Massimo Marino's Blog: The Ramblings and the Rumblings, page 31
December 9, 2012
Mailing list
Since few days, I've created a mailing list for readers who wants to stay in touch, and receive updates or even willing to answer to questions from me for the current sequel work "Once Humans". Maybe even becoming beta-readers for scenes, chapters, ideas, and so on.
The request to be part of the mailing list is accessible from the red box "Read My Book" right below the page cover picture in http://www.facebook.com/MassimoMarino...
When the app starts, there is a "Join mailing list". There is also a "Share this author" in case you want to suggest the reading to friends who could like the same genre...especially if you've already liked one of my short stories or the first novel in the trilogy "Daimones", of course.
Currently I am at chapter 8 of the sequel "Once Humans" and at about 25000 words into it.
I think the main reason a writer puts words on paper is to share, to give and receive. This will be a more intimate way to stay in touch, if you wish.
Thank you all.
Massimo
Massimo Marino
The request to be part of the mailing list is accessible from the red box "Read My Book" right below the page cover picture in http://www.facebook.com/MassimoMarino...
When the app starts, there is a "Join mailing list". There is also a "Share this author" in case you want to suggest the reading to friends who could like the same genre...especially if you've already liked one of my short stories or the first novel in the trilogy "Daimones", of course.
Currently I am at chapter 8 of the sequel "Once Humans" and at about 25000 words into it.
I think the main reason a writer puts words on paper is to share, to give and receive. This will be a more intimate way to stay in touch, if you wish.
Thank you all.
Massimo
Massimo Marino
November 29, 2012
Support Girl Child in India
Support "Running Tour de India Mumbai 2012 for The Girl Child".
All purchases of any title from today Nov. 29th to December 15th will go to this cause supported by my dear friend Sandeep.
Please, support a good cause, supporting The Girl Child and literary work too.
Go to: http://www.amazon.com/Massimo-Marino/...
ALL PROCEEDS TILL DECEMBER 15th WILL BE ENTIRELY DEVOTED TO THE GIRL CHILD CAUSE.
From Sandeep and myself, thank you for your generosity!
http://www.wishberry.in/Sandeep-Parek...
We all need to realize that 1 out of 6 girls does not live to see her 15th birthday & 53% of 5-9 year old girls are illiterate. While we spent our childhoods learning to cycle, cycling with friends, cycling to school, the Indian girl child spends hers fighting for her life. So we all need to come together and cycle the TDI so that she can have a better childhood.
Funds raised for the cause of the Girl Child will be given to Uber Welfare & Educational Society and will receive tax benefits under section 80G of the Income Tax Act.
All purchases of any title from today Nov. 29th to December 15th will go to this cause supported by my dear friend Sandeep.
Please, support a good cause, supporting The Girl Child and literary work too.
Go to: http://www.amazon.com/Massimo-Marino/...
ALL PROCEEDS TILL DECEMBER 15th WILL BE ENTIRELY DEVOTED TO THE GIRL CHILD CAUSE.
From Sandeep and myself, thank you for your generosity!
http://www.wishberry.in/Sandeep-Parek...
We all need to realize that 1 out of 6 girls does not live to see her 15th birthday & 53% of 5-9 year old girls are illiterate. While we spent our childhoods learning to cycle, cycling with friends, cycling to school, the Indian girl child spends hers fighting for her life. So we all need to come together and cycle the TDI so that she can have a better childhood.
Funds raised for the cause of the Girl Child will be given to Uber Welfare & Educational Society and will receive tax benefits under section 80G of the Income Tax Act.
November 18, 2012
I've read the news today...
I've read the news today... There is death everywhere, tragedies that should make everyone gasping for air and yet, we all tend to feel compassion for a few days and then we all feel forced to move on, "nothing is important, crucial only if touching you directly." We became desensitized.
Everyday is the Apocalypse for someone, when everything is lost and without resolutions. In today's society, we all turn our back on everyone. What difference there is for a a fellow human in a desperate situation to walk through empty streets, desolated lands, alone in the world or wander through streets full of people totally ignoring you?
