Sergio Ramírez
 When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid?
Comics, I started reading comics when I was six. I read lots of them, until midnight, using a flashlight under the covers when all the lights in the house went out, to avoid any reprimand for staying up too late . My hero was Captain Marvel, but I liked The Phantom too.
When you were growing up did you have books in your home?
My mother taught literature at the high school in the town where I grew up, so she was also my teacher. She had a modest personal library where I could find The Bible, Don Quixote, Victor Hugo, Alexander Dumas, of course the poems of Ruben Dario, and also Neruda and Lorca. And when I went to the university at 17, I started reading Poe, Chekhov, Ambrose Bierce, Maupassant, because what I wanted to be was a short story teller.
When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?
As a teenager, aspiring to be a writer, I did not think in novels, only a short stories. I was obsessed with discovering the secret mechanics of writing, the techniques to get a good short story, and I learned very soon that if you wanted to have it, you needed to have first the end of it. If you had the last sentence, you had all. At the university, which was not a large one, the president, Dr. Mariano Fiallos, who was a writer himself, encouraged me to write, and to read; from him I learned that to be a writer, you need to be a dedicated reader.
How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What's good about it? What do you hate about it?
I am an early bird. I start to write about 8 in the morning every day, and when I enter my studio, and sit before the computer, I isolate myself from the outer world completely, disconnecting the phone, and my wife knows that I am not available for anybody. It lasts until lunchtime. I need to be seated there, even if the grace of invention does not descend upon me; in that case, I go back over the written pages of previous days, and work on corrections. I hate corrections, it is sometimes a despairing task; but there is no writing without amending, changing, and suppressing words and paragraphs, even eliminating entire pages.
Any particular story to tell concerning the writing of this book?
I did a lot of research, especially on photography. I have been always fascinated with the images captured by the camera, particularly in the beginnings of this art form, and in more than one sense this is a novel based on the mysterious premises of photography. Once, in Lagunilla, the vast flea market of Mexico City, before finishing the novel, I spent a whole day looking for old photos of people that could match my characters; and I found there, in the dusty boxes, all of them. It was like entering into the darkroom of my own imagination.
What is some good advice that you've received concerning writing? What's some advice that you could offer young writers?
Writing is a matter of discipline, strict discipline. You can be gifted with the most powerful imagination, but you can throw it away easily if you do not put it into written language. Without words, imagination is doomed to perish. Then a writer must write like a typist in a solitary office.
How did you find the publisher for this book?
Through my literary agent in Barcelona, Antonia Kerrigan. And I am very happy one marvelous person like Antonia put another marvelous person like Bruce McPherson in my way.
What are you working on at the moment?
My last book El cielo llora por mí (The sky cries for me), has been just published in Madrid and Mexico. It is a black novel about drug trafficking, set in contemporary Managua. Now I am in the process of deciding which will be my next one; it takes some time to choose a subject among those which imagination offers me.
What are you reading?
The Comedians, by Graham Greene. It is my second reading of this novel after 30 years. I must write an article on Haiti, and I will take it with me as a travel companion when I go there this week.
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