Thank you for joining me for my stop on the Blog Tour for Of Life, Death, Aliens and Zombies by Dario Cannizzaro.
Today I have a great guest post and there is also a giveaway to enter.
First of all let's take a look at the book...
SUMMARY
Misnomer on purpose,
this amazing debut rocks nine short and amusing stories - a Zombie Apocalypse
without zombies; the Vatican announcing contact with Aliens; a heroin junkie
that loves poetry; a timeless love, and much more.
Ordinary characters
facing extraordinary situations, dry humor, philosophical musing dressed as
whimsical, offhand commentary, and a fairy-tale like writing; those are the key
elements of the style of this funny and thought-provoking collection.
The collection comprehends
three previously published stories ("The Galway Review”, “Trigger
Warning”, “Two Thousand Words” and “Chantwood Magazine"); five new
unpublished pieces; and for the first time in English, the best-selling story
“Impurità”, which was Selected Work in 2012 by Apple iBooks.
TOP REVIEWERS’ COMMENTS
“Very strong voice, reminiscent of Jorge Luis Borges, John
Fante, Kurt Vonnegut”
- Lyn, GoodReads Top Reviewer
“An author who will stun and amaze you and make you laugh and
perhaps cry”
- Pam S. Dunn, author of Sunflower
“I haven't really been introduced to a voice as Zeitgeisty as
this since Alex Garland”
- Fabian, GoodReads Top Reviewer
“Would calling it a literary masterpiece be an exaggeration? I
hope you will be able to tell me that after you read it”
- Bernard Jan, author of Cruel
Summer
PURCHASE LINKS
========================
Guest Post
On short stories
One of my
favourite authors, Cormac McCarthy, once said, “I'm not interested in
writing short stories. Anything
that doesn't take years of your life and drive you to suicide hardly seems
worth.”
Of course I read this quote exactly when I was writing short
stories again. At that particular point, he almost convinced me that my stories
shouldn’t see the light of day, and should stay in my digital drawer forever.
But then I realised something. Cormac McCarthy, for how
amazing he might be, said what he said because he didn’t feel he was good enough to write short
stories. He did wrote two shorts indeed,
Wake for Susan and A Drowning incident, while he was still
in College. And if you read them, while you’ll see the genius lying behind the
phrases, you wouldn’t recognise Cormac.
That’s because short stories are hard. And actually, a good short story is harder than a full novel.
Yes, in a novel you need to be careful with timing, consistency, and keep the
reader entertained until the end. But the power of a longer work resides in the
fact that, if you played your cards correctly, the reader will want to know how
it ends, because (s)he’s invested a good amount of time in the characters
already.
In a short story, you need to pack a story, a meaning,
sympathetic characters, antagonists – all in a short space. Short stories are
the chocolate pralines of baking – you see those little things and think
they’re awesome, and you can eat a whole bunch of them, but you never stop to
think how much time a single one took to make.
That’s when it hit me. Instead of sending the short stories
out and get them published on Literary Magazines (which I did in the beginning,
and I thank the magazines who published them – check out where you can read
some of them for free on www.dariowrites.com ), I should organise
them in a collection; much alike chocolate pralines, a single one might not
placate the hunger, but a box of them might work just fine.
So here it is, my box of chocolates for you. Someone said
about chocolate boxes, You never know
what you’re gonna get, but that’s
part of the beauty; you will find some of them incredibly tasty (Bathroom Love) and would wonder why you
don’t have more of it, while some other might be less punchy but leave a
lingering aftertaste (The Announcement).
And at the end, there’s also a bigger slice of cake (Impurita’), for the reader who will find himself or herself hungry
after all that amuse-bouche.
Happy reading!
========================
AUTHOR BIO &
CONTACT DETAILS
DARIO CANNIZZARO was born in the sun-eaten Naples, Italy in 1982. He moved
to Ireland in 2011, and has called it home ever since. He started writing short
stories at seven, which are shamefully lost forever, but has never stopped
writing since. His works have been published in Italian and English in Literary
Magazines such as The Galway Review, Two Thousand Words and Chantwood Magazine.
========================
GIVEAWAY
This giveaway is for 1
paperback copy of the book (UK only) as a first prize and 3 digital copies of
the book.
No comments:
Post a Comment