LORENZO SAUCHELLI – PHP and Front-End Developer at Santex
-
Is Lucero del Alba your first novel? Have you written anything else?
Well, it’s my first novel in quite a while, and it’s also the first one I intend to actually publish once it’s done.
When I was younger I used to spend most of my day writing (either in Spanish or English, whatever fit my mood at the moment). I wrote and completed one fantasy novel, started others that I never finished, in addition to several short stories.
I have to admit that I have recently re-read a few of my older stories and figuratively puked. My writing back then wasn’t all that good. It wasn’t bad. But I certainly thought I was better than I actually was. I hope I have grown since then and that my current stuff is actually good and not just ‘good’ in my opinion.
-
What is the novel about?
Lucero del Alba is a fantasy story about two girls who, when their parents send them to camp for the duration of their summer break, get lost in another world. One of these girls finds a strange-looking morningstar – basically a warhammer with spikes. Soon they realize the world they’re stuck in is not exactly Lord of the Rings, but a kind of prison-world for all the supernatural monsters that roamed through the ages. One of these monsters is responsible for bringing them there and intends to use them so they can break out of this supernatural prison.
-
How long have you been writing it?
I started it four years ago, plotted it, wrote some scenes, created characters and the rules of the world. However, I didn’t touch it for all of many years until recently, when I dusted off my rusty writing skills and notes and decided to go ahead and write the whole thing.
-
What inspired you to write it?
Dreams, movies, cartoons, books. Everything inspires me. I don’t think there was any one particular thing that inspired me and made me say, “Yes, that’s going to be my book!”
For instance, the concept of a girl lost in a strange fantasy world perhaps came from “Labyrinth”, which was a favorite of mine as a kid. The concept of the snarky girl protagonist came from Daria. The rest… it just gets foggy in my mind. A lot of it is inspired by stuff I wrote when I was younger: there’s this creature that’s a hulking monstrosity and it has cobras coming off its back, and it has a mask that covers its face completely. It’s my rendition of a gorgon. I wrote about this monster when I was 15, and I decided to recycle the idea into this novel, because I like how it looks in my mind’s eye.
For a while, before I finally decided to write it as a novel, I wanted to make this story into a videogame, “Battle Wizard Morningstar”. A lot of the ideas I have written in the current iteration of the novel come from this ‘gaming’ phase. I had some character models and everything set up, but discovered that the time needed to make a game is completely different from the time needed to write a novel. You can write a novel if you dedicate some fifteen minutes a day to it, but you need several hours every single day if you want to make a game.
When I finally decided that I was not making a game, but a novel instead, I started writing in English, with the working title of “Morningstar”. I thought that it would have a better chance of finding readers if it was written in English. However soon I scratched that idea and translated everything back to Spanish, and consequently it became “Lucero del Alba” again.
I will probably write it in English sooner or later, but for now I’m focusing on finishing it in Spanish.
-
Who are your favorite authors?
There are way too many to make a list. But the ones I like to read and re-read quite often are probably Borges, Tolkien, Hemingway, Doyle, Christie, and a few others.
Currently I’m a fan of Max Landis, a writer who has an amazing ability to pitch incredible stories in the blink of an eye. He’s also behind two of my favorite short movies of all time: “The Death and Return of Superman” and “Wrestling Isn’t Wrestling”. He also wrote “Chronicle”, a fantastic story about kids who gain telekinetic powers.
-
What’s your dream as a writer?
To publish my book and have people I know read it and tell me what they think. Does it suck? Is it good? Did you like that thing that happened in the sixth chapter? I want to have this conversation with people in real life.
After that? I will hopefully start another novel right after the first one is complete.
You can read some of Lorenzo’s work here.
