​Writing came to me later in life, provoked by an event that is well addressed in my first novel, INHALED. With this book, inside its first edition, nothing but a stream of consciousness marks the pages, exposing the challenges of a life that had been turned upside down. The more structured version of INHALED, its second edition, was reedited by Montreal Publishing Company editor Christian Fennell. Here, Fennell proposed to include a third-person point of view, infusing the story with a new layer of understanding, distance as well, where time and perspective were shifted. The result is a more rounded narrative, I think. A better book.

 

The idea for the sequel to INHALED, WHEN I BECAME NEVER, had more to do with what it had to offer: a pretext to continue writing at the time, a larger sanctuary if you will, for me to continue existing as a writer–what started as a prompt turned into a full-blown novel. As such, the idea for WHEN I BECAME NEVER was played with further while visiting Málaga, Spain, in 2019. I wanted to breathe in, understand the texture of the space I felt could become the starting point of my story, the landscape a genesis to the lethal dysfunctions of the man I expose in INHALED. To include Central America, Nicaragua, as part of the story, was a sine qua non from the start of the project: the political similarities between both countries offered the story a certain richness, a depth that helped sketch and root my antagonist’s character with more nuances. It just made sense. As well, having travelled to Central America multiple times over the last ten years provided me with a solid understanding of the Latino culture and Nicaragua’s political history from which to create from.

 

While INHALED’s writing was linear, a nice and big and comfortable flow, WHEN I BECAME NEVER’s was its total opposite. The process was messy. A nightmare, really. Ideas bounced from this abominable amount of research where facts, readings and observations collided into a staccato-like structure. One would think I would have used an outline to guide the narrative. I didn’t it, and so the writing process hiccupped until the end. Again, Fennell’s eyes and mind helped me carve the novel into a final state. Many lessons were learned …

 

COLD CHAOS, Stories from a North, came to be while WHEN I BECAME NEVER was being edited for a last time. It took me three months to write and put the collection together. Looking back now I think I created this collection in response to the disturbing space I inhabited while writing WHEN I BECAME NEVER. Writing the sequel to INHALED was quite demanding, and Cold Chaos seemed to pull a certain luminosity out of me. And it felt good, like a balm should.

 

Each story COLD CHAOS contains was written without an explicit outline, without much external editing as well. This unplanned work, a gift to myself, is what I think is my most accomplished to date. If you want to get to know me, my writing, discover the author existing today, I recommend you start with COLD CHAOS, then walk to WHEN I BECAME NEVER. Lastly, to satisfy the voyeur in you, to satiate your curiosity, indulge into INHALED’s depravity … Yes.

 

I usually write from home—the kitchen table, I favor—occasionally from coffee shops. I have no preference as to when I write; discipline allows room for impulse to coexist with the urgency of rigor; afternoon or nights are fine by me. I find drinking and writing not to complement each other–I write and edit sober … celebrate passages I fall in love with with a good glass of red wine. I type my words directly on my MacBook Air.

 

Music is central to my life and so each book was accompanied by its own soundtrack. I will include each book’s playlist in the following weeks and make it available here.

 

And, oh, right–my stance on artificial intelligence: Well, my three books are the product of hundreds of hours of writing and editing that were laid without the help of artificial intelligence. Human minds and eyes were used only. Mine, my beta readers' and my editor's. To write is to live, like most writers, and I intend to live as long as I can. This said, I do not think AI can be avoided or should be ignored. It can be leveraged. And so, I have started to play around ChatGPT and Claude and others and quite honestly am finding them to be of excellent assistance in devising marketing strategies that push my literary work into the world. As I see it, artificial intelligence is only of relevance when used by informed and critical minds–

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