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The Symbiosis has Started
So. It’s out! Poiesis is now available worldwide on Amazon (exclusively, for now), and this means Symbiosis has begun. Which is pretty bad, for me, I guess, because now I have to continue with this thing, and it will finally consume what little sanity was left. Well. That happens. Luckily, I’m not alone in this one (and that’s the main reason I finally managed to face it, as the project has been there, waiting, since 2016): Symbiosis is another double-headed project I’m tackling together with my wife, Valentina Kay. Also, you may have seen that Peter Watts has penned the intro — so you can imagine stoke levels around here.…
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My story “Flatblack” out now for Thirteen Podcast
Thirteen Podcast has just released an audio version of “Flatblack.” I’ve just finished listening to the story myself and I’m blown away by the fantastic job the team at Thirteen has done — narrator Mason Amadeus, sound designer Brooke Jennett (who also voiced the Wife), audio editor Haberlin Roberts, with assistance from Bridgett Howard and Ian Epperson. The story is beautifully narrated and the whole production is top-notch — eerie as hell. And the bellow. Oh, the bellow will haunt me tonight. Thirteen is a popular podcast which specializes in atmospheric, spooky stories, and features a free monthly story on their main website and a second, subscriber-only story on their…
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Urlan, Cosmic Cat: the Making Of – Part 5: Interview with the AI
And here we are with the mind-boggling final episode of the 5-article series bringing to you the “Making Of” Urlan, Cosmic Cat. An AI-Illustrated Experiment. You can read the Making Of – Part 5: Interview with the AI on Bee Lab’s website, in which the authors (more or less humans) speak with the AI artist about the creative process behind the graphic novella. Prepare for a very peculiar experience.
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Urlan, Cosmic Cat: the Making Of – Part 4 (Interlude)
Before venturing into the Interview with the AI (which I’m sure you’re eager to get to), we thought you were ready for some of the most sanity-jeopardizing unused panels you can find in the “Making Of” section of Urlan, Cosmic Cat. An AI-Illustrated Experiment. You can check it out in the Making Of – Part 4 (Interlude) article just published on Bee Lab’s website. Are you ready?
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Urlan, Cosmic Cat: the Making Of – Part 3
Third instalment of the Making Of out on Bee Lab’s website. In which our heroes tell about the treacherous final steps in putting together the graphic novella.
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Urlan, Cosmic Cat: the Making Of – Part 2
New issue of the Making Of out on Bee Lab’s website. You can now discover all the blood-chilling secrets about the creation of your favorite space cat. You’ve been waiting for this; we deliver.
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Urlan, Cosmic Cat: the Making Of – Part 1
Want to know how we did it? I know you want. So, why don’t you check out the Making Of about my new, AI-illustrated graphic novella Urlan, Cosmic Cat? Cool stuff, I promise.
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Out Now: Urlan, Cosmic Cat. An AI-Illustrated Experiment
My new book is out! I’m especially happy about this one, because it’s also the first book I co-authored with my wife (and lifelong editor), Valentina Kay, and the first book we’re publishing with our brand-new studio, Bee Lab. Urlan, Cosmic Cat. An AI-Illustrated Experiment is a graphic novella ripe with action, cats, guns, aliens and cool stuff. Also, it’s an exploration of what can be done with these robots — the art has been completely realized with Dall-E 3 via ChatGPT Pro. In the Making Of section, we tell you how we did that, explore the process, and also interview the robotic artist. The whole thing is interesting, very…
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Out Now in Preorder: Contact 2. Blood & Steel, featuring my “Sacrificium”
The new anthology Contact 2. Blood&Steel is now available for preorder on Amazon, launch date August 31. The book follows 2021’s successful Contact! and offers more historical settings than the first book, with stories by Julian Michael Carver, David Rose, Alister Hodge, Chris McInally (who also edited the book) and more great authors. My story is called “Sacrificium” and is set on Lake Como in the Roman era, when a troop of legionaries, led by Numidian centurion Aulus Domitius, is sent to investigate a remote fishing village. Disturbing rumors, people disappearing, an escapee with horrible scars and wounds ranting about eerie, unhealthy rituals…
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Shattered Mountain
In the Adventure section, you’ll find a new story and a video, in 4k glory, about a recent ascent to Pizzo Emet (3,200), on the Italy-Switzerland border, Val Spluga. Plus, my companion for this ascent (and wife) Valentina published a beautiful photo gallery on her brand-new website, titled Green Blue Gray. Check it out!
