Bernard Jan's Blog - Posts Tagged "dario-cannizzaro"

Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies by Dario Cannizzaro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Dario Cannizzaro is a 35-year-old writer from Naples who managed to mislead me with the title of his collected stories Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies and a completely black cover of his book outlined with red images of a syringe, stars, planet Saturn, a cross, a profile of a woman, a naked female body, a hand digging out its way through earth, a spaceship, a pierced heart, and a cloud dialogue with xxx in it. My mind was sidetracked into believing that I will be reading gory, horror stories of aliens, zombies, death celebrated and life taken, so I embraced myself for this dark and short journey.

I was so wrong. And I wouldn't put a blame for it on Dario Cannizzaro for choosing this title and Vico for “lending his design talent” for this book cover. Actually, now when I reflect on everything that I've read in nine stories on 104 pages (Preface, Thank you and Bio & Contacts pages included), they are rather logical and smartly chosen. Only my dark and twisted mind has been looking forward to the rivers of blood and aliens and zombies hunting down the remaining surviving specimens of mankind!

Cannizzaro's stories are indeed stories about life, death, alien and zombies. They are stories about everyday life as we know it, life as it could be if things went slightly different (e.g. zombies walking among us, Pope admitting that aliens are gods we have been worshiping since the dawn of mankind), life and death that continue its perpetual circle despite the fact that aliens are watching us and we don't care much about it after the first initial shock of finding the truth that is out there, or that zombies are our new neighbors even though we do not see or hear them so we carry on with our daily life, normal as it can be under the new circumstances.

Cannizzaro's stories are also stories about love, passion and sex. In some we can so vividly taste the smells, fragrances and the bloodstream of Italy, in others we are faced with our own basic instincts, aspirations, cravings, hopes, dreams and memories. Some of them are not even two pages long, while others are a more complex and maybe even more demanding reading. All of them, though, are carefully written with Cannizzaro's beautiful style and meticulously chosen words and sentences.

Three of my favorite stories are Yet Another Zombie Apocalypse, The Best Place to Plan a Mass Shooting and The Announcement. If that describes me as an aspiring and sometimes misunderstood author who is scared shitless of zombies and hopes for aliens to come to his rescue, so be it. This is who I am. But these stories carry the weight of a deeper truth and hypothetical and yet not-so-alien reality, if we only allow ourselves to think outside the box we have been put and locked into.

There is one particular story I wanted to mention at the end and I am sure there is a good reason why the author saved it to end his first book of collected stories with it as well. Impurita is the most complex and in-depth story of them all, but what truly separates it and places it on a special pedestal is the beauty and love with which it is written, a strong and deep emotion and the poetry in every sentence through which it speaks to us. Would calling it a literary masterpiece be an exaggeration? I hope you will be able to tell me that after you read it.

BJ
www.bernardjan.com



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When I was kindly invited by my friend and colleague Dario Cannizzaro, author of Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies – a great collection of short stories I was privileged to read and review – and a debut novel Dead Men Naked – to be released by the end of this year – to write a post about my writing pet peeve, my first thought was, oh no, I am going to publicly whine!

Whining or not, fact is that my biggest pet peeve is time, or better to say lack of it, accompanied by distraction. What on earth does that mean?

Well, time is all but relative and certainly I do not have it. As much as I try to organize my working day and the noise of my thoughts inside my head and the world outside it, I simply do not know, at this moment in time (again this precious word time!), when to sit down and start writing. (Maybe I should do that standing?! Or walking?! Or in my dreams, when I remember I had dreamed??)

I am not complaining, though it would be easier to do so! But after coming home from work, doing my regular networking hours, sending queries to literary agents (I am not doing that on a daily basis but nonetheless have to prepare myself mentally and emotionally for that sacred mission and highly important quest), writing posts for my blogs, updating my web page and social platforms, going through 50-100 emails depending on a daily e-traffic, I barely have energy to grab and read some book from my 90-something-high-pile of unread books (recently I regularly fall asleep and doze off more than once while reading because I am too tired to push my body and mind a little bit further), let alone write something. It's not that I don't have ideas and that my muse ran away to sell itself to someone else. I do! What I don't have is energy.

