This week we have a blog from Crime Cymru’s Cal Smyth who describes the personal background to his latest work and how terrible adversity can on occasion inspire creativity.
Barcelona Noir:
Darkness, Virtuality & the Possibility of Love
Reality
Kina edges around a sky-spired corner of Gaudi’s neogothic masterpiece and scans Carrer de Mallorca for any signs of life. The palm-lined street is as dead as the Catalan architect, Gaudi’s remains in the cathedral’s crypt.
Those are the opening lines of my latest novel – a romantic, psychological thriller set in a real and virtual Barcelona. But just as one of the novel’s two protagonists was anticipating danger, subconsciously so was I. Not only as a writer, but also in my roles as a father and a son.
Winter of Change
As I sat on the terrace at the back of my apartment in Gracia, I closed my eyes in the January sunshine, listened to the sounds of the barrio, and felt tears run down my cheeks. I was crying in happiness.
I’d wanted to live in Barcelona since April 2019. It was St Jordi’s Day back then, the Catalan festival of books and love and I was walking to my hotel from a creative writing conference in Ateneu Barcelonès – a beautiful, semi-hidden building named after the Greek Goddess of Wisdom.
Almost four years later, I was in a city I loved and starting a new job. As I re-explored Barcelona, life felt good. In February, I attended BCNegra, Barcelona’s crime fiction festival. I also popped into the Mobile World Congress, where the latest tech was on show, including a demonstration of a virtual reality gaming experience.
I saw Barcelona as a city of books and tech, of crime and romance, of adventure and exploration. Inspired by a few women I knew and my own visions, I came up with the idea for a novel called Virtuality – a two-handed thriller and love story with a female and male character searching for themselves and each other.
The female protagonist is a dynamic businesswoman, who seems to fear nothing in life – apart from love. While the male character is an imaginative dreamer, who has a dark side he avoids. And in Virtuality, both characters can experience reality without it being physically real.
But as I started to make notes and structure the novel, my mind was very unsettled. Maybe those tears weren’t only shed in happiness. Maybe they were also an expression of a deep sadness that I wasn’t allowing myself to feel.
While the new job allowed me to be in Barcelona, the lack of creativity and freedom to shape narrative in the role was slowly destroying my soul. I also wasn’t sleeping well, either with bouts of insomnia or long nightmares about my parents and my son.
Five months earlier, my stepdad had had a very serious stroke, leaving him without speech or movement. Living in The Netherlands at the time, I had flown to the UK the next day, joining my mum, brother and sister at the hospital in Swansea. My stepdad has since recovered some movement but not his speech and while he sometimes shows signs of awareness and recognition, it is impossible to tell exactly how much he is aware of. The impact on his and my mum’s lives has been horrendous.
Around the same time, my son also had his own troubles to overcome. After his teachers told me over a video call that he would fail his A-levels, my son defied them all and passed everything, even getting an A in Maths. Not only this, but he never gave up on his driving lessons and passed at the second attempt. And he got his first job, deciding to take a year out from education. I told him how proud I was of his resilience, but as with any of us, life and love can take its toll.
So we went on a father son flight and road trip, taking in Gaudi’s architecture in Barcelona, a Balkan birthday bash in Slovenia and cinema outings in Maastricht. As I moved to Barcelona at the start of the year, my son seemed back on track, but as his dad, of course, his wellbeing pervaded my thoughts.
Meanwhile, with my stepdad moved into a care home, my mum hated him being there. She wanted him in their own home, so one day, she basically kidnapped him. It was a legendary act of love, but it has also meant she has become his full time carer, with both their lives completely changed.
Summer of Darkness
As winter turned into spring, then summer, this ebb and flow of life’s challenges continued. While my brother and sister were in the UK and there for my parents, I was living in another country, unable to provide much support. My job was starting to make me really unhappy. And the relationship I was in at the time ended in a bad way.
One day, I was standing in my apartment when I blacked out, fell and cracked my head. Having been physically fit all my life, I had never experienced anything like this and went to get myself checked by the local doctor, who immediately sent me to hospital emergency intake. There, the doctors and nurses were amazing, whisking me in for a brain scan, as well as taking my blood and monitoring my heart.