There's no difference. We (generic we) live already in an apocalyptic world.
I've read the news today...and I'm mourning the whole world.
Everyday is the Apocalypse for someone, when everything is lost and without resolutions. In today's society, we all turn our back on everyone. What difference there is for a a fellow human in a desperate situation to walk through empty streets, desolated lands, alone in the world or wander through streets full of people totally ignoring you?
There's no difference. We (generic we) live already in an apocalyptic world.
I've read the news today...and I'm mourning the whole world.
November 17, 2012
Looper - The Movie. 3.5 stars
In the near future, the Mafia has developed a foolproof system to remove all unwanted witnesses. It sends its victims in the past, in our time, where the killers of a new kind (the "Loopers") remove the "problem".
One day one of them, Joe, discovers that the victim he must eliminate it is none other than... himself, with 30 more years.
As entertainment, the story copes well with the paradox of time travel, especially when the future 'interacts' with its own past. If you go back in time and kill your father in his childhood...what happens to you? And if you succeeded, how the hell were you existing to go back in time and kill your child-father? See the problem?
Looper, in a sense, conveys decently the idea that this creates vortices in the flux of time, where all possibilities co-exist, spinning and repeating themselves ad infinitum till someone, somehow breaks the loop. The loop itself, sending your old yourself back in time, to be killed by the young yourself is the "Loop," and it is not broken by the young-self killing the old-self.
All goes well for as long as the young killers accept to kill the oldselves—to end their career—and live 30 years in lusty richness...and so on...
If the well oiled machine derailed...
The story flows a bit slowly at the beginning, and you wonder whether the movie will ever become interesting, then the machine derails. From that point on it is well paced, actors are credible, and there are scenes that will make you laugh.
You need to be very open minded toward time travels as it is a paradox, and those paradoxes do appear in the movie plot. So if you ask yourself very rational questions you will lose the 'magic'.
All in all, an enjoyable movie. Lots of killing, though, so be warned. It is not a love story.
Ok, there is one but it is a gimmick ;)
The story is a 4, some weaknesses on treating the time travel paradoxes deserve a 3. The result is in the middle.
One day one of them, Joe, discovers that the victim he must eliminate it is none other than... himself, with 30 more years.
As entertainment, the story copes well with the paradox of time travel, especially when the future 'interacts' with its own past. If you go back in time and kill your father in his childhood...what happens to you? And if you succeeded, how the hell were you existing to go back in time and kill your child-father? See the problem?
Looper, in a sense, conveys decently the idea that this creates vortices in the flux of time, where all possibilities co-exist, spinning and repeating themselves ad infinitum till someone, somehow breaks the loop. The loop itself, sending your old yourself back in time, to be killed by the young yourself is the "Loop," and it is not broken by the young-self killing the old-self.
All goes well for as long as the young killers accept to kill the oldselves—to end their career—and live 30 years in lusty richness...and so on...
If the well oiled machine derailed...
The story flows a bit slowly at the beginning, and you wonder whether the movie will ever become interesting, then the machine derails. From that point on it is well paced, actors are credible, and there are scenes that will make you laugh.
You need to be very open minded toward time travels as it is a paradox, and those paradoxes do appear in the movie plot. So if you ask yourself very rational questions you will lose the 'magic'.
All in all, an enjoyable movie. Lots of killing, though, so be warned. It is not a love story.
Ok, there is one but it is a gimmick ;)
The story is a 4, some weaknesses on treating the time travel paradoxes deserve a 3. The result is in the middle.
November 16, 2012
Pitching your novel
In the last few days, there has been a rampage of indignation from readers in Amazon about some authors acting—willingly or naively—as car salesmen with their novel. One of the thread, rightly so, lamented the hyperbolic definition that some authors use to incense their own work.
I agree with the readers, I am totally put off when I read some of those sales b-class marketeers ramblings.