And TIME.

When I write I need to have my peace in order to escape this world and lose myself in my fictional world. This is when I switch realities, the real one with imaginary one. Yes, the imaginary reality is where I inhabit when I write, where I live with my characters, when I am a part of them and they become a part of me, where I make them miserable, kill them and mourn over them, where they break my heart.

Where we love each others.

In that world I don't want distraction with little or big things from this world I am trying to evade and forget, in that new world I have my new life which serves its purpose to create and build for the pleasure and entertainment of others. I am creating with love and dedication, revealing and showing what I love, with hope to share it one day with those who will appreciate it.

I don't want to be superficial and do it just for the sake of writing something and commercializing it. I want to do it out of love, to make something valuable and everlasting. My contribution to the world I will leave behind one day, soon enough.

So when I create, I need my peace and my time to write. Those are the diamonds I need to find and dig out from the muddy waters of my everyday life. When I find enough time, I will eventually find peace too. I will shut myself out from this world and move to another place and time. And if I cannot find time in this real time, I will dive into the well of my imagination, grab the remote and press pause.

As time continues its flux and events happen one after another without stopping, as seconds tick away one after another on their way to eternity and oblivion, my time will keep standing. My minutes will stretch into hours, days if necessary, and I will finish what I need to do. I will complete my task, my mission, my new creation I love and will gladly share with others who will appreciate it once I press play on my imaginary remote again and our times and worlds merge again into one on its continuous way into the unknowns of the future.

I thank Larysia, the poet from Canada who started this blog hop I am part of now and once again I thank Dario for introducing me to her.

With full confidence and great expectations I pass the question about writing pet peeves to my friends and fellow authors Angel Ramon Medina, author of the Thousand Years War Series and leader of the Hybrid Nation, and Jonathan Hill, author of Not Just a Boy, A Christmas Outing, FAG and the Maureen books . Don't forget to check out their web pages in the coming days to learn about their pet peeves! Thank you!

BJ
www.bernardjan.com
Bernard Jan

If you haven't tried to format an e-book, you wouldn't believe what a pain it can be. I wish I could describe differently how I feel about it, but I don’t want to use those words.

I am so tempted to destroy everything I did so far and start for the fourth or fifth time from scratch; this is what I will probably do in the end. I cannot stand the sight of the blank pages and weirdly aligned sections and chapters. If only I wasn't that eager to learn it so I will be able to do it by myself, while having the help of my friends who I am bugging every now and then, my book would already be finalized for marketing and almost out by now.

But it is not. It still needs to be done and perfected because I am a perfectionist. I am not going to publish or sell it until I know that I did my best within my limited knowledge and abilities.

So, if you ask me, when it will be, I can merely tell you that it is in the making and it will come out before I drive everyone around me, myself included, totally crazy.

While we all wait for a miraculous appearance of my soon-to-formatted-e-book A World Without Color, I invite you to take notice of these other four recently published books. I haven't read all of them yet but I surely will (currently I am reading one of them), and I would like you to read them too. Angel, Trish, Dario, Tim and L.T. deserve your attention. Thank you!

Janus: The Devil's Election by Angel Ramon Medina
It's September 11, 2016, only 2 months away from the most controversial election in the history of the United States. Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton are both running for office, but they both could not be any more hated by the American public. Meanwhile, an organization called the Terrorist Killers are investigating a substance known as the stem-cell substance. It supposedly extends the lifespan of a human being and be the next great breakthrough in genetic engineering.

Death by Default by Trish Reeb
An online game turns deadly. To fill the void following his divorce, Detective Conner Smyth plays chess with anonymous opponents. The stakes soar when white chess pieces turn up on murder victims. The problem? Conner's never won a game. His search for a master player leads to a ten-year-old chess champion. To what extremes will he go to stop a serial killer? Risk a boy's life, betray his partner, lose a new love interest... before someone he cares about dies?

