What was your hobby like until you became a book?

I've been lucky. When I won the City of San Sebastian award thanks to the story What a wonderful world, I contacted Iñaki Aldekoa of Erein, who was on the jury. He told me he liked this story a lot, and if I had anything else to send it. That is why the first book was published in 2004. Once you've taken the first one out, you lose the shame, even to get in touch with any editor.

Has childbirth been easy in this second?

None of that. In 2008, I presented the book to Susaeta, and it's been four years since then. That does not mean that in that period we have been in continuous order and correction, because I have spent two years completely standing still. I was finishing the thesis exclusively for a year. Then I was my father, and it's been another year. Then, when I wanted to get started, Susa's got into other mess. On the other hand, I had to make great corrections, I rejected four stories and created three others. Since 2008, the book has changed a lot. In the presentation I said, the greatest treasure that can be given to the writer is to develop that capacity for self-criticism. The process has been hard, because it has been a great job, but I am very happy. I've had the opportunity to learn.

Where does the story come from?

Each one has its own way and in all stories the process is not the same. Many times, the starting point is often an image that has come to me, I don't mean it's necessarily the beginning of the story. For example, the stand-by story. I really saw what's said there, a man in a suit, not for that reason elegant, a bit grumpy, sitting on the beach on a spring day. He suddenly took a plastic bottle, went to the sea and filled it with water. And he put the bottle in a special suitcase. A curious picture, no doubt, of those that remain recorded. Then, of course, below that are the pains of you. Starting from an image and completing a story is a way to bring to light my internal pains, although not explicitly.

You say literature saves you.

The idea that we live fast is that of many. This leads us to want to do too many things, and to want to do too many, to want to live different lives. We have too much desire to start from scratch. Living so fast, we're not able to value what we have. We'd like to interrupt what we have and devote ourselves to another life, and then another life and another life. I think it's crazy. In that sense, literature saves me, because it allows me to start from scratch again and again without going crazy, and because it gives me the opportunity to live all those lives that I can't live. Hence the title of the book, Alter Ero.

What are you looking for in stories?

I'm interested in creating emotions in a subtle way. If you want to talk about death, the starting point may be the story of a death row, tell that person's ideas in detail. At that point of departure, you put the reader in some way on the defensive, on alert. You know it'll be hard and sad, because it's very explicit. That's not the literature I want to do. The path that interests me is another: something has happened here, perhaps we do not know what has happened, but there is pain.

The ballad of the surrogate is also the axis of death, and it is not mentioned so subtly.

No, it's true. The book of stories has emerged more heterogeneous than was thought. This subtlety that I seek is manifested, above all, in the stories that I have just written, and curiously in the stories that have formed the backbone of the book: By Pass, Stand By and Bye. In other words, that story you mentioned to me belongs to another stage, as it is an eight-year book. In sport I had in mind talking about the role of the loser, but from the point of view of the winner. In this story, I liked that contradiction.

If you look at the protagonists of eight stories, all your crazy alters are men.

The truth is that it's written from sharpness. An alter ego of woman could come out, but this time it didn't come out. In the previous book there was a female protagonist and I felt good that time, but the book had more fiction. That has been the case.

What would you like to contribute to the Basque literature?

When I write, I don't address this problem. My goal is to write as freely as possible. Ur Apalategi thought I did not look at the critics, nor at the groups of readers, critics and other elements that make up the Basque literature. Perhaps he had observed the readers, but not with the intention of establishing a faithful and prolonged relationship, but with the intention of surprising them. I was glad. I've tried to write without taking readers into account what I'd like to read. That, of course, has a risk, because in the end you have to publish it. Literature is my way to slow live, and almost the only field I have to send people for a walk and do whatever I want.

What are your favorite writers?

I would mention Xabier Montoia, in this case. I loved Vitoria Beach. I think in this book there is its influence, especially in the way of telling stories. You're telling something through a thread, and some technical things like introducing a conversation without just explanation are its effect. Harkaitz Cano, Eider Rodríguez.. These are from my generation, and I've always followed them closely.