I’m in the hopefully last stage of revising that novel I wrote mostly back in May, “My Own Desert Places”, because I intend to self-publish it as an ebook, and it lacked a bio section, so this morning I wrote one. I’ll likely revise it in the future, but this seems good enough to place at the end of the ebook. It’s not like most people read through this stuff.

I was born in 1985, in the north of Spain, right in the border with France. For as long as I can remember I have felt uneasy around people, and I have preferred to isolate myself and interact instead with the worlds and characters that kept popping in my head. Besides translating those daydreams into written stories, I also drew comics up until high school. I’m an anxious person, easily agitated by any kind of change or stress, and prone to falling into the rabbit holes of obsessions. Generally an unpleasant guy to be around.

I was good with computers, so I studied to become a programmer. However, those jobs in the private sector were either too stressful for my fragile mind, or I got discarded, despite my technical skills, because I wasn’t perceived as a team player. I’m weird and make people uncomfortable. At this point I realized I was fucked and I may end up living with my parents forever. I went to therapy with little success, until a couple of psychiatrists realized I have high-functioning autism, formerly called Asperger’s syndrome. Ironically, I had thrown out the possibility of having this neurological condition, because I thought that one needed to be good at math, and unemotional. That’s what happens when you get your facts from popular fiction written by normies. So if you want to get an impression of how reality feels like through the lens of high-functioning autism, you may be interested in my fiction. Warning: it’s disturbing. Anyway, I eventually got a job as a computer technician at a hospital, which I can tolerate.

My life was a mess. I failed to write for long periods, as I believed that nobody would publish my shit. However, that gave me the chance to learn how to play the guitar, which became one of my most fulfilling hobbies apart from reading and masturbating. I consider that learning how to play an instrument was key to figuring out how to bypass my conscious mind and access my subconscious at will, which I rely on during every writing session.

I didn’t want to die without at least trying to publish some of my stories, so I got serious and attended a few writing courses. I discovered that I dislike most writers, I don’t share their reasons for why they need to write, and my tastes clash with theirs. They were disheartening experiences. I ended up writing six novellas in Spanish that became my two books “Los reinos de brea” and “Los dominios del emperador búho”. I sent them around, but no traditional publisher wanted them. When I ended up self-publishing them, they didn’t sell for shit. The whole experience taught me that nobody cared about what I did, and that due to my peculiarities I would never find my place in this life. I stopped writing for a couple of years.

However, the daydreams didn’t stop, and I kept receiving sparks for stories that felt compelling, so I thanked whatever demons still believe in me and I started writing again, this time just for myself and in English, the language in which I always felt more comfortable. I didn’t think I have any business writing in a different language than my native tongue, and I doubted that I could do it well enough, but I said to myself, “Fuck it, I’ll do it anyway,” which is how I usually push through my mental barriers. This time I know that nobody will publish my shit, so I write without the slightest thought of whether anything I include in my stories will bother some faceless, oversensitive gatekeeper. I’m only writing to satisfy my lurid desires and to drag myself out of the cycles of depression. If anything I write makes someone else happy, even better.