An author should only describe facts about a story, synopsis like, so that a reader will not be mislead and disappointed.
A page-turner for a reader is a dull brick for another. Never assume anything as an author. Let the readers decide what your story has been for them. So I can tell you what my novel is about, characters, a bit of the plot, maybe why it differs from others in the same genre, but never what it will be for you as a reader, that is preposterous and pretentious.
I agree with the readers, I am totally put off when I read some of those sales b-class marketeers ramblings.
An author should only describe facts about a story, synopsis like, so that a reader will not be mislead and disappointed.
A page-turner for a reader is a dull brick for another. Never assume anything as an author. Let the readers decide what your story has been for them. So I can tell you what my novel is about, characters, a bit of the plot, maybe why it differs from others in the same genre, but never what it will be for you as a reader, that is preposterous and pretentious.
November 13, 2012
Daimones
I was requested a pitch for "Daimones", my PA novel
http://www.amazon.com/Daimones-Trilog...
So, here it goes:
PA novels are often about cataclysmic events, survivors fending off dangers at every page, zombie attacks, aliens destroying everything for inscrutable reasons, or as a fulfillment of the latest religious prophecies. "Daimones" has nothing of the sort.
The novel puts a few survivors in a world having experienced a planetary culling of the human race but there is no immediate cause to be pointed at for the survivors. The Apocalypse has arrived, but why and how remains unknown in a frustrating and fearful reality for the family around which the story evolves, untill the last third of the plot.
"Daimones" explores moral and emotional issues as well as the mechanics of everyday survival for this family: all evidences point for them to be the only people left alive on Earth. The exploration of human relationships and their importance, of personalities and memories, are at the heart of the tale. Confusion, sadness, and fear start to mix into the main character's mind, Dan Amenta.
We are led to discover the disbelief, the anguish, the grief, the frantic search for other survivors through his eyes and the 1st person narration.
Finally, when Dan and his family do find other survivors...they experience the absolute terror of first contact. The ending brings some closure about the catastrophe to this family, but also lays a heavy burden and responsibility on Dan, and opens up the novel to the sequel in the trilogy.
Being a scientist at heart—and by formation—the premises and what happens in the story are very plausible and realistic, if the tale were to be true...
http://www.amazon.com/Daimones-Trilog...
So, here it goes:
PA novels are often about cataclysmic events, survivors fending off dangers at every page, zombie attacks, aliens destroying everything for inscrutable reasons, or as a fulfillment of the latest religious prophecies. "Daimones" has nothing of the sort.
The novel puts a few survivors in a world having experienced a planetary culling of the human race but there is no immediate cause to be pointed at for the survivors. The Apocalypse has arrived, but why and how remains unknown in a frustrating and fearful reality for the family around which the story evolves, untill the last third of the plot.
"Daimones" explores moral and emotional issues as well as the mechanics of everyday survival for this family: all evidences point for them to be the only people left alive on Earth. The exploration of human relationships and their importance, of personalities and memories, are at the heart of the tale. Confusion, sadness, and fear start to mix into the main character's mind, Dan Amenta.
We are led to discover the disbelief, the anguish, the grief, the frantic search for other survivors through his eyes and the 1st person narration.
Finally, when Dan and his family do find other survivors...they experience the absolute terror of first contact. The ending brings some closure about the catastrophe to this family, but also lays a heavy burden and responsibility on Dan, and opens up the novel to the sequel in the trilogy.
Being a scientist at heart—and by formation—the premises and what happens in the story are very plausible and realistic, if the tale were to be true...
November 12, 2012
Classics
Reading for the first time a great book at an older age is an extraordinary pleasure: it's a different experience (we cannot say it's a greater or lesser experience) than that of reading it in one's youth.
Youth brings to reading—as to any other experience—a special taste and confers a special importance to the process.
With maturity, one appreciates (you should appreciate, at least) more details and different layers of a literary work, sometimes even more meanings.
