One of my favourite books last year was Soul Beach, which you can read my review here. I am currently reading the sequel to this which is called Soul Fire, and I am loving it. You can imagine my excitement when author Kate Harrison said she’s do a guest post on my site as part of the Soul Fire Blog Tour. I think Kate is an awesome author, so now I’ll hand my blog over to here.
I’ve never learned to ski, to surf or to rollerblade, because broken limbs would inevitably follow. Instead, I get my kicks by putting my characters in impossibly dangerous or unpleasant situations – which is so much more fun.
However, when I decided to set Soul Fire, the second in the Soul Beach trilogy, in Barcelona, I knew I’d have to play with fire: literally. Because of all the crazy things that the Catalan capital city has to offer, the Correfoc – or ‘fire run’ – is the wildest. And one I realised I had to experience for myself!
During the correfoc – which is often the final act in the region’s many fiestas – people take to the streets with more fireworks than you’d see on the average Bonfire night (I’ve read one estimate that 80,000 can be used in the space of an hour) and, um, fire them at each other.
There’s a little more to it than that – the firecrackers are loaded onto ornate, scary structures that resemble devils, dragons and other fire-breathing creatures. Accompanying the members of the Correfoc clubs, formed to compete against each other to be as scary as possible, are drummers and other musicians who struggle to make themselves heard above the deafening explosions and even more deafening screams.
And as the devils and dragons proceed along a set route, thousands of spectators throw themselves into their path – and try to stop the fire-breathers passing, even though they’re doomed to failure given that the devils are armed with exploding pitchforks.
The preparation is scary enough in itself. We went to the flea market to buy head scarves and old t-shirts and sunglasses to protect ourselves from sparks. Then we elbowed our way along Via Laeitana in the centre of the old town, where surely the entire city had showed up to get involved.
A distant rumble was the first sign things had started. Well, that and the fiery glow we could see at the very far end of the boulevard. The drumbeat echoed my heartbeat. I considered backing away to the safety of the side street. But I had to know what Alice, my character was going to experience.
And then I felt a tug on the arm and was pulled by friends into the centre of the action.
The videos probably do a better job than I can of showing what happened next. It was scary, it was loud, but it was exhilarating, too. And it went on for AGES – with the odd interruption as the dragon kept having to be ‘reloaded’. As scary as the fireworks was the craziness of the crowd – we were constantly swept up in the waves of people running AT the fire, the complete opposite of everything your instincts are telling you to do.
I was jostled, and pushed, and I screamed and I shouted back. I was showered with sparks and definitely felt the bigger ones make it through my layers of clothing. One of our party had her hair singed but seemed to take it in good spirits.
And then, suddenly, the fire-breathers stopped coming. The ambulances and firefighters ambled off into the night without needing to treat anyone – kids in Barca are introduced to the fiesta as babes in arms and seem to know how to stay safe. And then the street cleaners descended, clearing up the thousands of spent fireworks in a matter of minutes, so all that was left is a fug of smoke hanging over the city.
Afterwards, it was hard to believe any of it happened. Except when I pulled out the scarf and baseball cap and saw the large scorched holes that proved we’d been there. It was wild and unmissable.
And when I sat down to write the climax of Soul Fire, I was glad I’d been there. Sometimes pushing yourself to the limit – in life and in your writing – can be the best thing you can do!
Wow what a fantastic and exciting post, thank you Kate for sharing that amazing experience with me and my readers. What do you think, could you face the fire-breathers? Not sure I could, but it sounds like an incredible adventure.
