How Life in Málaga Shaped Subjunctive Mood

With Subjunctive Mood, the first book in my False Friends series, already out, and Imperative Ember following in February, I am now working on the third instalment. It seemed like a good moment to say a little about where the series came from.

Some readers will already know from earlier newsletters that part of the inspiration comes from a real language school I attend here in Málaga.

Technically, I am not a tourist in Málaga. I live here. But I am still a foreigner, and that can feel complicated. Tourism brings money and jobs, but when local residents are priced out while others profit, resentment is understandable.

Even so, it can still hurt. You cannot change where you come from, how you look, or the circumstances life has placed you in. And, like Bianca in Subjunctive Mood, I have felt lost here countless times, not only physically but emotionally as well, as though the ground beneath ordinary life had become less stable than it once was.

Recently I stood in front of a wall sprayed with the words “No tourists.” While I was looking at it, a tourist walked past and took a photo of the graffiti. The irony of that moment stayed with me.

That sense of disorientation feeds directly into Subjunctive Mood. Bianca and Ramón are the two central protagonists of the novel. Bianca is struggling with not fully belonging, while Ramón embodies a much darker form of obsession.

The title also felt right for two reasons. Fictionally, the subjunctive suited a story about uncertainty, desire, fear, and a stalker’s warped sense of possibility. In real life, I have also been struggling to get my head around the Spanish subjunctive while learning the language here, and it gives me a proper migraine rather than just a headache.

Readers sometimes ask how much of the book is true. The answer is that the events are fictional, but many of the emotions are not. The South Africa section was written while I was still living there, after my husband died of Covid, and writing became a way of processing grief. The school setting was inspired partly by a real language school in Málaga and, to some extent, by real teachers, though the story itself is entirely invented.

What I borrowed from real life were fragments, emotional states, small details, and that strange instability that comes from living in a country where you do not yet fully speak the language. That feeling became a central part of Bianca’s story.