Noir

For years now I've been a regular contributor to Spanish satirical magazine El Jueves. In late 2010 I began publishing a series of super short stories under the title Noir. They built upon detective fiction clichés (the dramatic sunlight through closed blinders, the laid-back private eye narrating in the first person) allowing me to skip through the descriptions and jump into the jokes. I guess I'd been reading Raymond Chandler at the time and wanted to try it. They looked like this.

I don't feel like translating it.
Take it from me: it's hilarious.

Noir ran for twenty weeks, whereupon I switched to the horror genre with a new series, Gotik, but I was always proud of some of the material and wanted to expand it into something longer, provided I found some genre-breaking element to throw in. Hopefully that would be an original detective, because my first-person narrators have this annoying tendency to resemble me.

When I came up with the detective, I wrote  a novel. This was late 2012; I had just finished The Supernatural Enhancements in English, but nobody had yet confirmed it was intelligible, so I exerted caution and went with Spanish for this one. I showed it to several publishers in the following years; they all passed. In late 2016 I translated it to English and showed it to my agent and my editor at Doubleday. Both said, "It's the best thing you've ever written." And it's my upcoming book. :)

Meddling Freebies #3: Teen Sleuth Rules

An idea for a series of badges: the rules of teen detective fiction (mild spoilers: all of them are struck out in Meddling Kids). These never went past the Photoshop stage.

By the way, if you don't own your MK copy yet, or want to own an extraordinarily dirty one, Doubleday is throwing a holiday giveaway of signed books! Signed, doodled and pencil-colored by an author with very little real work to do. Follow @doubledaybooks on Instagram for a chance to win now! The girls will be given away today, and the boys are on their way!

Meddling Freebies #2: Bookmarks

I designed these as giveaways at conventions when we were pitching swag for MK. I have shared the front pictures before: the foreground kids are mine, whereas the silhouetted adults were drawn by artist Jordi March, who was also the photographer for the story on the Pennaquick Telegraph in the book.

Each model included a different quote from the depicted character on the back.

A fifth bookmark contains the rules for Word Bluff, the official Blyton Summer Detective Club car trip game. Try it at home!

Meddling Freebies #1: Meddling Comic!

In the week before Halloween, Meddling Kids has gone into its sixth reprint. And I'm as happy as an author whose novel has gone into its sixth reprint. (Yeah, guess what: without my editor I am incapable of creating metaphors.)

To celebrate the spoopy reads season, I thought I'd share some of the promotional material I made. I posted glimpses of this comic while in the making, but never the whole thing. This was supposed to accompany the early copies of MK that are sent to distributors and booksellers, as a way to introduce the book and myself to them. Although it says I'm a cartoonist there on the side column, and it's true, I don't draw comics these days, and even when I used to publish them in El Jueves full pages were not that common. This is far from perfect, but I'm happy with parts of it. It's spoiler-free, but those who have read MK will notice some inside jokes. Enjoy!

So Many Damn Books!

I went to visit these kids in Park Slope to record an episode of their booky podcast, and they were excellent hosts. We talked teen detectives, adult criminals, what Enid Blyton and H.P. Lovecraft had in common (it's not good), and they invited me to a signature cocktail (that was really good, as you can tell by my dangerous lack of inhibition toward the end). You can listen to it on iTunes or livestream or on their own website.

Or you can try the cocktail at home.