#Interviews-in-Translation. @ElExpecial (Roberto López-Herrero). Nothing Normal about ‘Normal’ and a humorous take on Twitter and murders

Hi all:

As you know I’ve been bringing you authors who write mostly in Spanish but who’ve been exploring other markets through getting their works translated. They’ve all been special in their own way, and Roberto follows suit, as you’ll see when you read his biography. Here he is, Roberto López-Herrero.

Biography

According to Wikipedia: Roberto López-Herrero (born in Madrid in 1970) is a Spanish writer, screenwriter, actor, director and presenter of TV and radio programs.

He has worked in a variety of programs at national and autonomic level amongst the most important Pecado Original (Original Sin), Saturday Night Live, El Método Gonzo (The Gonzo Method), En Antena (On the air), Un paseo por las nubes (A walk in the clouds) and A 3 Bandas (Three Way) on TV. But the piece of work that has brought him public recognition has been the narration of Ninja Warrior, the mythical Japanese programme. He’s working on the new episodes of the programme.

As an actor he has played in some episodes of TV series such as Maneras de Sobrevivir (Ways to survive) or Saturday Night Live.

On the radio he has worked in Te doy mi palabra (I give you my word, Onda Cero), El Jardín de los Bonsais (The garden of the bonsais. Protagonistas – Punto Radio), La Mirada Cítrica (The citric look. En días como hoy – RNE), and he has collaborated in Queremos Hablar (We want to talk, Punto Radio).

In the nineties, Roberto López-Herrero co-founded Ediciones Cronópolis, a publishing company of role games active between 1993 and 1997. Some of the role games published by Ediciones Cronópolis were created by López Herrero himself, for example Superhéroes Inc.1 o Jurasia.

He is the founder of the humor website El Expecial.

He is the author of two humor novels: “Antonio mató a Luis en la cocina con un hacha porque le debía dinero” (Antonio killed Luís in the kitchen with an axe because he owed him money) and “Una conspiración mundial secuestró a mi perro para que yo no contara todo lo que sabía” (A world conspiracy abducted my dog to stop me from telling everything I knew) and of the noir novel “Normal”, but personally, says Roberto, I’m Rober.

When and how did you start writing?

“I’ve always written, in fact in 1993 I created a micro-publishing company with two friends and we published some adventure books, but it was a pre-technological era and it was impossible for us to make it work.

I wrote my first novel, «Antonio mató a Luis en la cocina con un hacha porque le debía dinero» in 2013. How did I start writing? I imagine it came from reading a lot since I was a child and wanting to tell my own stories.

What could you tell us about your experience as an indie writer:

“It has been a fabulous school. I’ve done and learned to do everything: from formatting to marketing, but it is exhausting.

What’s been the best moment (until now) in your experience as a writer?

“When my wife read my first novel and she encouraged me to publish it. Closely followed by the day when I reached number 1 in Amazon.

What are your favourite genres?

“For entertainment, my favourite genre is science-fiction, in its hardest version, the farthest away from the space opera. For my formative reading I choose a bit of everything, from the classics to the latest books as one can learn from everything.”

What made you decide to translate your novel? And how did you go about getting a translator?

“A friend of mine told me that my third novel, Normal was like a film script and Hollywood should become aware of it. That’s how I discovered babelcube.com and I decided to put my books there. The rest just seemed to happen by itself, interested translators started to appear and today they read me in English, Italian, French…”

Tell us something about your book.

“Normal is a police procedural novel where the murderer is absolutely “normal” according to demographics, and the members of the police who are chasing after him are also “normal”, and that makes me think that we don’t really know what being “normal” means.

Any advice for your writer colleagues (especially those starting up)?

Work every day, hard, as if you were working in an office. You must be rigorous with your timetable and at least, produce two thousand words per day. (It isn’t mine, it’s Stephen King’s and I’d say it has served him well.)

I understand that ‘Normal’ should be available in English version shortly, but in the meantime, you can check all his books here:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&field-author=Roberto+L%C3%B3pez-Herrero&search-alias=digital-text&text=Roberto+L%C3%B3pez-Herrero&sort=relevancerank

Personally, I’m fascinated by the title of this one (actually, the dog one too, but this one is a murder in Twitter) so…

Antonio killed Luis in the kitchen with an ax because he owed him money by Roberto López-Herrero (Author), Anca Dora Costa (Translator)

Police officer Pepe Gómez little imagined the troubles he’d get involved in when he was assigned the investigation of Luis`s murder. At first it seemed very simple but as the clever researcher enters the curious world of Twitter to investigate, an international conspiracy comes to light.

Psychopaths with multiple personalities, TV presenters addicted to alternative therapies, beautiful and sexy hackers and a lot of different characters are part of this novel`s author`s universe, Roberto López-Herrero, who, to prove his healthy mental state, made his debut with a plot of intrigue and passion, emulating Agatha Christie herself.

Or what do I know.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ZBCS69O/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00ZBCS69O/

Just in case you read in Spanish, here is the link to «Normal» (I’ll keep you posted when it becomes available in English).

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JZ4S4JG/

http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JZ4S4JG/

Thanks to Roberto López Herrero for being my guest, thank you to all of you for reading, and if you’ve found it interesting, like, share, comment and CLICK!

Olga Núñez Miret

@OlgaNM7

http://OlgaNM.wordpress.com

http://www.OlgaNM.com