She was born in Campolana, a small town in Venezuela where the word internet was barely in the residents’ vocabulary and she only realized her success as a writer when, years later, already visiting, the teenage daughters of these same neighbors went line up outside his door to ask for his autographs and take pictures with him. It was when Ariana Godoy (1990) became aware that many things had changed since, at the age of 19, she came across the Wattpad platform, where thousands of young people from all over the world read and upload her writings. Now 33 years old, Godoy has 2.2 million readers on the platform and has sold more than a million copies of her books, a fact that makes her one of the most successful voices in the Latin American publishing industry of last years Now he lands definitively in Spain, which he visits for the first time to present his saga about vampires: Almas perdidas (Montena).
“The numbers are cold and isolated, but when I saw those girls queuing to take pictures with me, I knew something important was happening,” recalls this teacher. Many things remain of that 19-year-old who came across Wattpad when she was looking for free vampire novels on the internet. I had already devoured Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and the Twilight saga. “I went in and started reading all the stories written by normal people, in the sense that they weren’t established writers. And I said to myself: I can do it too. And I uploaded my first story”. He uploaded it with the user ColdLady19 and it was a bomb. Eleven million reads for a novel about vampires, the fad of the moment, which no longer exists and whose title you don’t even remember. Then, already moved to Raleigh (North Carolina), where she still lives, she would continue with Mi amor de Wattpad, which Planeta published on paper in 2011 and which she would “rewrite from scratch” despite the love she has for it, since it is the initiatory work with which he already became known as Ariana Godoy.
A través de mi ventana (Alfaguara, 2019), the first installment of the Los hermanos Hidalgo trilogy and the most romantic of all his sagas, today accumulates the barbarity of 373 million readings on Wattpad and Netflix put Clara Galle and Julio Peña to star in its film version. On June 23, Netflix will release the second part, A través del mar, where it follows its path apart from Godoy’s novels, although with his advice. “Readers are very protective of the book and now they will find an unpublished story with which they can have fun in a more free way.”
But Ariana Godoy has a dark side that she gives expression to through writing. He already demonstrated it with the Darks – Heist saga: ¿Cazar or be hunted? (2021) and Fleur: Mi desesperada decisión (2022) – and she leaves it embodied again in La revelación and El nuevo mundo, the first and second installments of the first series that the Venezuelan woman dedicates to the supernatural world. The plot revolves around Morgan, an 86-year-old woman – peccata minuta for a vampire – who lives without knowing her true identity and the importance of her simple existence for the rest of the world. She is a purifier and, as such, has the mission of literally annihilating dark souls. “I was always curious to know aspects of vampires, how long they live, what you can feel when you live forever… I’ve read a lot and it’s very interesting to see how throughout history everyone has their own version.”
This is how Ariana Godoy has created a new world, her favorite, which is also her husband’s, with a new language, with supernatural beings, where she once again uses the protagonist’s memory loss to weave the plot ( already did it with Fleur). “The brain seems spectacular to me, with the ability to block traumas, not to remember for pure survival”. He also pours out his traumas, as he openly and honestly acknowledges. “My father died ten years ago and I loved him very much. It was very painful and I ended up reflecting that pain in Sigue mi voz (2022). This loss created in me an aversion. Creating a good father figure like my father meant remembering him and reliving all the pain that took me a long time to overcome. So what did I do? The father is absent or bad. No semblance of the affection and love that mine gave meâ€. Morgan’s father is a clear example.
She is not ashamed to admit that she likes clichés in love, good girls who fall in love with bad boys, enemies to lovers and that she herself is their number one fan. And good news for the readers: she will continue to write on Wattpad because without her comments “she feels very alone writing”.