Are you reading, or re-discovering a book it marked you—differently—in your youth? Is it a classic?
Youth brings to reading—as to any other experience—a special taste and confers a special importance to the process.
With maturity, one appreciates (you should appreciate, at least) more details and different layers of a literary work, sometimes even more meanings.
Are you reading, or re-discovering a book it marked you—differently—in your youth? Is it a classic?
November 8, 2012
The right time to die...
How to decide whether one of your characters shall die?
I have mixed feelings, she's a haunting presence, bound to a med-unit, kept artificially alive.
Lots of emotions are growing up among other characters too. There is tension, and tension is good, people say.
And the situation will haunt other characters for quite some time if she's left hanging in there, fighting for her life.
So...when it is the right time to die?
I have mixed feelings, she's a haunting presence, bound to a med-unit, kept artificially alive.
Lots of emotions are growing up among other characters too. There is tension, and tension is good, people say.
And the situation will haunt other characters for quite some time if she's left hanging in there, fighting for her life.
So...when it is the right time to die?
November 3, 2012
A writer's life from someone in the know...
“Here’s something I’ve been meaning to say for years,“ says Garrison Keeler, and goes on:
”Okay, let me say this once and get it off my chest and never mention it again. I have had it with writers who talk about how painful and harrowing and exhausting and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE it is for them to put words on paper and how they pace a hole in the carpet, anguish writ large on their marshmallow faces, and feel lucky to have written an entire sen-tence or two by the end of the day.
“It's the purest form of arrogance: Lest you don't notice what a bril-liant artist I am, let me tell you how I agonize over my work. To which I say: Get a job. Try teaching eighth-grade English, five classes a day, 35 kids in a class, from September to June, and then tell us about suffering.
“The fact of the matter is that the people who struggle most with writing are drunks. They get hammered at night and in the morning their heads are full of pain and adverbs. Writing is hard for them, but so would golf be, or planting alfalfa, or assembling parts in a factory.
“The biggest whiners are the writers who get prizes and fellowships for writing stuff that's painful to read, and so they accumulate long resumes and few readers and wind up teaching in universities where they inflict their gloomy pretensions on the young. Writers who write for a liv-ing don't complain about the difficulty of it. It does nothing for the reader to know you went through 14 drafts of a book, so why mention it?
“The truth, young people, is that writing is no more difficult than building a house, and the only good reason to complain is to discourage younger and more talented writers from climbing on the gravy train and pushing you off.
“Young people are pessimistic enough these days without their elders complaining about things. Shut up. Life is pretty good when you grow up. You own your own car, you go where you like, and you sing along with the radio or talk to yourself or chat on your cell phone. You pull into the drive-up window and order the Oreo Blizzard. What's not to like?
“One day you get lucky and find someone who's willing to pay you to do something you do well or can fake, and on this you can build a life. You marry someone loving and sensible who makes you laugh, and you beget children, and go through the poop and puke and snot years, and somewhere around the age of 5 or 6, your kids start to fascinate you. There is nobody like them, except perhaps you. You would run into a burning building for them, and at the same time they're the cause of exquisite worry and consternation. At the age of 12, they look at you as if to say, "Your replacement has arrived."
“Meanwhile, you march forward and sample the pleasures of life. You read history and learn to grill fish in beer batter and find comfortable shoes. You go to Rome. You go to Montana. You come to love baseball and old jazz and the art of conversation. You admit to yourself that you don't care for Walt Whitman or Proust or Henry James, and you forgive yourself for that and pick up Elmore Leonard and J.F. Powers. You dis-cover the pleasure of discarding stuff. You find a hairstyle that suits you. You go back to Montana.
“Eventually you cross the line into your forties, the mortgage years. And the fifties, when you stand weeping at graduations and weddings, and then, in the blink of an eye, come your sixties, and now you're on Easy Street. People who used to ignore you now treat you with reverence. There is great silence when you natter and pontificate, and people ask the secret of your success. You have become eminent. Inside you feel mischievous and jokey, but other people see you as a laureate, so you learn to harrumph.
