Luis is a Matryoshka doll

Luis felt as though he was living his life as a Matryoskha doll, a tiny Luis inside a bigger Luis, inside an even bigger Luis. The tiniest doll was the real Luis dancing happy inside a great big dream, but life as the little doll was hot and suffocating too. He could dance happy for a time, but then big Luis Matryoskha would have to go out to work.

He’d seen his papa live like this, repressed, crying out for creative freedom, a poet, forced to work 12-hour shifts in his factory in Hospitalet on the outskirts of Barcelona, for the sake of the family and he’d listened to his papa’s stories of grandpapa and great grandpapa in Cuba with the sun in their eyes and honey in their mouths. Great grandpapa and grandpapa’s honey farm had supported the entire Moreno family through the generations. 

Luis had a little book of black and white photos, and in it grandpappy Moreno was photographed with his bees, feeding the village with his happiness and the organic honey he kept aside for his own personal use.

Grandpappy Moreno had never come to Catalonia and Luis had never managed to get to Cuba. All Luis had from grandpappy Moreno were the black and white photos and the stories from his own papa and his taste for honey, which he didn't understand and which he didn't talk about. People would think him crazy.

Luis was crying silently as he walked down the Ramblas to the Hotel Central, great rivers of tears streaming behind the backs of his eyes, but he was smiling and his smile was frozen. It was a cold March day and the sky was slate grey. People rushed in their black and Luis thought of the uniform of working life and how all people really needed was freedom. If people had freedom, maybe they wouldn't wear black. Luis hated black, hated people who wore black. To Luis, black was death and in Catalonia people were dying.

As he walked he knew he was the biggest Matryoskha doll, smartly dressed, ready for the day, in his grey uniform (no black for him, he had begged his bosses), with all the right things to say, there on his lips, the right smile for the right moment.

He’d risen early, had stood at the window of the tiny one bedroom flat he shared with Ferran, his friend and he’d scooped the honey from the jar and had eaten it straight off the spoon. The texture was warm and comforting, tasting of herbs and spice – it was the best organic honey he could find – and then he’d licked the spoon, forcing his tongue into the silvery grooves. 

This was Luis’s ritual every morning and the only way he could face his own 12-hour shift as a porter at the Hotel Central, watching the bored rich tourists who travelled only so they could box tick countries and places. 

Luis had never felt so lonely. 

Good reviews and happiness

Today, Friday 15th March 2013 (a day that is nearly over) has been a very special day for me. 

Within the space of 24 hours I have received some excellent reviews for two of my novels The Hidden and After Rafaela. The reviews, written by strangers - (and people I will never meet) - expressed a real interest in and enjoyment of my novels, and a strong appreciation of my writing. 

I have sold quite a few copies of my novels but few people take time (or have time) to review my work. Most people (and I do this) read a novel and get immersed in the story. They finish the story, then put it away and move on with their lives. This is natural and normal, after all a novel is escapism and that's where it ends. 

There are a million things in life to interest us and our attention is fractured and scattered. This makes a review even more potent to the writer. I have been writing for a long, long time. I write because to write is pure escapism. I read because to read is pure escapism. Both are blissful, but then the experience is over, and the feeling both experiences leave is put aside as one to file in the archive of memory. 

To read that my writing has affected a stranger in a profoundly positive way is like winning the lottery. A good review makes me deliriously happy. I won't say that it makes writing my novels worthwhile because I would write my novels regardless, but it is special and it is beautiful and for that I am so thankful. 

On being a woman.......

On being a woman……

Being a woman is seeing the world with wide, wide eyes……in awe of everything and tired of nothing, wanting to devour experiences, places, countries, sensations, aromas, and scenes with an energy that burns through me. 

I burn, I burn. 

Everything I want to do, I want to do with passion. I want to see everything in hyper-reality, I want to be the ethereal butterfly flitting across the Earth. 

Nobody can confine me. I live in my own country, a place that has no name and that allows no one entry but me. It's my own inner female country that is beautiful and sensual and free. 

I will walk the Earth without chains; I will make my decisions freely; I will love my children more intensely than any man; I will be encircled by my Earthly family, the communities and friends from one continent to the next who want only to live without fear. I love the money in my life, the way money keeps me safe. I am in charge of everything I earn and I spend it only on things of beauty, that enhance my life and the lives of those I love. 

I love my femaleness, adore my body, my womb, my breasts, my skin, my hair, my eyes, my mouth, the complexity of my mind, my freedom to be whoever I want to be. And nothing will stop me loving the woman I am, not age, not circumstance, not fear.....

I have shed the men in my life who have dared to try and stop me.....I surround myself with men and women who never try to force their will on me or 'tame' me.

No rule or stereotype or tradition or saying or expectation is every going to enchain me. To my female ancestors I am linked. To Huda, to Silvia, to you all, in all countries and across all time I fly with you. To the daughter in my mind I say I go with you…..

To the female half of the Earth I say I love you.....

The beauty of silence

Life is just too busy nowadays. I call my blog 'the uncomplicated life of a novelista' because my life is just too complicated to be bearable sometimes.

I live three/four lives and then there is the 'life' inside my head and my secret life.

My secret life is my writing life. I carry my secret notebook with me - right now, a green Moleskine soft cover notebook and I write in pencil. This feels real. I adore writing long hand. I like my hand-writing because in the loops and swirls of my writing I see my own 'madness'.

In my secret life, I crave simplicity and silence, because in silence I can hear the voices of my characters. In my secret life I can control the hated complication of modern existence.

But that 'silence' is often just too hard to find. Expectations are chains and I hate chains.

When I'm writing I fall passionately in love with characters. I have to, to want to write about them.

And when I have finished my novels I miss these imaginary people. They have become my friends. Sometimes I talk to them inside my mind......even after the book is out. This sounds insane I know but they keep me company. They remind me that within the complication that I was born to bear there is the silence I need to be me.

Ines and Luis in 'Honey Lemon'

I love writing about human relationships. In my next novel Honey Lemon my two main characters Ines Perez and Luis Moreno, two young Cubans, living in Barcelona, find themselves dreaming of a better future. Both work in menial jobs with no prospects; both have lost hope that things will ever get better for them. They both feel adrift in a modern Europe gripped by austerity and hopelessness.

Ines sings to her lemon tree each morning before she goes to work at the bakery Deliciós close to Gracia, believing her lemon tree holds the secrets to her existence. Luis, a porter at the Hotel Central close to the Ramblas, is addicted to the taste of organic honey. He is fascinated by honey, the texture of it and how it makes him feel when he tastes it. He saves as much of his low pay as he can afford to buy the best he can. Both feel lost in the midst of menial work, low pay, struggle, disconnection, loneliness and fear.

But Ines and Luis know there is more, more for them, more of life to be experienced.....both are young, in the prime of their life and determined to find a way to push all the bad to one side and find life's sensuality. 

Ines and Luis are beautiful people trapped by life's circumstances, but circumstances can change.......

El amor lo es todo......