Brief literary biography of Dan Guajars

This literary biography is an ego exercise, and that’s why it exists on my blog. Because I have achieved things in time and I forget that I did them.

It is also an exercise in memory because there are days when I think that I did not do enough or that I did more before. But the truth is that my productive pattern has always been the same, even from the time when I had more time. So…

• Year 1984.
  • The Neverending Story was released in theatres. I didn’t see it then, but the images and Limahl’s song that I saw on TV marked me for life. I was 6 or 7 years old.

• Year 1989.
  • I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit. Before that, I didn’t even read the schoolbooks. I became a voracious reader and was bitten by the creative bug. I was 11 or 12 years old.

• Between 1990~1994.
  • I filled my school notebooks with pseudo poetry and fantastic stories that I wrote late at night. One in ten had something like an ending.

• Year 1994.
  • I participated in the school magazine, as part of a journalism workshop. I edited it, diagrammed it, and made all the photocopies.

During college

• Year 1995.
  • I started Journalism. I was 17 years old. That same year, I applied to the Zona de Contacto magazine with a story. And in the personal interview, they laughed at my face because I had “about fifty finished stories.” I was not selected. And I got so angry.

• Year 1997.
  • I spent much of my days in the computer lab at the university, hooked up to a Mac with a monochrome screen because no one used those. I learned HTML and wrote several short stories, which I later had to print because floppy disks were incompatible with PCs. «In the Blood», «Semilleros» and «Artemio Salinas» were born.

• Year 1998.
  • Over the summer I wrote my first (unpublished) novel, Deke, dramatic sci-fi with time travel and transcendental teen romance. I was 20 years old.

• Year 1999.
  • Over the summer I wrote my second (unpublished) novel, sci-fi/urban fantasy with messiah and various “New Adult” romances.

• Year 2000.
  • I participated in an elective writing workshop at the university and wrote a short story a week for 4 months. Most of them were style tests.

• Año 2001.
  • I was a finalist in the 1st Andrés Bello Literature Contest with a weird story about a blind guy who sees the world with perfect clarity.

Graduated and working

• Year 2007.
  • I wrote Sordomudo, a short science fiction novel for young people (around 50k words). It remained unpublished for a few more years.
  • I also published online Anemia, a collection of salvageable stories with tales from the workshop I participated in 2000.

• Year 2008.
  • I began my participation in the Poliedro group of Chilean Fantasy, Horror and Science Fiction writers. I also started a collaboration with Sergio A. Amira in a four-handed project.

• Year 2009.
  • I was a finalist in the call for Dream Makers 2009 book. The edition of the printed book is terrible, but it doesn’t matter, I was selected.

• Year 2010.
  • The novel Psique written in collaboration with Sergio A. Amira was published.
  • I also published Corcho Loco y otros Relatos online, a collection of several short stories that I had written until then.

• Year 2011.
  • I published in PDF the collection of short stories There is a Zombie in my Soup.

Self-publishing on Amazon

• Year 2013.
  • I published the En la Sangre collection on Amazon with my ten best Urban Fantasy stories. Before that date, I hadn’t thought of piblishing (for real) on my own.
  • I also published the horror story Espantos Cotidianos on Wattpad. I won in a contest on the platform, and it became the No. 1 story in the Horror category in Spanish. I was 36 years old.
  • Together with colleagues from Triada Ediciones, we gave a talk on “How to write Fantasy and Science Fiction” at La Furia del Libro (GAM halls).

• Year 2014.
  • I sent a reduced version of Sordomudo to a literary contest in Spain (25k words). It was returned unread to me because there was no one to receive the manuscript. Cuak!
  • I published the reduced version of Sordomudo on Amazon.
  • I studied for eight months a diploma in Editing and Publications. I learned a lot about the industry and the editorial process.
  • Together with colleagues from Triada Ediciones, we gave a Fantasy and Science Fiction literary workshop at the Santiago Library.

• Year 2015.
  • I convened, selected, edited and published an international collection of urban fantasy short stories called Dolunai. There are no stories of mine there. It can be downloaded for free at Smashwords.

• Year 2016.
  • I taught a brief literary workshop on my own about the construction of stories before writing them.

• Year 2017.
  • I published the long story Madre Árbol Hijo Semilla on Amazon. This is the first time I contracted an editor to do revisions and corrections on my work.

Learning new things

• Year 2018. I did not publish anything, but I did many activities and some changed me as a writer:
  • I advanced a horror movie script that was born in 2017, during the Pixar in a Box Storytelling course.
  • I studied and worked for nine months in my craft as a writer during the screenplay diploma for TV at PUC. We ended the year with a bible for the series and the script for the pilot, as well as a pitch before a great commission. It was a team effort and I learned a lot.

• Year 2019.
  • I published my new collection of short stories, Furia de Estrellas.
  • 2019 word count: 55k.

During the Covid-19 pandemic

• Year 2020.
  • Confined since March due to the global pandemic by coronavirus SARS-CoV2 Covid-19.
  • I decided to include my blog posts as part of my literary output for the written word count, under the “nonfiction” category. And I no longer feel so pathological thinking that “I don’t write”. Because the truth is that I do write, it’s just that not everything is “fiction”.
  • In July, my short story “guai fai” was published in the free anthology CONFINAMIENTO by Cathartes Ediciones.
  • 2020 word count: 55k.

• Year 2021.
  • Still confined, but with some liberties thanks to the stubborn incompetence of the Chilean authorities.
  • The first days of January, I set up the website libros.guajars.cl with all my historical production. Prior to September 2001, there is nothing to show.
  • I participated in the selection and editing/correction of stories for Carnívoras, a Zombie anthology written by women, from Editorial Astartea.
  • In May, I published Somnis Obitus, a pretentious name for a book with my Poliedro short stories (volume 3, 4 and 5).
  • In September, I published Los Niños Monstruo (The Monster Childrens), an urban fantasy and “period” horror novel, set in the Santiago’s winter of 1984.
  • In November, was selected a story of mine for the anthology Rapsodia, a short stories rock anthology from the group Textualmente Activas.

• Year 2022.
  • In October, I finished the first draft for the novel that I started in 2011. I hope to have news by the end of 2023.
  • In December, I published Deke, the unpublished novel I wrote in 1998, under the title Esta Novela está Mal Escrita (This Novel is Badly Written). I added the rewrite piece I put together in 2011 that I didn’t finish. Plus a memoir where I tell why I wrote and why I decided to publish such nonsense.

• Year 2023.
  • I started using Scrivener. I love it, and I think it’s important to declare it here.
  • Summary of unfinished works accumulated on the hard drive and backed up in the cloud: 19 texts, which are divided into one movie, two graphic novels, and 16 long novels. About 140k words of unfinished works of fantasy, horror and science fiction.

I will keep updating this literary biography