“Clarity is hard. Honesty can be hard. Comedy is always chancy, but then so is profundity. Sometimes one winds up as the other. Illness is, of course, to be avoided, and also megamalls and meetings involving vice presidents. But writing is not painful, no more so than a round of golf. Nobody was harmed in the course of writing this column. That is all I have to say at this time. Thank you."
Wonderful, isn't it?
”Okay, let me say this once and get it off my chest and never mention it again. I have had it with writers who talk about how painful and harrowing and exhausting and ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE it is for them to put words on paper and how they pace a hole in the carpet, anguish writ large on their marshmallow faces, and feel lucky to have written an entire sen-tence or two by the end of the day.
“It's the purest form of arrogance: Lest you don't notice what a bril-liant artist I am, let me tell you how I agonize over my work. To which I say: Get a job. Try teaching eighth-grade English, five classes a day, 35 kids in a class, from September to June, and then tell us about suffering.
“The fact of the matter is that the people who struggle most with writing are drunks. They get hammered at night and in the morning their heads are full of pain and adverbs. Writing is hard for them, but so would golf be, or planting alfalfa, or assembling parts in a factory.
“The biggest whiners are the writers who get prizes and fellowships for writing stuff that's painful to read, and so they accumulate long resumes and few readers and wind up teaching in universities where they inflict their gloomy pretensions on the young. Writers who write for a liv-ing don't complain about the difficulty of it. It does nothing for the reader to know you went through 14 drafts of a book, so why mention it?
“The truth, young people, is that writing is no more difficult than building a house, and the only good reason to complain is to discourage younger and more talented writers from climbing on the gravy train and pushing you off.
“Young people are pessimistic enough these days without their elders complaining about things. Shut up. Life is pretty good when you grow up. You own your own car, you go where you like, and you sing along with the radio or talk to yourself or chat on your cell phone. You pull into the drive-up window and order the Oreo Blizzard. What's not to like?
“One day you get lucky and find someone who's willing to pay you to do something you do well or can fake, and on this you can build a life. You marry someone loving and sensible who makes you laugh, and you beget children, and go through the poop and puke and snot years, and somewhere around the age of 5 or 6, your kids start to fascinate you. There is nobody like them, except perhaps you. You would run into a burning building for them, and at the same time they're the cause of exquisite worry and consternation. At the age of 12, they look at you as if to say, "Your replacement has arrived."
“Meanwhile, you march forward and sample the pleasures of life. You read history and learn to grill fish in beer batter and find comfortable shoes. You go to Rome. You go to Montana. You come to love baseball and old jazz and the art of conversation. You admit to yourself that you don't care for Walt Whitman or Proust or Henry James, and you forgive yourself for that and pick up Elmore Leonard and J.F. Powers. You dis-cover the pleasure of discarding stuff. You find a hairstyle that suits you. You go back to Montana.
“Eventually you cross the line into your forties, the mortgage years. And the fifties, when you stand weeping at graduations and weddings, and then, in the blink of an eye, come your sixties, and now you're on Easy Street. People who used to ignore you now treat you with reverence. There is great silence when you natter and pontificate, and people ask the secret of your success. You have become eminent. Inside you feel mischievous and jokey, but other people see you as a laureate, so you learn to harrumph.
“Clarity is hard. Honesty can be hard. Comedy is always chancy, but then so is profundity. Sometimes one winds up as the other. Illness is, of course, to be avoided, and also megamalls and meetings involving vice presidents. But writing is not painful, no more so than a round of golf. Nobody was harmed in the course of writing this column. That is all I have to say at this time. Thank you."
Wonderful, isn't it?
Suspense...
Whenever you need to go into some lengthy exposition about character, past events (“She remembered the first time they met, etc.”), try to preface it with a bit of unfinished narrative -- maybe with an unanswered question -- that keeps the reader saying, "Yes, and what happens next?" --and then take your time telling him.