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Out Now: My Translation of Eximeno’s “The Sweetest” in Chthonic Matter
Santiago Eximeno‘s disturbing story “The Sweetest,” translated by me, which already appeared in his (disturbingly good) personal collection Umbría, is back in the summer issue of Chthonic Matter. That’s a new — and very promising — quarterly series (this is the second book) by Nightscript editor C.M. Muller. The book includes “tales from the darkside” by Jason A. Wyckoff, Jonathan Louis Duckworth, Gail Pinto, Santiago Eximeno, Gordon Brown, Stephen McQuiggan, K. Wallace King, Patrick Barbis. It’s already on Amazon in ebook and paperback.
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Coming Soon: Contact 2. Blood & Steel, featuring “Sacrificium”
After 2021’s Contact! (which still sits at a solid #171 in the Horror Anthology category on Amazon.com), I’ll be back on the frontline for more beasties and badasses in Contact 2. Blood&Steel, alongside Julian Michael Carver, David Rose, Alister Hodge, Chris McInally (who also edited the book) and more fantastic authors. This time, things will get close and personal with less technology and more historical settings. My story is called “Sacrificium” and tells about a squad of Roman Legionaries investigating the disappearance of a boy and disturbing rumors coming from a backwater village on Lake Como. Are you ready to fight the monsters?
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Coming Soon: “Flatblack” in audio version for Thirteen Podcast
My story “Flatblack” will come to life in audio incarnation for Thirteen Podcast this summer. Thirteen is one of the best podcast out there, featuring slow-burn and atmospheric stories — from classic ghost stories to eerie supernatural and weird tales. All beautifully narrated and edited. “Flatblack” should be published in July. Stay tuned for updates!
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Lanzarote Coast-to-Coast
With my wife Valentina, we traversed the island of Lanzarote from the South to the north tip, in a hike which took about 24 hours (including a bivouac rest) to cover the 75km of the Camino Natural from Playa Blanca to Órzola. An article about this tough and wonderful experience, made peculiar by very unusual weather for this tropical haven (it was pretty cold and we actually didn’t see the ocean the whole time!), will certainly come.
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Out Now: Contact!, featuring The Shattering
Out now: Contact! A Military Horror Anthology — fetauring my new story The Shattering — brought to you by Screaming Banshee Press, who’s doing better and better and keeps delivering. After Nature striking back in Aberrations, Contact! offers thrills, action, badasses and beasties. Can you miss it? And I’m glad to have such authors as William Meikle, Lee Murray, Dan Rabarts, Lucas Pederson, among the line-up by my side.
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Out Now: Umbría
(Finally) out now: Umbría, by Santiago Eximeno (Independent Legions Publishing). Translation from Spanish by me. Don’t miss it. Really.
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Coming Soon: “The Shattering”
With Aberrations going strong, the guys at Screaming Banshee Press don’t rest on their Australian laurels and the next book is already coming: after zombies and natural horrors, Contact! promises (and no doubt will deliver) some good old action-packed, high-adrenaline military horror (never enough of that). And I’m happy to be in the line-up again, with a new SF-horror tale — sitting right on the mark between short story and novelette — I’m particularly fond of: The Shattering.
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Find me at The Last Bookstore, Los Angeles
You can now find some of my stuff at The Last Bookstore, in Los Angeles, CA — “the biggest (and loveliest) new and secondhand bookshop in California” according to The Guardian — where a nice spot has been set for Independent Legions books, including my co-edited anthology Monsters of Any Kind, my English translation of Alessandro Manzetti’s novel Naraka, and The Beauty of Death 2 — where you can find my story “The Gorge of Children” (among many masters of modern horror). And lots of other good horror books, of course.
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Synchronicity
Talking about synchronicity. Two brand new, wonderful incarnations came out almost simultaneously of the first two books I worked on as a translator: the Italian editions for Brian Keene’s The Conqueror Worms (I vermi conquistatori, co-translated with Luigi Musolino, published this time by Independent Legions — after Edizioni XII and Urania Mondadori); and Rocky Wood’s Stephen King. Uncollected Unpublished (Stephen King. Le opere segrete del re, deluxe edition for Kipple Officina Libraria).
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Out Now: Aberrations, featuring “Frozen in the Abyss”
Australia based Screaming Banshee Press has released Aberrations. A Creature Feature Anthology, where you can find my eco-mountaineering tale “Frozen in the Abyss“ alongside awesome stories of natural horror from authors all around the globe: Dave Jeffery, David Irons, Paul Mannering, Chris McInally, Alister Hodge, R.G. Blackstone, B.D. Ramsay, Lucas Pederson.
