[Interview] Miquel Reina is asked !

English Interview with the Incredible Miquel Reina!

I had the great opportunity to interview Miquel Reina, debut author with his novel "Lights on the Sea" which remains one of my favorite books of all time! Below, you will see my Questions and his answers, I hope, you´ll enjoy. For me, it was a huge honour to do this interview and to get in contact with Miquel. First of all, I am going to give some Basic Information About the book and the author himself.

Miquel Reina lives in Vancouver, Canada. In 2011, he received one of the most important awards in the advertising industry and his video clips were awarded several times at the Tribeca Film Festival. In 2016, Miquel Reina published his first novel» Lights at the Sea «-a book that saw a meteoric rise and sold to numerous countries.

Information Source

The Book and it´s Content

On the highest point of an island, in a house clinging to the edge of a cliff, live Mary Rose and Harold Grapes, a retired couple still mourning the death of their son thirty-five years before. Weighed down by decades of grief and memories, the Grapeses have never moved past the tragedy. Then, on the eve of eviction from the most beautiful and dangerously unstable perch in the area, they’re uprooted by a violent storm. The disbelieving Grapeses and their home take a free-fall slide into the white-capped sea and float away.

As the past that once moored them recedes and disappears, Mary Rose and Harold are delivered from decades of sorrow by the ebb and flow of the waves. Ahead of them, a light shimmers on the horizon, guiding them toward a revelatory and cathartic new engagement with life, and all its wonder.

My review of this book

If I wouldn´t be a fan of this book, i wouldn´t put that much effort in creating this blogpost, but you guys Need to explore this amazing Story!

My blog is translatable, and even if you aren´t convinced buying this book after the following interview, you really Need to check out the review I wrote from heart in order to make you gays pay Attention to this amazing Story!

And now finally: The Interview

1.) How long have you been writing?

Since I was a child I've always loved telling stories, but if I'm totally honest, I wasn´t until I started writing “Lights on the Sea” when I thought about being a writer, that was 11 years ago, back on 2008.

2.) You are the author of “Lights on the sea” which main characters are very old, was it tough to develop their character, because you maybe don´t know much about the behavior of older people?

The age of Harold and Mary Rose Grapes wasn´t the most difficult part of managing these characters. I have always had a certain obsession with time, I’ve always been a bit worried about the idea of wasting my life living the life that is expected from me and not the one I want to live, so in this sense, having two characters at the end of their lives was easy to be able to express this kind of feelings. The most difficult thing was to understand what happens to a couple who loses a child. The sequels at a personal level, the dynamics in the couple, the very complex feelings that are generated inside every person are really complicated and that was a challenge.

3.) Where is your favorite place to write?

I usually write in my home office very early in the morning or very late in the evening, when the city is quiet and there are hardly any noises that distract me. Most of the times I listen classical music to write, especially film soundtracks. They help me to enter into my desired emotional state. For my new novel I’m mostly listening the amazing Thomas Newman and Hans Zimmer.

4.) What advices would you give writers?

My advice for aspiring writers is to be PERSEVERANT. And I write it in uppercase because it's crucial. Writing a novel requires a lot of energy, sacrifice, and self-discipline, but if writing is tough, publishing is even tougher. I have spent 10 years since I began to write "Lights on the Sea" until I have seen it published on bookstores shelves. During all these years, I thought about giving up many times, I thought it was not good enough or that nobody was interested in my story, but I didn´t surrender. I continue polishing my writing, reaching new people and looking for cracks on a wall that at that moment looked impossible to bring it down. There is a quote by Randy Pausch that I use all the time to keep me motivated when things look impossible to achieve. It says “The brick walls are there for a reason. The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something. Because the brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want it badly enough. They’re there to stop the other people.”

5.) Do you plan your projects in detail (plan every chapter) or do you write spontaneous?

Before writing I spent some time working on the novel structure, something like a road map to not get lost. But I always leave myself free to improvise when I write, and it always happens that when writing, ideas or unexplored paths arise that modify that first planned structure.

