As we all know ‘squatters’ squat, that is, they break into our houses and there they settle, never to leave, except by force. The squatters in these stories also squat, unexpectedly, illegally, even brutally, albeit not in our houses, but in our minds. No one is safe from these “mind” squatters. The characters who make up these stories are only an example, a mere possibility; even more, you who are reading these lines and I who wrote them could well be the victims of mind squatters, and still not know it.

There are seven stories in this book. In Lena’s World, the narrator, a writer by profession, sees his existence suddenly occupied by a female stranger who nonetheless brings coherence with her. In the story that follows, the young Azahara, whose name titles it, bursts into the life of a celibate university professor shaking up his beloved routine. The Fortress offers the reader the possibility to see the squatting process for it is outside the character’s mind. The Other, which could well be a nightmare, is the writer-narrator’s encounter with his self that has crept into his world. Similar situations are presented in Juan, the author of novels and The Re-encounter: two parallel worlds that have never crossed, until one invades the other, with devastating results.

The theory of parallel worlds, formulated by the physicist Hugh Everett in the 1950s, cannot be ignored when it comes to plotting, or perhaps I should say ‘dreaming’ a story: it is a truly fantastic conception, with no need for magic or unimaginable beings, nor aliens or the living dead. It is simply a matter of a character occupying the parallel world that corresponds to him. In doing so he encounters two realities, and therein lies the story.