According to my friend Flavio, writers should learn to place curses on their books, to hit people that would not pay the writer, or copy and distribute illegally their work. Some dark, ancient ritual to summon the Copyright Demon, if you will.
Just like me, Flavio makes his living by writing, and not being paid is a major professional risk for writers, especially hereabouts, especially in these strange times of the COVID.
Continue readingI am pleased to announce that the next issue of the award-winning magazine Shoreline of Infinity, number 19, will feature a short story of mine (and also an awful lot of other incredible stuff).
The magazine will be out on the 30th of the month, but you can already pre-order it.
My story is a short piece called Singularity, about crocheting and higher dimensions – and I am rather proud of it.
Shoreline of Infinity is a beautiful magazine, and you can get it from their website, both as an ebook or as a gorgeous paperback.
Check it out.
It’s been rough going these last two months, and it’s not over yet.
I’m pushing myself to keep writing and putting together ideas, because it’s either keep moving or die, and yet I’m once again going through one of my bouts of black moods.
In particular, I’m somewhat tired of failing repeatedly in learning from past errors, especially where evaluating other people comes into play.
If I were as good at picking the right horses as I am in trusting the wrong people, I could make a living at the racetrack.
And yet there is an up side, and it’s the fact that in these two months, as people took a bad turn for a number of reasons and old friends and connections vanished or turned out to be more than willing to move to Cold Shoulder County, I was also treated, again and again at the kindness of strangers, receiving a helpful hand from distant acquaintances.
So I can’t really say I’m losing my faith in humanity – I am not, because humanity is great as always. Maybe it’s the slice of humanity I kept close that’s not that great.
Anyway – I’m wasting a lot of time, and I should be working on a thousand different projects.
But we’ll get out of this pit yet.
Meanwhile, some good music to close this dreary Sunday.
Supplies, check; books to read, check.
Videogames, check.
A new RPG campaign we’re playing over the web? Check.
Writing and translation jobs that will hopefully pay the bills for 2021… check(-ish).
Starting today, and for an unspecified time, I won’t be able to leave the boundaries of my town – orders from the government, because we are in the Red Zone. It’s Lockdown, Season 2 – and it promises more thrills and chills, and in general the plot will slowly but steadily go down the sink. As it happens with sequels.
But you can expect more posts as the situation develops.
And so, as a final essential for this new exile and isolation term, I also enrolled in a number of online courses and events – most of then offered for free by the British Writer’s HQ.
Because I’m always looking for ways to improve my craft – and to pass time here in the sticks, as winter makes the countryside drearier that usual.
One of the things in particular I signed up for is an Advent Calendar-like cycle of exercises, prompts and things.
You can check it out HERE, with all the rest of the nifty stuff the guys and gals at Writers’ HQ are offering.
Let the plague sweep the land. We’re all set.
I know everybody’s expecting a free horror/adventure short story or something, because, you know, Halloween and all that but, truth to be told, I’ve been feeling damn lazy these last few days, and also, today I took a trip to the supermarket to buy provisions for the next few weeks, because there’s a new lockdown looming.
And it was not a proper horror or adventure, but for certain it did exacerbate my already tired feelings for humanity.
So I thought I’d jot down a few anthropological notes, for your general enjoyment…
Yesterday I shared a few photos from the documentation phase of my current work in progress – and I said I was also patching together a sort of soundtrack, as I usually do when writing my major projects.
And considering today’s been a good day, I was able to take two hours off around lunchtime (who needs to eat anyway) to put together a proper soundtrack as an episode of Radio Karavansara…
As the book will be set in New York’s Greenwich Village in the early ’50s (unless the publisher asks me to move it to San Francisco in the 60s, of course, or whatever), this is mostly classic jazz, with a few modern things thrown in for variety.
But this reflects the mood of the story I have in mind, and also the personality of a few of the characters.
I hope you’ll like it.
I am working on a full-scale pitch and proposal for a new novel, an attempt at getting a foot in the door with a high-profile publisher, with a target of 75.000 words, possibly as a first in a series (and yes, I’ve got ideas already about where the series might be going).
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Karavansara 