The 15th of August is a big holiday here in Italy, and the country – that is already working at 1/3 power – shuts down completely. Nor even the one bar in the village is open, should one want to go for an ice cream.
But it is not so elsewhere in the world.
And so, while I was about to sit down with the next volume of Yoko Tsuno, trying to keep the heat at bay, I received a mail from the publisher of my book House of the Gods.
They are in Australia, where evidently August 15 is a normal working day, and they were writing to know if I’d like to write “one or two novels” for them to publish.

Are we kidding?

And so I spent the following five evenings working on two one-page pitches, and on the 21st I mailed them off.
The following day I received two contracts.
Nice and smooth (if we except that I was so excited and exhausted I sent them back with the wrong date, and had to resend them).

And I am writing.
The two novels will come out next year (unless I am really fast) and follow two rather different plots. I designed both to serve, in case of success, as first episodes in two separate series.
I’ve told more to my Patrons, and here I’ll reveal only that

• the first is set in the 90s, and is “Indiana Jones-style, but the hero is Belloq”
• the second is set in the ’40s and is “Hell in the Pacific meets The Lost World”

And yes, I’ll be writing like hell, but it’s great to find out that my work is good enough and respected enough that publishers ask me for more.
It’s good for the soul.