Love in the Time of Double 'Check': Marina Romero's Debut in Romantic Fiction

A few weeks ago, I accompanied veterinarian Fabiola Quesada as she operated on rhinoceroses and lions in the African savannah for a new television format that ... will soon premiere on RTVE. Today, she speaks from the jungle of Madrid, her usual ecosystem, where she has lived for 15 years and the city that inspired her first novel. The journalist from Malaga, Marina Romero, makes the leap from television to literature with 'As if the World Cared' (Roca Editorial), a love story among millennials, a portrait of the way we fall in love in the times of the double 'check' and Instagram peephole. She will present it on December 9th at home, at the Rayuela Bookstore (7:00 PM).

She has been writing stories and tales since she was a teenager, but, as is often the case with most first novels, it was a personal experience that sparked the idea. Just like Lía, her protagonist, she is a communication professional with a fulfilling job that takes her around the world, with friendships that are like family and more or less sporadic romantic relationships. Happily single. "I was 35 years old and it had been a long time since I was curious about anyone. But suddenly comes a guy who shakes everything up, just when I was so calm… And I got the urge to write literature again." On the subway, on mobile notes, in the work notebook. Lía took shape and filled page after page, even when that special person left her life.

The Book

• Title 'As if the World Cared.'

• Author Marina Romero

• Publisher RocaEditorial

• Presentation December 9 at 7:00 PM at Rayuela Bookstore.

There is a lot of her in Lía, it's no secret. "I did a bit of catharsis, yes, but one day I left all the responsibility to Lía," says Marina Romero. She added stories from friends she borrowed "without asking permission," to compose a radiography of current relationships, where WhatsApp and Instagram 'stories' have "a lot of responsibility." "My friends live in fear of appearing in the book," she laughs.

Her Lía is a contemporary Carrie Bradshaw, a 35-year-old sports journalist, empowered and liberated, who lives love as she pleases and has made herself three promises: never to fall in love again, not to cry over a guy, and not to celebrate Halloween. "Each of these promises is linked to a story that happened to her and that puts her at a point where, indeed, she feels like nothing." Until Abel appears, "a very sexy singer," and she breaks her word.

'As if the World Cared' confronts the reader with their own way of relating. "We are going to look at a mirror when we fall in love, whether we like what we see or not." Because Marina Romero does not shy away from the "love miseries," those things that are not even told to friends out of embarrassment, "like you've taken two days off your vacation to see if he replies and you meet up." "She has done things she did not like about herself." Like everyone. "That's why this book is about reconciling with your own story," summarizes the author.

She does not shy away from "love miseries" nor explicit sex in an exercise of honesty and naturalness

An exercise of honesty and naturalness that is appreciated in the way of telling, with WhatsApp chats that sneak into the narration, and in the way she tells it. "The romanticized sex is over. You touch it, smell it, and feel it or it doesn't reach me, I don't believe it. I decided that the sex scenes should be very explicit. And I discovered that it took no effort for me to make it so. It was harder for my parents to read it afterward," jokes Romero. There is a need to talk about these relationships without taboos—very much in line with the novels of Elísabet Benavent—"because there is a need to read them." Both in girls, "as in boys, because they also tell me that they feel identified."

It took her nine years to finish the novel between one TV program and another. She was snatching paragraphs from moments of pause between reports for 'Travelers Four', 'Spaniards in Conflict', 'Morning People', 'Andalusia Around the World'... and many more television spaces where she has worked as a reporter, scriptwriter, or producer. The journalist from Malaga has specialized in those projects where the proposal is to travel to who knows where for who knows how many days to record and report. And that complicates any routine. "But last year, during a work break, I went to Malaga, locked myself in my sister's house, told my parents I wouldn't see them for a week, and finished it," she explains with relief. What she did not expect was for her text to reach Penguin Random House and for them to decide to publish it. Even today, with the book in her hands, she finds it hard to believe. "I became a journalist because I wanted to write," she remembers.

Life goes "so fast" that even in this last decade, while she was writing, the way we relate has changed. "When I started Lía's story, 'stories' and TikTok didn't exist. I had to make like a mix of two people," the one she was at 35 and a girl today at 35. Lía and Abel, the protagonists, meet and communicate through social networks. "And they make you go a little crazy. It's like a peephole, you look through it at the other person's life, but it's not complete. If you're waiting for a call and you see a post, you start to become a bit obsessive," she reflects.

It's a time of consumption and fast relationships, but Marina Romero is of the opinion that all stories count. From a quick kiss to a platonic love or a long relationship. It always leaves a mark on personal biography. "I am very much in favor of relationships that are not conventional. You can be in love for two years with someone you've never had anything with, and that person is important to you." With the conviction that there is not just one love for life, Romero sums up her romantic philosophy in one sentence: "In the end, what you remember is not when they left your life, but when they arrived."