1) Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you get into writing?
When I went to university in Buenos Aires I first signed up to journalism. Mainly because my family tried to derail me from studying acting, and this was the only other thing I wanted to do. I felt I was going to write, not sure what. Maybe for the travel section of a paper one day, or as a correspondent going away around the world on assignments. I left after one year, to study Drama full-time. I still wrote stories for myself, and I minored in Creative Writing.
2) What inspired you to write your book?
I began writing to try to understand what was going on with me at a certain moment. I was very uncomfortable with the expectations placed on me as a woman, being expected to want to get married, to want to change my name, I thought it was outrageous. I was hurting someone I loved with these feelings. At the same time I could not betray myself. I felt alone and wanted to speak to my teenage self, my child self, to figure out my situation, I wondered if there was something very wrong with me. So I wrote a story which now is chapter 5, a day at a wedding when I was a child.
3) What theme or message do you hope readers will take away from your book?
Everyone who connects with the book enough to read it will take their own, I would like to stay out of that. That connection is enough, I just hope they take away something useful for their lives.
4) What drew you into this particular genre?
Maybe the introspection I needed. I didn’t mean to write a book or be in a genre. I just wanted to put down a story to make a short film, to talk about the expectations put on me, and then there were more stories that came out because I was in a writing class. After about a year I looked at everything I had written and the short film had been left behind, the book was there plus many more pages to get rid of.
5) What social media site has been the most helpful in developing your readership?
Instagram is the only social media I have, and there are new independent publishers and independent book-shops that showcase writers, new ones and older ones. They make curious and want to get new books.
6) What advice would you give to aspiring or just starting authors out there?
Joining a writing workshop to work on ideas was very useful to me. I will do it again. Apart from developing skills there, to feel like I am working with other people. Being an actor I am used to working with groups of people. Then there were times when I had to be writing on my own for a long time of course, but writing is such a lonely thing to do, and quite torturous to me, and this way I felt less alone in it for a while.
7) What does the future hold in store for you? Any new books/projects on the horizon?
I am inspired to tell other people´s stories at the moment. I am working on one idea and researching now, I am not sure what shape it will take exactly, but it is already going in a certain direction.
About the Author
Dolores Reynals was born in Mendoza, Argentina. She started out as a radio actress before moving to London to attain her BA (Hons) in Drama from the University of Surrey. Since then she has worked internationally and now lives nowhere in particular, often between Europe and Mexico.
https://www.doloresreynals.com
