We’re thrilled to have here today MAGDALENA FUENTES from Colin Falconer’s romantic thriller, NAKED IN HAVANA. She is coming to us all the way from … well she still won’t give out those details, even today, for security reasons.
It is a pleasure to have her with us today at The Literary Nook!
Thank you so for this interview, Magdalena. Now that the book has been written, do you feel you were fairly portrayed or would you like to set anything straight with your readers?
No, I dictated most of it, so it’s as it was. As the author says, I was a bitch when I first met Reyes, a spoiled bitch, but I was young and beautiful and I thought I could do what I want. Angel soon taught me different. So did Reyes, though in a much kinder way, in the end.
What do you believe is your strongest trait?
Well Reyes always said I had spirit. I faced down one of America’s biggest gangsters when he wanted to buy my father’s nightclub and I seduced John Kennedy, so I guess in my day I had a bit of zip in me.
Worst trait?
I have a temper. Angel would say that, God rest his soul. I threw him naked in the street once and shut his hand in the car door as my chauffeur was driving off. Made sure he had to run after me for once! So yes, I guess he’s right, I’d say I had a temper.
Do you have a love interest in the book?
I have two. I’m not a girl who does things by halves.
At what point of the book did you start getting nervous about the way it was going to turn out?
At what point? Right from the beginning point, when that maricón Angel took my virginity then told me he’d just got engaged to that bloodless mafia princess from Miami Beach. I guess I was plenty nervous then. It’s also about then I started losing my temper.
If you could trade places with one of the other characters in the book, which character would you really not want to be and why?
My papi. My father put up with so much from me. He loved me to death, that man. I would not like to have been father to a spoiled bitch like me all those years as well as run one of Havana’s most exclusive nightclubs. The man was a saint, God rest his soul. He deserved better.
How do you feel about the ending of the book without giving too much away?
The ending of the first book? There’s still some nights I wake up in a sweat thinking about it. I don’t know why I forgave Reyes for what he did. But I guess by the end of the third book I was feeling a bit better about him. But there’s still some nights, when he’s asleep, I feel like hitting him with a blunt object when I think about that last night in Havana.
What words of wisdom would you give your author if she decided to write another book with you in it?
I don’t know why he wanted to write about me in the first place. Because I was so beautiful and spunky I think, and he has a thing for spunky, beautiful women. But if I was him I’d stay away from writing about Latin women with hot tempers in the future; who wants to read about what they get up to in Hollywood, about their sordid affairs in Havana nightclubs and about sleeping with John Kennedy?
Thank you for this interview. Will we be seeing more of you in the future?
Naked in Havana is part of a trilogy, so I guess that’s up to you. But I told Falconer, after the third book, that’s it. After what we did to Angel and all that drug money, we still have so many people looking for us, still. You’d think that after all these years they’d forget about it! So no, we’ve kept out of the limelight all these years, we intend to keep it that way after this.
About the Book
But fate doesn’t care whether we believe
in it or not...
Havana, 1958. Magdalena
Fuentes knows that Angel Macheda is the only man for her, even after he takes
her virginity and then tells her he is engaged to someone else. She knows they
are meant to be.
So why can she not stop
thinking about Reyes Garcia? From the moment I saw you, he says, I
knew there would be no one else.
From the moment I saw
you, she
tells him, I knew you were arrogant, conceited and rude.
Magdalena is a girl who
will not let sentiment stand between her and love. But as Fidel Castro’s rebels
tighten their grip around the city and she watches her family and her whole
life come apart, she learns hard lessons about love abd about life.
Against the backdrop of
the boleristas and the gangsters, the music and the guns, Magdalena
discovers just how dangerous love can be.
Naked in Havana is the first in a three
part series, a sprawling epic of passion and destiny, stretching across three
decades and two continents.
About the Author
Colin Falconer was born
in North London, and spent most of his formative years at school playing
football or looking out of the window wishing he was somewhere else.
After failing to make
the grade as a professional football player, he spent much of his early years
traveling, hitch-hiking around Europe and North Africa and then heading to
Asia.
His experiences in
Bangkok and India later inspired his thriller VENOM, which became a debut
bestseller in the UK and his adventures in the jungles of the Golden Triangle
of Burma and Laos were also filed away for later, the basis of his OPIUM series
about the underworld drug trade.
He later moved to
Australia and worked in advertising, before moving to Sydney where he
freelanced for most of Australia’s leading newspapers and magazines, as well as
working in radio and television.
He has over 40 books in
print. HAREM was an enormous bestseller in Germany and THE NAKED HUSBAND was
only kept out of the number one spot in Australia by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code.
AZTEC stayed on the bestseller lists in Mexico for four months. He is a
bestseller in Europe and his work has sold into translation in 23 countries
around the world.
He travels regularly to
research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the
bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across
Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in
La Paz. He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.
He did not write for
over five years following personal tragedy but returned to publishing in 2010
with the release of SILK ROAD and then STIGMATA. His historical novel ISABELLA
was an Amazon bestseller last year.
His likens his fiction
most closely to Wilbur Smith and Ken Follett – books with romance and high
adventure, drawn from many periods of history.
His latest book is the
romantic suspense, Naked
in Havana.
Visit his website at www.colinfalconer.org.
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