And let’s admit it, it is fitting that a post about the endless reworking / rewriting / tweaking / revising we do to our work in order to push the finish line as far as possible should have a second part. I mean, the first was not quite finished, right?
Well, here is where I talk about academia, roleplaying games, and “the funny incidents that happen when you try and make your living as a writer” (remember? this was the topic of the comic book I was told to start posting instead of these useless words I am putting on my blog and nobody reads anyway).
Just a quick one to let you know I’ve just got my author copies of the two-volume set of Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives, the massive anthology edited by John Linwood Grant, and they are beautiful books.
In other news: I need a new webcam (this one sucks).
Back when I was starting as a science fiction reader – as to say, in the late ’70s – I chanced upon an article in a magazine that basically quartered and killed E.C. Tubb and his Dumarest series. Cheap, repetitive, boring, bad bad bad. Oh, well, I took note and moved on – it’s not like there wasnt other stuff to read, right?
Fast forward to 2017 and the announcement that a TV series was in the works based on the Dumarest novels. Back then, a friend dropped on me the whole 33-books series, telling me it was a good opportunity for me to brush up on the plot before the series hit our screens. The series never happened, I never read the books.
Let’s talk about crime, shall we? As those that have chanced to read my BUSCAFUSCO novellas probably know, I’m not that much into homicide. It was Agatha Christie, I believe, that said that a proper whodunnit should feature a homicide, but, really… c’mon, Agatha, there are so many crimes that are a lot more interesting!
And mind you, I like a good murder mystery just like the next guy, but having the possibility, I do prefer softer but trickier crimes.
Today it was a good day. I finished the first draft of the Job from Hell. I finished the second draft of my historical non-fiction book. I mailed off the first of three historical articles I plan to write and sell this month.
Of the three, the Job from Hell is the only one that is problematic – ghostwriting for a client that basically believes he knows better than me what this writing business is all about has meant wasted time, humiliations and a somewhat shell-shocked feeling on my part. Now I’ll tell the client the first draft is done, and he’ll tell me it’s not, and ask for changes that could easily be done during second draft… See what it’s doing to me? It’s very hard to live with this sort of anxiety about what you do, and how it will be received. But anyway – first draft done.
The historical essay is going as smooth as silk – and by the end of the month, barring accidents, and after a couple minor adjustments, we’ll have the final draft and hand it over to the publisher. If everything works out fine, and the Turin Book fair will take place in September, we’ll be there with our book.
And the article was fun. It’s not every day you can quote The Black Amazon of Mars, by Leigh Brackett, in a learned piece about the history of science.
A few days back, talking about James Garner’s Marlowe, I talked about how I grew up on (among many other things) The Rockford Files. And I said I share the belief hard-boiled fiction can help a lot, when you are a kid in your early teens,and need role models – especially a certain kind of hard-boiled. Hammett rather than Spillane, for instance.
So, in my lunch breaks, I’ve been re-watching the first season of The Rockford Files, because I wanted to see whether the series was really as good and fun and all that, and in general my memories were validated. Yes, there’s a car chase in every episode (what was this obsession with cars in 1970s America?), but the mysteries are fun, there’s an incredible supporting cast and a roster of guest stars, and James Garner is very good at doing his thing.
They say it’s good to be my Patrons, but really, it’s good to have my Patrons – and this is the reason why I give them exclusive contents: like a short story I just posted to them, both in Italian and English.
I also added a little piece about how I wrote it, why, and using what building blocks, one of which is the following photograph.
Karavansara 