Bryan Murphy's Blog - Posts Tagged "italy"
Daria Rigoletti
Ladies and Gentlemen, Please say hello to Daria Rigoletti and Goodbye, Padania: http://www.bryanmurphy.eu/ebooks.asp !
Noir
From Calabria with love. And death. Meet Daria Rigoletti: http://www.bryanmurphy.eu/ebooks.asp
Catnap
A heart-warming rescue? Or a furry, freaked-out fantasy? You decide. From Pyrokinection webzine. For lovers of cats, poetry and graphic comics.
Catnap
Fritz! Now there was a cat: that
monstrous, malodorous, megalomaniac, marauding, mariajuanaphile
creation of Crumb. Sixties and Seventies
slip through a wormhole, spaced out in spacetime,
materialise the poor creature on my absent neighbours’ balcony,
transfix it among spiked anti-robber railings
it is too scared to back out of.
The cat shrieks, wails, howls
like a banshee, yanks us
from Sunday-morning dreams of long sleep.
Its instinct calls to our instinct;
we snap to our feet,
rush to save ourselves by saving it,
but Fritz is recalcitrant, its freaked-out fur frozen,
all energy focused on throat,
issuing warnings and pleas that drown the Cathedral’s bells
(its creator would chuckle).
Its lord and master, our neighbourhood hotelier,
is beside himself in the courtyard below.
We beam him up, with a gang of his workmen, converted to animal rescue, who compose a human chain to anchor him
as he stretches his yearning across the abyss
between next-door balconies.
The banshee screams,
sinks front claws into its ninth-life owner’s wrists,
thus gets hauled back through space, in time,
cocooned in human arms,
to the tableau outside my condo kitchen.
One by one, the humans disappear.
Fritz goes too.
Bryan Murphy is a retired translator who now concentrates on his own words and divides his time between England, Italy and the wider world. His work has recently appeared in Descant, Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon, The Pygmy Giant, Rose and Thorn, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes and The View from Here. His website, www.bryanmurphy.eu, contains a taster of his forthcoming novella, Goodbye, Padania.
Catnap
Fritz! Now there was a cat: that
monstrous, malodorous, megalomaniac, marauding, mariajuanaphile
creation of Crumb. Sixties and Seventies
slip through a wormhole, spaced out in spacetime,
materialise the poor creature on my absent neighbours’ balcony,
transfix it among spiked anti-robber railings
it is too scared to back out of.
The cat shrieks, wails, howls
like a banshee, yanks us
from Sunday-morning dreams of long sleep.
Its instinct calls to our instinct;
we snap to our feet,
rush to save ourselves by saving it,
but Fritz is recalcitrant, its freaked-out fur frozen,
all energy focused on throat,
issuing warnings and pleas that drown the Cathedral’s bells
(its creator would chuckle).
Its lord and master, our neighbourhood hotelier,
is beside himself in the courtyard below.
We beam him up, with a gang of his workmen, converted to animal rescue, who compose a human chain to anchor him
as he stretches his yearning across the abyss
between next-door balconies.
The banshee screams,
sinks front claws into its ninth-life owner’s wrists,
thus gets hauled back through space, in time,
cocooned in human arms,
to the tableau outside my condo kitchen.
One by one, the humans disappear.
Fritz goes too.
Bryan Murphy is a retired translator who now concentrates on his own words and divides his time between England, Italy and the wider world. His work has recently appeared in Descant, Eunoia Review, The Camel Saloon, The Pygmy Giant, Rose and Thorn, The Rainbow Rose, Dead Snakes and The View from Here. His website, www.bryanmurphy.eu, contains a taster of his forthcoming novella, Goodbye, Padania.
New e-book
The English-only version of “Goodbye, Padania” is now out!! It costs less than a cup of coffee, from: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Please take a look (you can download a sample), and if you like it, please “like” it, maybe buy it and certainly recommend it to friends. Thanks!
Please take a look (you can download a sample), and if you like it, please “like” it, maybe buy it and certainly recommend it to friends. Thanks!
Blog Hop
We are hopping our way through some great reads. For those who aren’t familiar with a blog hop…it’s a lot like a treasure hunt — once you find something on one blog, hop over to the next blog link for more treasure. In this case, the treasure is a wealth of new and exciting books. Some are still being written, some are just being released. Either way, for fiction lovers…it’s a treasure, and I’d like to thank my friend Delinda McCann for asking me to take part.
You can find Delinda here: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
Here are the questions Delinda asked me, and my answers.
1) What is the working title of your book?
“Goodbye, Padania”.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My protagonist, Daria, was a minor character in an earlier story, also set in Padania. I wanted to flesh out her personality and look into her mind.
Italy has often had small states within its territory. Venice, Genoa, even Pisa have all been independent. Today, only San Marino and the Vatican State remain. Some people are pushing to carve a new one, called Padania, out of the north Italian lowlands, to be a haven of wealth and racism. I want to suggest that wealth and racism are incompatible in today’s Europe.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a kind of noir thriller set in the future, so I’d label it “speculative fiction”.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For Daria, I’d want authenticity. I’d cast among southern Italians for someone short, dark and capable of glaring razor-sharp daggers. I’d go to Hollywood or Cinecittà for Mercurio. Di Caprio or Raoul Bova might do. A gaggle of the latest pretty boys for Daria’s disciples who become her lovers. A real priest for Father Francesco, and a hologram of Charles Bronson for the villain in the final showdown.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Amid the death agonies of a pariah state, a young woman tries to escape the role that fate has apparently designed for her: killer.