After keeping me in for twelve hours, the doctor declared that my brain, heart and blood were all good. While it was a relief to find I was physically fine, it meant I needed to sort out a few things psychologically.
As I embarked on a physical and mental reset, those summer months were one of the darkest phases of my life I’ve ever had to get through.
I ran and swam and walked every day. I changed job, finding one where I could be part of a creative collaboration. I didn’t hide from the darkness or sadness, but faced both.
I felt the love and support of some amazing people. I loved hearing about my son’s adventures as he travelled around Croatia and Spain. And I channelled all the emotion into my novel as I wrote like a demon.
As I walked the streets, I wondered about the city’s history. Was all the beauty a cover up for its dark past? Take Plaça Felip Neri for example. It’s a quaint little square with a terrible history marked on the church walls.
The story that is well known is of Franco’s bombs killing all the children who were in the school and church. What is not so well known is that Gaudi was on his way to the same church when he was knocked down by a horse and carriage a few streets away – Gaudi dying from his injuries a few days later. And in modern times, just a few minutes away and almost parallel to the square, is where the terrorist van ended up on La Rambla.
Maybe it’s a bit fanciful to think there is some kind of magnetic force luring death to that particular area, but it made me think how I could use the setting of Barcelona in Virtuality. And in turn, how Virtuality could be used for the characters’ journeys. Amidst the architectural beauty, Barcelona is also a city of people seemingly searching for something new in their lives – whether it is secret clubs, mushroom shamans or mindfulness gurus. I wanted to capture this and use it within my novel.
One day, as I was walking home from work, I stopped in a church. I have no religious beliefs, just wanted the sanctuary of a silent space. I was completely alone in the cavernous aisles and as I sat on a bench, I couldn’t stop tears rolling down my cheeks. These were definitely tears of sadness.
Although I thought I was alone, a soft cough got my attention. Turning to the side, I saw a confession box and could just about make out a priest seemingly staring at me. With nothing to lose, I headed over to the confessional and went inside.
I explained that I didn’t speak Spanish and the priest responded in gravel-voiced English, sounding like an aging Mafia boss who had smoked all his life. After hearing what I was sad about, the priest suggested that I shouldn’t forget to love myself. I appreciated the wisdom, only for the priest to excitingly ask me to tell him my sins. I replied that I probably had too many, but he was adamant as he said: ‘tell me your worst sins, your worst ones!’
I’m not sure if I told the priest my worst sins, but I gave him one of them. He thought about it, then told me to do ten Hail Marys and come to church on Sundays. It wasn’t a solution that would work for me, but I left the church feeling thoughtful about life and love – both for myself and the characters in Virtuality.
Autumn of Hope
In September, I was back in Wales to help my son move to Cardiff Uni where he is studying Architectural Engineering. It was more emotional for me than him I guess, but I was so happy to see how he has embraced life and I told him what an amazing young man he is.
Stopping in Swansea, I drove my mum and stepdad to the beach. While I pushed my stepdad around the coastal walk in his wheelchair, my mum went for her customary swim in the sea. Their lives are still permanently changed, but it was a moment of respite.
Returning to Barcelona, I was enjoying my new job, where I could come up with creative concepts and collaborate with talented colleagues to script video teasers and interview people for a series called Behind the Minds.
Having given my novel a break and taken time to absorb feedback, I rewrote and edited it. There were plenty of external obstacles, but the characters needed to face and overcome more internal conflicts. The metaphor and philosophy of Virtuality itself also needed to be more entwined in the plotline.
Virtuality
As the CEO of a VR company in Barcelona, Kina strives to stop a virus from killing her creation. As a narrative designer, Liam searches the city for a woman he’s fallen in love with. Can she escape virtual versions of Barcelona and return to reality? Can he reach her in time so that she stays alive and they both have a chance at love?
That’s the novel’s storyline. On the surface, Virtualityis a romantic thriller, but it is also a psychological journey into the emotional depths of a woman and a man as they fight real fears. A journey into hearts of darkness and light. It is not a love story. It is the possibility of a love story beginning.
You can read more about Cal Smyth on this link
Crime Cymru 
I found this very moving, Cal
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