Thank you for this interview, Magdalena. Now that NAKED IN HAVANA 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 when 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.
I guess he redeemed himself in the end, with what he did in Saigon.
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. 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.
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