One of the key concepts in The Corsair is to set the stories in the Mediterranean in the 1950s. The French Riviera is frequently featured in the stories. So here’s how it looked in that sort of golden age of mass tourism…
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Questions
And so it’s out, both in ebook and paperback.
The Mysterious Machinery of Amazon say The Devil Under the Sea is 108 pages, which makes it 35% longer than Chasing the Mermaid.
Is it also 35% better? Or just as good?
Will they like it? Will they actually buy it and then like it?
Will there be reviews? Or will it be consigned to oblivion?
I always get a lot of worries when a new book of mine comes out.
The best way to silence them is to go back to writing – make the monkey mind go silent by overworking it.
My ghost decade: 1953
Two days and The Devil Under the Sea hits the shelves (but you can preorder it right now), and I got thinking about the 1950s.
Now, the 1950s are sort of a gray area as far as I am concerned – a gray area for my generation of Italians, really: the history program in school stopped at the Second World War, and we were born in the late 1960s, so the ’50s sort of fell between what we learned and what we experienced. A sort of “ghost decade”.
And yet, with hindsight, it was a pretty exciting decade1.
It was the decade of bebop and rock’n’roll.
It was the decade of revolutions and uphevals.
It was the decade of the New Look, and of the Dolce Vita.
A lot of stuff happened, and the world was shrinking.
The density of events in the 1950s is both a joy and a horror when writing The Corsair.
I wrote about 20 pages of what was planned as the third story, set in Egypt in 1953/54, before I checked my facts and found out the whole action took place during a coup that basically locked down the nation under martial law.
Oooops.
Scrap the thing, redo from start.
But I already told you I like doing research, and after all the events in the ’50s were quite influential on my life, and exploring the decade is becoming a hobby (another one!) of mine. Continue reading
The Devil Under the Sea for preorder
I am very happy to announce that the long overdue second episode in the adventures of Leo Martin, aka The Corsair, will go on sale through Amazon on the 10th of August.
The novella, The Devil Under the Sea, that can be enjoyed as a standalone1, will be available both in DRM-free ebook format and as a paperback volume. Both the ebook and the paperback are being processed as you read this post, and will be ready for preorder in a few hours.
Read on to learn more and view the cover of The Devil Under the Sea…
And after Felice Sabatini, Leo Martin
Chasing the Mermaid, the first of the Corsair stories, hit the shelves on the 25th of March 2016. It was the first time I worked on a series designed specifically to appeal to a certain kind of readership, and it seemed to be working – I was having fun writing the stories, and my publisher believed in Leo Martin’s potential as a new pulp hero.
Within three months, all was in shambles: first in May, following a long illness, my father died, leaving me and my brother in a disastrous situation. Then, almost exactly two months later, Michael Hudson, my friend and my publisher, passed away suddenly and unexpectedly.
At the time of his death, Michael had been putting the finishing touches on the second adventure of Leo Martin. We had programmed three stories per year, and The Devil Under the Sea was planned for the summer, while I worked on two new stories.
Michael’s death, and my family problems, relegated Leo Martin to the limbo. Continue reading
A postcard from Hanzhong
When I wrote my first novel, The Ministry of Thunder, it was originally called Beyul Express. It was the first in a hypothetical series, and I had written the first draft in eight days. The second draft took six months, and expanded from 48.000 words to 78.000.
The book got some great reviews, and was generally well-received.
Later, I wrote another story featuring Felice Sabatini.
A lot of people had asked to learn more about Helena Saratova, Sabatini’s old partner, and Cynical Little Angels, set about two years before the events in Ministry, described the first meeting between the Italian pilot and the blue-haired adventuress.
Two nights ago I was going through one of my usual bouts of insomnia. This has been a rough time for me – rougher than usual. Lots of thoughts and stuff. In the last ten days I’ve been unable to write anything good – and you may have noticed my posts on Karavansara became erratic and short.
So two nights ago, nursing a hell of a headache, at about 2am I fired up a txt file, and started writing.
Write to the block, write through your worries.
At 6am the neighbor’s dogs started barking their hearts out at the dawn, and I found myself with 3500 words of The Ministry of Lightning, the sequel to Thunder, taking place in Shanghai, about six months after the last page of the first novel.
As the story opens Felice Sabatini, having walked the 7000 miles back from the Taklamakan desert, rolls back in Shanghai in the sidecar of a stolen motorbike driven by a Korean expatriate. The city is getting ready for trouble – there are sand bags in the streets, and lots of soldiers carrying weapons.
The motorbike enters the Italian-style garden of a mansion on Bubbling Well Road.
“Are you sure this is the place?” the Korean asks, looking dubious.
“I’m sure,” Sabatini replies.
He knocks on the door. A girl in a sailor uniform opens the door, stares at him, starts screaming, and slams the door shut.
Sabatini gives a reassuring grin at the Korean guy, that looks even more dubious.
Then the door opens again, and it goes more or less like this… Continue reading
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