Dead Men Naked by Dario Cannizzaro
After the sudden death of his best friend Neil, involving a 6-foot giant crow and quite some Tequila, Lou's life takes an unexpected turn towards the impossible. As Lou discovers his unwelcome gift to see Neil's ghost, he starts to question his sanity; but the real challenge is just coming up. Mallory, a self-proclaimed medium, offers her services to help Neil pass over. Drunk on spirit, lust, and hope, Lou agrees to perform a ritual, which, unforeseen, leaves him alone to face death.

Dead End Girl by L.T. Vargus, Tim McBain
The most recent body was discovered in the grease dumpster behind a Burger King. Dismembered. Shoved into two garbage bags and lowered into the murky oil. Now rookie agent Violet Darger gets the most important assignment of her career. She travels to the Midwest to face a killer unlike anything she's seen. Aggressive. Territorial. Deranged and driven. Another mutilated corpse was found next to a roller rink. A third in the gutter in a residential neighborhood. These bold displays of violence shock the rural community and rattle local law enforcement.

The picture of a mouse I am attaching to this blog post as a gift for you. This is what Anita's cat brought to us yesterday while we formatted my book at her place. The joys of direct formatting! No wonder instructions say never use direct formatting.

No worries, we did not use the mouse for the formatting!

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan

Dead Men Naked by Dario Cannizzaro

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


In my first review of Cannizzaro's work (a collection of stories titled Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies) I wrote: Three of my favorite stories are Yet Another Zombie Apocalypse, The Best Place to Plan a Mass Shooting and The Announcement. These stories carry the weight of a deeper truth and hypothetical and yet not-so-alien reality, if we only allow ourselves to think outside the box we have been put and locked into. There is one particular story (...) Impurita (...) the most complex and in-depth story of them all, but what truly separates it and places it on a special pedestal is the beauty and love with which it is written, a strong and deep emotion and the poetry in every sentence through which it speaks to us. Would calling it a literary masterpiece be an exaggeration?

Dario's new book and his first novel Dead Men Naked is a literary masterpiece. It is of no importance what other people say and with how many stars they rate it. No stars and no other opinion and review can alter the feeling and sensation I experienced while reading it.

I am not a person who flirts with occult and otherworldly. I also don't think often about death despite my occasional suicidal thoughts and moments when meeting death would be a welcome hideaway and oasis of nirvana and nonexistence from the everyday monsters of the world of the living.

The way Dario Cannizzaro flirts with it in his Dead Men Naked makes me want to reconsider it, even though for a brief random and non-regular moments. Without restraint and holding back, Dead Men Naked is an open buddying and intellectual lovemaking with the Grim Reaper and ghosts of our departed loved ones.

I bet you’ll never forget your first real friend, and for me that was Neil — my first true friend and probably the only one. I missed him in my bones and in my gut. It was a physical feeling, a ghostly limbic resonance with something that wasn’t there anymore.

It is an ode to death which celebrates life and poetry on every page, a detailed and intimate portrait of who we are while stepping over the threshold of the unknown, our becoming into something else or nothing, the ultimate cognition of what we are so desperate to find out while blooming with life but are unable to do so.

There are no secrets to the dead, as after this life they still exist, and known to them is the exit from this stage of fools; alas, everyone will join in this secret eventually, in his own personal way; but a great death takes a life of preparation.

Beautifully portrayed characters are just our guides through this unusually sensual, emotional and deep story. Everything is subordinated to a strong mixed feeling of dying and staying alive, of meeting and escaping the inevitable. I am at the lack of words and abundant with tears of strong impressions, and if I keep saying more, I will only ruin the whole experience. Therefore I will say only this: Dario, you nailed it!

Under the bird’s wings are Neil, Mallory, and Angelene. All of them naked. We’re under the stars, in what looks like an ancient Roman arena. The moon is shining and the clouds are broken and remade by the wind in an endless dance.
Who are you gonna save? the bird declares.
All of them, I reply.
No, you won’t, because you cannot save anyone but you.
The bird flaps his wings once, twice. The air coming from them throws me to the ground. Angelene and Mallory and Neil turn into skeletons and their bones shine like constellations.

Bernard Jan
www.bernardjan.com

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Bernard Jan