Stories My grandfather was a great storyteller; he would spook us out with his horror stories about seeing the devil and that kind of stuff. When I was living in exile in Venezuela I got a telephone call to say that my grandfather was dying in Chile. I couldn’t go back to see him, so I wrote him a letter. I wanted to tell him that he could go in peace because I remembered everything he told me – all the anecdotes, all the stories, all his life. And to prove it, I started writing the story. I started writing on January 8 1981, and it turned into my first novel, The House of the Spirits, although I didn’t know it at the time. When it was published it turned out to be very successful, and so I thought I’d start the next book on that same date. Now I always start writing on January 8.