6) Is your book self-published, published or represented by an agency?
For an anarchist like me, it has to be self-published.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote it as a series of short stories over four years. I ran them together in a week.
8) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The rise of racism in the country in which I was living.
9) What else about your book might pique the readers’ interest?
The psychology of Daria, I hope. The paradox of an ordinary girl who loves shopping and overeating, yet is a highly successful, cold-blooded killer.
10) What other books in your genre would you compare this to?
Nicoletta Vallorani’s “Eva” is a whodunnit set in a future, dystopian Milan. Irene Dische examines the banal mind of a contract killer in “The Job”. Harold Pinter often featured ordinary-seeming people who may or may not be killers. And Phil Zimbardo deals extensively with the psychological aspect in “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”. They go beyond a single genre, but I hope that “Goodbye, Padania” does, too.
Continue on the blog hop by checking out these other wonderful authors!
Rosemary Adkins: http://www.extraordinaryireland.blogs...
Dan O’Brien: http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.i...
Steven Nedelton: http://www.snedelton.com
Maggie Tideswell: http://maggiestorm.blogspot.com/
Delinda McCann: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
You can find Delinda here: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
Here are the questions Delinda asked me, and my answers.
1) What is the working title of your book?
“Goodbye, Padania”.
2) Where did the idea come from for the book?
My protagonist, Daria, was a minor character in an earlier story, also set in Padania. I wanted to flesh out her personality and look into her mind.
Italy has often had small states within its territory. Venice, Genoa, even Pisa have all been independent. Today, only San Marino and the Vatican State remain. Some people are pushing to carve a new one, called Padania, out of the north Italian lowlands, to be a haven of wealth and racism. I want to suggest that wealth and racism are incompatible in today’s Europe.
3) What genre does your book fall under?
It’s a kind of noir thriller set in the future, so I’d label it “speculative fiction”.
4) Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
For Daria, I’d want authenticity. I’d cast among southern Italians for someone short, dark and capable of glaring razor-sharp daggers. I’d go to Hollywood or Cinecittà for Mercurio. Di Caprio or Raoul Bova might do. A gaggle of the latest pretty boys for Daria’s disciples who become her lovers. A real priest for Father Francesco, and a hologram of Charles Bronson for the villain in the final showdown.
5) What is the one sentence synopsis of your book?
Amid the death agonies of a pariah state, a young woman tries to escape the role that fate has apparently designed for her: killer.
6) Is your book self-published, published or represented by an agency?
For an anarchist like me, it has to be self-published.
7) How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
I wrote it as a series of short stories over four years. I ran them together in a week.
8) Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The rise of racism in the country in which I was living.
9) What else about your book might pique the readers’ interest?
The psychology of Daria, I hope. The paradox of an ordinary girl who loves shopping and overeating, yet is a highly successful, cold-blooded killer.
10) What other books in your genre would you compare this to?
Nicoletta Vallorani’s “Eva” is a whodunnit set in a future, dystopian Milan. Irene Dische examines the banal mind of a contract killer in “The Job”. Harold Pinter often featured ordinary-seeming people who may or may not be killers. And Phil Zimbardo deals extensively with the psychological aspect in “The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil”. They go beyond a single genre, but I hope that “Goodbye, Padania” does, too.
Continue on the blog hop by checking out these other wonderful authors!
Rosemary Adkins: http://www.extraordinaryireland.blogs...
Dan O’Brien: http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.i...
Steven Nedelton: http://www.snedelton.com
Maggie Tideswell: http://maggiestorm.blogspot.com/
Delinda McCann: http://delindamccann.blogspot.com/2011
500 down
“Linehan’s Trip” sails past the 500-download milestone. See why: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... For lovers of sci-fi, soccer, Italy and our future.
Postcards from Italy
I'm really pleased to announce that I have an online chapbook ready for your perusal at the Camel Saloon, where "the beer is cold, the whiskey Irish & the door always open", thanks to head barkeep, Russell Streur. Please visit, read some of my "Postcards from Italy" and maybe do me the favour of leaving a comment. Here's the address:
http://booksonblog38.blogspot.it/
http://booksonblog38.blogspot.it/
Announcement
From 24 to 28 January Goodbye, Padania will be free on Smashwords, in multiple formats. Enter coupon code UH33Q at the checkout. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... Please share!
100% discount
From 24 to 28 January Goodbye, Padania is free on Smashwords, in multiple formats. Enter coupon code UH33Q at the checkout. https://www.smashwords.com/books/view... Please pass on the good news.
Murder By Suicide
My new e-book, Murder By Suicide, is now available in all electronic formats and for on-screen reading. It is very short and completely free. You can find it here:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Please share this news.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view...
Please share this news.
