola Award for Experiences in 2012 and the 3rd prize in the Cultural Field Micro-story Contest in 2011. He has developed photography and visual arts projects such as Light of Words (photography and haiku poetry with the F / 7 Co-ordinate Collective and the poet Coriolano González Montañés), and Archetypes, selected work in Discoveries PHOTOESPAÑA 2012, among others.

Ana Lena Rivera Muñiz (Asturias, 1972)

Asturian and resident in Madrid, she has a degree in Law and Business Administration from ICADE and the author of the detective novel series starring Gracia San Sebastián. Your first case, What the Dead are silent, could not have been more successful with the awarding of the Torrente Ballester Award 2017 and the finalist award for the Fernando Lara award in May of the same year.

Our interview

We propose some questions for you to tell us more about your professional and literary career, your future projects and other more particular aspects. And we thank you in advance for your more than sure interesting answers.

Still savoring the prize and the success? Tell us how was the experience.

Ana: The emotion of seeing your work recognized in an award with the prestige of the Torrente Ballester is an incomparable bath of spirit. This is a very lonely profession and seeing yourself recognized by so many people and of such literary level as a serotonin kick. The special circumstances of this award granted to two writers at the same time have been an added luxury: they have allowed me to meet Fatima, my partner, an exceptional writer, with whom to share ideas, projects and dreams that no one outside of this world and of this craft can understand and feel.

Fatima: It was an unexpected event that exceeded all my expectations. I have presented myself to this great contest dreaming of being one of the eighteen final selections, but I could never imagine this result with my first novel; it still has to be assimilated. The award ceremony in La Coruña was very exciting and the Provincial Council has supported us a lot. The fact that it was delivered for the first time to two authors equally It has been very positive and does not stop giving good times. My fellow award winner, Ana Lena, is an amazing and admirable writer. Knowing us has allowed us to unite objectives and exchange experiences. From the first moment, the affinity has been absolute, and, without a doubt, a source of opportunities that we share at every step.

What do you think this award brings you in addition to that success and recognition?

Ana: The opportunity to reach readers, which is the ultimate goal of this adventure. It fascinates me to think that each reader who reads my story will make it their own, build their own adventure, and be unique. There will be so many What the Dead are Silent as readers read it and each one of them will spend some time alone with their imagination, with themselves, out of the daily whirlwind that drags us all.

Fatima: I subscribe to each of Ana's words. This has been something unusual: receiving this wonderful award and the birth of your first novel, which will begin to live in the readers. In addition, it has been especially gratifying for me to achieve it with a work that takes place in the Canary Islands. I think it will offer fascinating and unknown aspects of my land. I also notice the responsibility that a prize of such height gives in the future projects that I consider.

What can you say in two sentences about What the Dead are Silent y The angle of the haze?

Ana: It is a classic novel of intrigue, with a traditional touch, with a lot of rhythm, with tension, humor and a controversial human side that accompanies you in your reflections long after reading it.

Fatima: The angle of the haze It is inspired by the French expedition of 1724 that measured Mount Teide for the first time. It slides between the adventures of exploration and the love affair that arises between its three protagonists, two French scientists and a young Canarian woman, Emilia de los Celajes.

What new projects are you involved in?

Ana: Writing the third novel and preparing the second, A murderer hides in your shadow, to show it to readers.

Fatima: In the middle of writing my second novel, The Overseas Inhabitants, and about to present a book of stories with a group of writers, Short stories for boring couples or boring stories for short couples.

Any pretense with your novels or do you just like to tell stories?

Ana: My aim is to have a pleasant time and then take something with them forever. I want to give my readers a story that envelops them so much that it produces a mental cleansing, that they forget about day-to-day problems while reading, that they live the story as if it were their own and that they take it with them when they finish the last one. page and book rest on the shelf. The purpose is for the reader to identify with the good and the bad, for the line to be so blurred that likes and dislikes mix, because most of us are neither perfect nor horrible. They are novels to question the motives, the emotional wounds and the vicissitudes of life that can turn an ordinary person into a criminal.

Fatima: I had not considered writing historical plots, but I have found myself very comfortable in them, despite the great time that the documentation that needs to be consulted devours. It has been fascinating to build the novel, a constant discovery, weaving to disrupt, walking to go backwards, and furthermore, that journey has occurred in all senses: in time, in geography, in sensations. Thanks to this process I have met very interesting people, I have gone to many places to observe them, I have valued data that I did not know, customs, uses in disuse, in short, it has been exciting. And when it is published, I hope that readers will share this adventure and live it as much as I have. Continue the journey, continue writing, and all that is read will be sublime.

What was the first book you remember or read? And one that will decisively mark you to dedicate yourselves to writing?

Ana: I went from the Mortadelos to Agatha Christie. The first book I read about her was A Cat in the Dovecote, I remember perfectly.

I started writing for her, for Agatha Cristhie. The entire collection was in my house. I still have them all, in a sorry state from the amount of times I read and reread them. I don't think I could choose just one. Then I went on to George Simenon with Commissioner Maigret, to Stanley Gardner with Perry Mason and hence a whole evolution from the hand of authors of psychological intrigue until today. I love well-known Spanish authors and not so much that they have opted for this genre, I flee quite a lot from the Nordic ones, who are stark and very focused on murderers with personality disorders, although that has not stopped me from getting hooked on Stieg Larsson with his character from Lisbeth Salander or for me to devour the entire Henning Mankell collection and become a fan of his detective Walander. One that would mark me out of the genre? Nothing opposes the night by Delphine de Vigan. Just by seeing it on my shelf, I relive the sensations it gave me. It is an opening in the channel of his life with a bipolar mother, her traumas, her injuries, her feelings.

