The secrets behind An Unusual Therapy
If you have been following me and my work for some time, you have probably noticed how important music is to me. It plays a central role in my life and finds its way into all my projects, either directly or indirectly. For An Unusual Therapy and the other books in the trilogy, I decided to pair each chapter with a song, creating a playlist in which every track reflects the story and the emotional journey of the characters.
That way, the reading experience becomes immersive and unforgettable.
My journey with An Unusual Therapy began in 2012, during one of the most difficult periods of my life. I was living alone abroad, far from home, my family, my friends, and everything familiar to me. As the loneliness, silence, hunger, and darkness that surrounded me began to take their toll, both physically and emotionally, I once again found shelter in music and it was through it that the first spark of An Unusual Therapy emerged. The story was initially written as a screenplay, but I soon felt that the story I wanted to tell could not be contained within a single feature-length script. So I set it aside and decided to rewrite it through a trilogy of novels instead.
Although the first book was published in 2024 and its writing began in 2013, the entire trilogy, its story, characters, plot twists, cover designs, and every other element composing these three books, was conceived and planned from the very beginning, back in 2012.
Nothing in these books is left to chance. Even the characters' names were carefully chosen to reflect their personalities, without naming any character after someone I know or who has been part of my life. The only reflection of my personal journey that I allowed myself to include in this story is the name of the main male character, David. For some reason, throughout my life, I have found myself drawn to men whose names began with the letter D: my first childhood crush, the second one, my first love, and the two that followed. Curiously enough, they all had the same name, although it wasn't David.
Even though my best friend and my brother insist that Max is a copy of my personality, the truth is that all the characters carry some of my traits.
Max has my shameless and unapologetic attitude, my fear of vulnerability, and my inability to hold back an ironic reply to a dumb or obvious question.
David has my tendency to hide behind a mask of self-centredness, using it as a shield against emotional pain.
Brian is the friend you call at three in the morning because you're trapped in your own thoughts, worrying about the one thing that won't let you sleep.
Ridley is the silent observer, the one who sees, hears, and understands everything but remains quiet until it becomes necessary to speak. The introverted extrovert.
And Todd... there are still a few things about him that you'll discover in the third book, so I'll keep those to myself for now.
An Unusual Therapy is a part of me and my world that I’m offering to anyone willing to step into it. It is fiction grounded in reality, because what my characters go through could easily be anyone’s story. It is just a story, but one that carries the same kind of truth music does when it finds you at the right moment. And in that sense, it all comes full circle.
If you’d like to dive into the playlist, you can listen to it on Spotify and Apple Music through the links below.