6.) If you could change anything in the story, what would it be?

I don´t think I would change anything. Al least for now.

7.) What makes “Lights on the Sea” so important to you?

“Lights on the Sea” has been my first novel and a project that has accompanied me for a third of my life. I think I will never be able to completely detach myself from Harold and Mary Rose Grapes story, they have become like children to me, children of retirement age! :)

8.) Would you say that you are self-confident with the stories you write, or does it take a long time, till you become confident?

I usually spend a lot of time thinking about a story before I start writing it. For me the most important part of a novel is its concept, what do I want to convey with this story? Many times the first ideas are somewhat weak, and I need time to explore them, to test them until I feel confident enough to share it with others.

9.) What types of books do you like reading?

I like the books that entertain you but at the same time leave you a mark in your heart. For me, those are the great stories, the ones that become part of you.

10.) What does writing mean to you?

For me, writing is a way of liberation, of being able to transmit my way of seeing life to the world. When I write I also feel that I do a kind of therapy or inner meditation. I have to face emotions, characters and situations that are not part of me but at the same time force me to think outside my limits, and I love that feeling.

11.) How long did it take you to find a publisher?

I will not lie; the process was hard. I started writing the first draft of the novel in 2008 and I finished the polishing in 2014. When I first started to write the story, I haven´t any publishing pretensions but then, when I let my friends and family to read the novel, everyone insisted me to try to publish it. I thought that the hardest thing was to write the story but I was wrong. I started a long process of trying to reach publishers but nobody payed me any attention; I was an unknown author without any connections to the publishing industry. Then in 2016, I moved to Vancouver and for a while I left the project in pause. But then one day someone told me about self-publishing. Honestly, I did not have too many expectations and I decided to try it. And then everything started moving. Within a few days of self-publishing the digital version of “Lights on the Sea” in Amazon Spain, the book began to rise in the rankings of the best sellers and that was the key to unlocking access to the publishing houses. I did not have to send more emails explaining who I was, the publishers came to me. By the end of 2016 I signed a contract with Planeta, the biggest publishing house in Spanish. Then I had to remove my self-published novel from Amazon and I went from being a self-published author to a traditionally published author. During the following moths, other foreign publishing houses bought the rights of “Lights on the Sea” and in 2018, after 10 years of starting to write the novel, I was finally published on paper in Spain, Germany, Italy and in English.

12.) The story deals with love and an unlucky couple, how did you develop this idea?

Indeed, the story of "Lights on the Sea" revolves around love, love towards life, towards the dreams and aspirations that guide us through the unknown sea that is our life. I don’t think the story deals about bad luck, but of the bad things that can happen in life. It’s true that not all of us have experienced the terrible tragedy that the characters must face when losing their son, but life is not all light, there are moments of darkness, difficult moments that not only test us, but also our dreams and our love toward life.

13.) What is your favorite quote from the story?

“A home is built from our experiences, from the people we meet along the way, and, more than anything, from how we decide to journey through life. Life is movement. A precarious equilibrium that can change in an instant.”

14.) Are you currently planning other stories?

Yes, I’m currently working on my second novel, it’s still a draft so there’s still a lot of work to do but I’m really excited with it. The story is also more ambitious than “Lights on the Sea”, not only for its characteristics but also because its main theme and characters. Can’t wait to tell you more about it!

15.) In what genre would you like experiencing your writing talent (crime, children…)?

When I write, I never think about literary genres. I don’t like labels; I think their only purpose is to constrict creativity or to make marketers life easier. Many readers have been surprised after reading "Lights in the Sea" because they don´t know how to classify it. Is it adventure? Is it magical realism? Is it fantasy? ... So for now, I will continue to explore stories that speak of emotions rather than genres, because in the end, stories, like life, is a mixture of many genres.

I am really grateful, my eyes caught this book, I am grateful for you, Miquel Reina, to have come up with this amazing story and for not giving up, because this is a book, everyone should read!!!