Fatima: I remember the books in my grandparents' house, they were school teachers and they had the shelves full of them. There were many: there were fables, stories, jokes. Perhaps the culprit that I became fond of adventure stories and legends was Ivanhoe. Then came the Arthurian myths, the mysterious islands, the trips to the end of the world, to space or to the future. I grew up with Jules Verne, Emilio Salgari, even some Galdós battle filled some summer. But there are authors who, when reading them, have represented a before and after because they have shaken my beliefs. This makes nothing the same when you intend to write. Something like this was produced by Gabriel García Márquez when I read A Chronicle of a Death Foretold. Everything was there, that was the lighthouse. I reread it and I always learn something new in all its elements: the plot, the narrator-chronicler, the village-universe of characters, the language. All this seasoned with the most effective intrigue, since it achieves constant interest even though the end of the novel is known. Prodigious.

Who are your main authors? And the most influential in your work?

Ana: Many, but above all I look forward to each book by Jose María Guelbenzu in his police series starring Mariana de Marco, each new Brunetti adventure in Venice by Donna León, or by Jean-Luc Bannalec with his commissioner Dupin in Brittany French, and Petra Delicado, in Barcelona, ​​Alicia Giménez-Barlett who hooked me many years ago.

Fatima: There is no single writer or writer who enlightens you. It is true that Gabriel García Márquez is a prodigy. But the world did not end there, rather it began. There are many writers who have impressed me, for example, Cortázar, Kafka or Lorca.

Do you have any mania or habit when writing?

Ana: Virginia Woolf used to say that a woman must have money and a room of her own to be able to write novels. I need time and silence. Several hours in silence and everything starts to come out. I never know what I am going to write, or what is going to happen in the novel. It is a very fun process because I write with the emotion of the reader who does not know what will happen in the next scene.

I remember one day when I was writing in the middle of What the Dead are Silent and I decided to reread what I was wearing to continue consistently. I got so into reading that I began to feel the tension of the reader and asked myself "Is not X the murderer?" Until I realized that I was the writer and that the murderer would be who I decided. Sometimes I think that I don't decide anything, that the novel is written in some corner of my mind and I just transcribe it on the computer.

Fatima: LOL. What Ana is surprising? It's great. It is true that when you go into a "trance" you jump from reality to another parallel world. Sometimes it seems that the hand writes on its own and that you are channeling a plot that travels through the air. I have the facility to concentrate and I can write anywhere and with any noise. In fact, people who come across me on a daily basis always see me with my computer in tow. I have notebooks all over the place to catch the "revelations." What I need to be clear about is the end of the novel. The rest I do not know, I do not know the causes, or who, or how, but everything that happens is destined for that end, a magnet that devours the entire novel.

And when you finish, do you ask your environment for an opinion, advice or correction?

Ana: When I finish, I have a Betareaders Club, who read the novel and tell me about their feelings as readers and the gaffes they find in it. Some are close people, others I don't even know, and for me they are a treasure. I believe that without them my novels would be unfinished.

I am immensely fortunate to have two brilliant writers from two different generations, Jose María Guelbenzu and Lara Moreno, as mentors and each one on their own point out my inconsistencies and make me see errors in my own novels that, without them, I would never arrive. to correct and polish to leave them as the reader deserves to receive them.

Fatima: During the process of writing The angle of the haze I have had the advice of one of my literary teachers, the great writer Jorge Eduardo Benavides, who has been a great guide to "diagnose" the novel. I formed a team of four fierce readers from my environment (mother, husband, sister and friend), all different in their vision and in their literary tastes that served as a compass.

How can you define your styles?

Ana: Fresh, fluid, fast, contemporary, modern. In my novels, the reader pauses for the right time in flourishes, things happen quickly as in a television script.

Fatima: It is difficult to define this question. I can use a term from the plastic arts: expressionism. I like to explore the nuances of words, their strength, I like to play with synesthesia, metaphors, although I believe that simplicity, naked language is valued today.

What book are you reading now?

Ana: You catch me in a moment that does not usually happen: I am with two books and neither is a crime novel. One is Death of the father by Karl Ove Knausgard. It is a book to read slowly, thoughtfully, the author opens a great door to his emotions and lets us look inside. The other is a gift from the publisher Galaxia, A smart guyby Xosé Monteagudo. They make up for that I just finished Mortal remains by Donna León and The Office of Evil by Robert Galbraith (JK Rowling).

Fatima: I have an invaded nightstand: The legend of the voiceless island, by Vanessa Monfort, the one I have more advanced and with whom I am getting involved, and in the queue, The color of milkby Nell Leyson, and 4, 3, 2, 1by Paul Auster.

Do you dare to give some advice to those writers who are just starting out?

Ana: Let them write what they would like to read, because that way they will believe in their work and know that before finishing they already have their first unconditional fan. Surely there are more people who like the same as they do and those will be your readers. If not, they run the risk that their work will not like them or anyone and no story deserves that.

Fatima: The hardest question. For those who start, do not stop. It is a long-distance race, of pulling strings, of discovering oneself, of breaking up and putting oneself back together, but it cannot be stopped. We must break the myth of the fear of the blank page. You have to sit down and scribble words. Suddenly, everything will appear. And when a story is born, reread it, correct it, defend it, promote it and go as far as possible, because we already have the "no" without doing anything.

Well, we thank you for your answers and kindness. And we wish you many more successes in your literary careers.