Having spent most of the last 72 hours running around – mostly on trains – all I have to post today is this great little noir movie…
Coming soon: Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives
Two volumes, 200.000 words, 21 stories (including one by yours truly)
The Carole Lombard Memorial Blogathon: the Two Godfreys
Hold on tight to your seats, ladies and gentlemen, because this is the day of the Carole Lombard Memorial Blogathon, and if you’re ever been around here before, you know I worship Carole Lombard, that we lost too soon and was absolutely irreplaceable.
The Blogathon is hosted by The Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood and Carole & Co, so be sure to check the link, and you’ll find a wealth of posts about Lombard, her movies and her life.
And then come back here, because we are about to discuss My Man Godfrey, and also, My Man Godfrey.
It’s going to be a gas.
A tour on the Minibus
As expected, the night spent reading Chris Fowler’s book about forgotten writers has started wreaking havoc with my reading plans, or at least with my to-read pile of books and ebooks.
Having read Fowler’s fun collection of short bios, I found it to be excuse enough to finally go and check out a writer that’s been on my radars for years now, but I never found the time, or motivation, or that extra bit of curiosity that would make me go and spend money and time on one of her books.
Continue readingSelling the unknown
I have just mailed a four-page preliminary pitch to my Italian publisher, a proposal for a novel that might be fun to write, and might become the first in a series (one hopes) and might even have a chance on the international marketplace (ditto).
Now, a short pitch should include the working title, the general plot, and the major selling points of the book. The author, in other words, should tell the publisher why this book is the coolest book ever written, why it will sell in cartloads, and who is going to buy it (possibly multiple copies of it).
And here is the rub – one of the strong points of my story, I am sure, is that nothing like this was done before, at least in my country, at least within my genre of choice. I can point out TV series and movies, comics and books, that work on the same premises – or something really similar – but in Italian, as horror/thriller? No, never.
Continue readingGone but not forgotten: Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors
When was the last time that, against all good sense and sanity, you spent a whole night up to read a new book from cover to cover? Wrapped in a blanket, drinking hot tea, while the countryside outside was silent and mist-shrouded under the moon, it happened to me last night, and I am now typing this before I crawl in bed, my day’s schedule completely scrambled, but who cares.
Yesterday (my goodness, it was only yesterday!) I received as a gift an ebook copy of Christopher Fowler’s The Book of Forgotten Authors, and as it usually happens, I checked the first pages, just to see how it felt. I was preparing dinner, and I was in fact putting the soup up on the stove.
I went through the foreword, and them, after dinner, I said to myself I’d check a few pages.
And now here I am, bleary-eyed, the book finished, and the certain knowledge that it will have a terrible influence on my 2020.
We are still having fun
I read the news today, oh, boy, just like John Lennon did. In my case, it was a social media post by someone I know. It was a masterful piece of brand management – three paragraphs with all the right keywords and all the bits and pieces to reinforce the author’s brand, the SEO perfectly balanced.
His pet topics, his by-words, even a subtle call-back to his first book.
The sort of thing you read in books by social media gurus about how to establish your presence and reinforce your brand.
It was, also, a piece about the recent death of a person, a public figure, a musician.
Me, I’m old fashioned, probably even Victorian in such things, but I found it in poor taste, and my respect for that person dropped a few more notches.
Continue reading
Karavansara 