The Supernatural Enhancements was only my English debut. Before that, I had authored two novels in Catalan. In fact, my second book came out five years ago this week. Whereas my first, Dormir amb Winona Ryder ("Sleeping with Winona Ryder", 2007) received awards and considerable academic attention, you're unlikely to ever read about my second—not to mention read it, pending your learning a language with scant job prospects. So today I'd like to show you my second book.
This was the cover. Actually this was my proposal for it; the real thing kept the art, but toned down the comic-book style. But the art was mine, and you wouldn't believe how many weeks it took me. Here's the first sketch:
Vallvi was set in an alternate-history Vallvidrera. Vallvidrera is an actual suburb of Barcelona, and most of the geography in the book was real. I drew this Tolkien-inspired map to help foreigners keep up.
But I wasn't the only artist involved. One element in the plot was an underground comic-book that related some Vallvidreran backstory. One of my beta-readers and frequent collaborator Jordi March suggested that the comic be featured inside the novel. So I wrote it, he drew it, and this was the result.
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| There were eight pages of this! |
I'm not going to tell you much of the plot, but let's just say there was a lot going on. And I had much fun writing it. Really; it's not my memory idealizing the past: much of the process was actually recorded on my Fotolog (yes, it was 2010 and I was still using Fotolog, oh em gee, el oh el), and I look happy there.
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| From my Fotolog archives: The fuel of champions. |
This is the plot board. Not very enlightening, but it looked cool on the wall.
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| (Warning: spoilers for Catalan readers!) |
And these are some photos I took during my frequent hikes to Vallvidrera, on the mountains north of Barcelona. Many spots were incorporated into the book, but where the real Vallvi is like a peaceful little village, mine had become a lawless punk dystopia taken over by eurotrash, gangsters, and violent junkies.
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I had to write at home, but I used to take notes on the field. I'm very proud of this crucial passage, which made it to the book verbatim.
The main character was this young hipster author Edgar Cantero with a promising career in the highbrow Barcelona scene—until he visits Vallvidrera and his literary leitmotifs are ruined by drugs, car chases and punk superheroes. Those things are hard to write in Catalan, which is a language more suitable for 19th century rural dramas than psychedelic trips and action sequences. To try and overcome this difficulty I made up a Vallvi slang, borrowing words from English and French. A five-page appendix provided some assistance, and I later designed these "Learn Vallvi" cards with some definitions.
And to top it all, since I'd ended up with a bunch of sexy colorful badass characters, I came up with some stickers! Looking back, I made for Vallvi the most sophisticated art in my life.
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What did all this effort result in? Well, Vallvi came out in June 2011. It sold no more than 500 copies. [Edited 2019: 8 years later, it's safe to say the publisher destroyed the surplus.] It got little media attention and very few reviews. The one I liked most, after attempting to summarize the overpopulated plot, ended with, "You will likely think it's all excessive, crazy, and overwhelming. It is, and that's why it's funny."
I never got published in my country again. If you asked the people who in the wake of Dormir amb Winona Ryder called me a "promising" author, the few who remember my name would tell you I never delivered.
Second books come with their own set of concerns and anxieties: living up to expectations and all that stuff. I despise that cliché, but damn, it was so real for me! Vallvi was so greatly shaped up by that "second book syndrome" that I turned it into a "fuck-the-second-book-syndrome-book." In it I tried to say that calling someone "promising" is not flattery; at best, it's condescension. All it does is undervalue the work that person has already done. Vallvi said, almost in as many words, "fuck literature, I won't mature. I will live here in the mountains, get drunk, and keep dreaming of Winona Ryders—the one in America, and the two new ones I fell in love with while writing this—and all my effort will be aimed toward impressing them, not you; all my skill to try to pour into words the beauty they inspire me."
It's a guideline I still abide by, as you'll see in Meddling Kids. Which will be awesome. :)