Dr. Watson's Blog - Posts Tagged "queer"
New book announcement: Spring is coming
Spring is coming, later than usual this year 😄 Yes, this is by now the slogan of my upcoming book, When the Spring Comes, which releases in paperback and ebook on July 26th. It is my long-suffered folk horror book set in Sardinia, that I spent the last two years working on, with all the PhD stuff, travelling around, and mental madness. We authors always say that our newest book is the book of our heart, but truth is When the Spring Comes is very dear to my heart. It's a very symbolic, very metaphoric book, which deals with religion, self-discovery, Life and Death, and the Greater Good. It has so much of my personal experience and view of life, so much that writing it took 2 years of fighting through procrastination. It's the book that led me through some deep personal stuff that I needed to solve in order to put them in words. It's also the first book I wrote with a deeper understanding of personality types.
But enough said for now. I'll leave the book description here and watch out for upcoming updates!
«Water is life. Children are sacred. Every year, the people of Riola celebrate the incoming Spring with rituals whose meaning has been long lost. Until one day, the children of the village begin to disappear, one after the other, without a trace. Anna, a misfit among the girls of the village, and Andrìa, a newly appointed priest, team up to find the truth and take the kids back home.
The evidence hints to an old pagan god of rain who would be taking their toll. A lieutenant of the Carabinieri tries to solve the case, fighting against the legends but faced by the elusive words of the people. Surrounded by an atmosphere of mistrust, Anna and Andrìa uncover a reality they had never even imagined.»
But enough said for now. I'll leave the book description here and watch out for upcoming updates!
«Water is life. Children are sacred. Every year, the people of Riola celebrate the incoming Spring with rituals whose meaning has been long lost. Until one day, the children of the village begin to disappear, one after the other, without a trace. Anna, a misfit among the girls of the village, and Andrìa, a newly appointed priest, team up to find the truth and take the kids back home.
The evidence hints to an old pagan god of rain who would be taking their toll. A lieutenant of the Carabinieri tries to solve the case, fighting against the legends but faced by the elusive words of the people. Surrounded by an atmosphere of mistrust, Anna and Andrìa uncover a reality they had never even imagined.»
WHEN THE SPRING COMES is out!
Today, When the Spring Comes is finally available to buy on Amazon, on paperback and ebook (DRM-free). It's been a long journey, but we made it.
When the Spring Comes is a folk horror set in 19th century Sardinia, with a bigger-than-life concept behind it. It's probably my currently grandest project (even if Storie di Sardegna - Epoca Giudicale comes very close). It all started more than 3 years ago, when I read a book about Sardinian Carnival rites and was inspired to write this story, intertwined between pre-Greek Dionysian rites and Sardinian pagan cults to the local god of water. In fact, Sardinians worshipped Maimone, a god of water and rain, and some of those rituals remained even today in Carnival traditions, like Sa Sartiglia of Oristano and neighbouring villages. Those same connotations were typical of the Micenean version of the god Dionysus, not just the god of wine and madness, but The God, a god of the atmospheric agents, of Life and Death. Even today, most of Sardinian Carnival rituals evoke old Dionysian rites. The book is set in Riola Sardo, a village near Oristano, and directly involves some of the rituals of the village.
Then, it took me 2 years to start and finish a draft. The concept and character building behind this book has been one of the most complicated I have ever come up with, which means it took its time to complete it. I have been procrastinating the drafting phase for so long, due to PhD work, moving to Spain for a few months, more PhD work and, most importantly, personal stuff that I needed to dive deep into in order to portray the characters and express the concepts fully. Because every time we procrastinate writing is because we are avoiding something in ourself or our mind that we don't consciously want to face.
When the Spring Comes is not an easy book. It hasn't been easy to write it, and it's not easy to read it. It's extremely metaphorical and has deep roots in Sardinian (or better, Mediterranean) folklore. I put so much of my own personal experience in creating Anna, the main character, and my own view of the world. She shares my same MBTI personality type, INFJ, which makes her often vague, mystic, out-of-the-world, detached and deep at the same time. When the Spring Comes is basically the crypted way to my mind, and my philosophical legacy.
The book does not feature any romance at all. So, if you're wishing to read some cute romantic plot line, this book is not it. To the contrary, Anna is written as an asexual and aromantic main character, even if she herself does not explicitly mention it in the book (she wouldn't have had the words or the means to know about asexuality/aromanticism at all). This book is very much queer, which is a good turn of events if you think about the over-sexualisation of the figure of Dionysus. The representation of the god itself has some peculiar queer characteristics that I'm not going to disclose now...
To conclude, yesterday was also the anniversary of the publication of Song Among the Ruins. So here is a reminder that the ebooks of both Song Among the Ruins and Un canto fra le rovine are offered at 99 cents until July 27th!
You can find them on Amazon: Song Among the Ruins | Un canto fra le rovine.
When the Spring Comes is a folk horror set in 19th century Sardinia, with a bigger-than-life concept behind it. It's probably my currently grandest project (even if Storie di Sardegna - Epoca Giudicale comes very close). It all started more than 3 years ago, when I read a book about Sardinian Carnival rites and was inspired to write this story, intertwined between pre-Greek Dionysian rites and Sardinian pagan cults to the local god of water. In fact, Sardinians worshipped Maimone, a god of water and rain, and some of those rituals remained even today in Carnival traditions, like Sa Sartiglia of Oristano and neighbouring villages. Those same connotations were typical of the Micenean version of the god Dionysus, not just the god of wine and madness, but The God, a god of the atmospheric agents, of Life and Death. Even today, most of Sardinian Carnival rituals evoke old Dionysian rites. The book is set in Riola Sardo, a village near Oristano, and directly involves some of the rituals of the village.
Then, it took me 2 years to start and finish a draft. The concept and character building behind this book has been one of the most complicated I have ever come up with, which means it took its time to complete it. I have been procrastinating the drafting phase for so long, due to PhD work, moving to Spain for a few months, more PhD work and, most importantly, personal stuff that I needed to dive deep into in order to portray the characters and express the concepts fully. Because every time we procrastinate writing is because we are avoiding something in ourself or our mind that we don't consciously want to face.
When the Spring Comes is not an easy book. It hasn't been easy to write it, and it's not easy to read it. It's extremely metaphorical and has deep roots in Sardinian (or better, Mediterranean) folklore. I put so much of my own personal experience in creating Anna, the main character, and my own view of the world. She shares my same MBTI personality type, INFJ, which makes her often vague, mystic, out-of-the-world, detached and deep at the same time. When the Spring Comes is basically the crypted way to my mind, and my philosophical legacy.
The book does not feature any romance at all. So, if you're wishing to read some cute romantic plot line, this book is not it. To the contrary, Anna is written as an asexual and aromantic main character, even if she herself does not explicitly mention it in the book (she wouldn't have had the words or the means to know about asexuality/aromanticism at all). This book is very much queer, which is a good turn of events if you think about the over-sexualisation of the figure of Dionysus. The representation of the god itself has some peculiar queer characteristics that I'm not going to disclose now...
To conclude, yesterday was also the anniversary of the publication of Song Among the Ruins. So here is a reminder that the ebooks of both Song Among the Ruins and Un canto fra le rovine are offered at 99 cents until July 27th!
You can find them on Amazon: Song Among the Ruins | Un canto fra le rovine.
