They have not gone through 24 hours since one of the best-kept secrets of the Spanish literary world, the identity of the best-selling Carmen Mola, and its creators, the winners of the Millionaire Planet Award this year, have already missed anonymity.
“It was very comfortable, we loved it, you did not affect you both the criticism, you still had your life when you took a novel …”, Jorge Díaz recognizes.
“There is something very healthy in eliminating this obsession by the author, for knowing who he is, how he saw him, what life he has,” says Agustín Fernández.
“If Carmen Mola has worked is because the stories have liked the readers, getting out of the ego is difficult but we try to leave it out of the room. In the end, we do not care so much,” he adds.
Last night, the mobile phones of these three tanned screenwriters were filled with messages from friends and some other “ghostly childhood appearance”.
They all told them the same after the congratulations of rigor: “What a calladito you had it”.
And it is that out of the circuits of Nir Patrio, little was known about the identity of Carmen Mola.
In spite of everything, the three wanted to break the spell because besides comfortable, anonymity has also sometimes been “a scorching secret,” Antonio Mercero admits.
“We were tired of lying. That’s why we thought about getting out of the closet over high, with great electrical appliance,” he joked Diaz.
“Lately we had the feeling that at any moment I could skip the secret and we did not want us to unmask us. Better to do it”.
And if it is with a million euros, better than better.
How do you write to six hands?
“Our Academy has been the script and there we are more than accustomed to teamwork,” explains Mercero, the creator of the Emergencies series together with Díaz, where they worked 12 years.
Its modus operandi has, in fact, more planning on Excel sheet than to be carried away from the blank page: all three tend to be talking, discussing and conscientiously designing the frames, turns, characters and structures of the
Chapters and, once the skeleton is plotted to the millimeter, work is distributed and wrote.
“We try to reach consensus, that the three like everything always, as a good democracy, although sometimes there has been to resort to bullying,” Bomese Mercero.
“We all do everything, but each one has its strengths: Agustín is the best plotting, Antonio gives the Mercer Play to the final phrases and it is very good for the construction of characters,” explains Jorge, that departs in the adjunctions
.
“It looks like a miracle that we have four novels and we are not taking my eyes. We never fight, but it is thinly difficult,” says Agustín, who considers that “park the self and put the story ahead” is one of the keys to his
success.
The history of Carmen Mola shows that the sum of factors does alter the product.
The name occurred to them because they were looking for something that was simple and easy to pronounce.
“Carmen occurred to us and it’s cool … it’s not a joke, but almost. We think: Carmen, Mola! And in the most silly way we find the pseudonym,” explains Diaz.
Then, when the snowball was growing, some biographical detail had to be invented with which to fill the flap of the books.
Nobody escapes that the idea of a three-child institute teacher who in the morning gives classes of algebra and in the afternoons, in his free time, he writes novels of an ultra wild violence and macabra has been, seen what was seen
, A good marketing operation.
But they deny such intentionality: “What to choose a woman name was not a thing thought, we do not want to send any message, we could have put it R2-D2, but we put Carmen Mola.”
Fernández coincides: “More than thinking things, we were reacting to them. Reality rolled us. Maybe we would have known that we would end up writing four novels we would have thought a little more, but at that moment it was a fun.”
The most crazy that have come to hear about Carmen Mola is that behind the pseudonym, Manuela Carmena hid.
The beast, 500 pages, will go out on the street on November 4, and oddly as it seems, will live in bookstores with the next delivery of Carmen Mola starred by researcher Elena Blanco who will publish competition, Alfaguara, in spring of 2022.
“We have a contract for mothers, it is not delivered, but very advanced now, we are combing it,” explains Díaz, who cites Rosa Montero as an example of the author that simultaneously the two large editorial rivals: Penguin and Planet, where Seix Barral publishes
The Husky Bruna series.
The television series, which will be released in autumn in Atresmedia, will begin to shoot this January in Madrid.
The winner of the planet is a mixture of thriller and historical novel with the Madrid of 1934 Stage: the Carlist Wars and Cholera ASFIXIAN to a city where the restrictions and confinement of the sick and the suspicion with symptoms are the daily bread
.
The novel opens with a raw and wild image, brand of the house: the sectioned head of a girl covered in mud, lying on the floor of a dirty street.
“We do not know if Ellen White will live much more, it depends on whether novels or not, we are used to this because when you make a television series, if you have a hearing you have to write more, if not, stops and point. We would like to write
A new novel by Carmen Mola every year, whether it is from the style, but it will depend on how readers’ receive it, “reflects Díaz.
“The day we stopped like we will have to look for other ways.”
