Ciao Bella!
I’m in Germany! Wait? No, that’s not right. I’m in Italy. Bologna to be exact, well actually I’m hopefully in Ireland by the time you read this as I’m going to post it once the trip is over but I’m in Bologna as I type this. Interestingly enough, F1 champion Max Verstappen was testing GT3 cars in a track nearby today but predictably didn’t challenge me to a race, he’s obviously heard I’ve done eight driving lessons and I’ve been driving my own car a lot lately and he knows not to challenge someone like me. How is that driving going? I hear you ask, it’s going well. My girlfriend is usually with me and is a good teacher, we got lost around Dundalk the other day and drove down this very Irish road which had a speed limit of 80 kilometres per hour...
Anyway, I thought I’d make this a little bit of a special edition of the Midnite Gazette and temporarily turn it into a travel blog for this trip. But first lets jump into some needed updates... after you look at this picture of the bruschetta I got while I wrote this.
Look at that bad boy, I always thought I hated tomatoes but it turns out I hate Irish tomatoes. Italians know what they are doing, it’s kinda the reverse of how Irish people hate milk and butter outside of Ireland cause everyone else can’t do them right.
Updates:
Lots has been going on lately with writing projects and it makes me ecstatic. I’m finishing up the final edits on script number four for Osaka S.P.D. before sending it off to Clare for her edits. I’m gearing up for the final script too, some of it is written but its a rough draft. I’ve planned out the issue and I think I just have enough page real estate to squeeze everything in while pulling off an ending I think and hope will have readers wanting more (and hopefully we can deliver more, the Osaka series should be a trilogy). Rob has finished the letters on issue two and I’ve written the summary for the issue (summary of previous issue to be shown at the start of the current issue) so issue two is in the books and has been sent off to the publisher. Hugo in the meantime has been absolutely tearing through the art for issue three, with 17/24 pages fully completed, I’ve checked them out and as always they are absolutely stunning. I did notice one small error that I caused by not being specific in the script but it’s a small error and not something that would be worth re-doing finished pages over (plus you can all try and spot it when it comes out. I’ll buy the first person to spot it a pint or an ice cream or something). There is a huge fight scene in issue 3 that I spent a lot of time planning out and providing as much references as I could for as I wanted it done as perfectly as possible. I know I said I’d stop sharing sneak peaks of upcoming books but fuck it, Hugo finished the art for the fight so here is a single page of the fight between two unnamed characters (no spoilers and also please don’t share this anywhere. A little gift for the newsletter subscribers. Also, it is a screenshot, image quality is much better on the real thing).
I GO TO AMERICA ITALY:
As mentioned up above I am in Bologna, Italy. I’m here on a work trip, not a writing work trip just a regular work trip with my regular job I work because perusing a career in writing would be impossible without another job covering my bills and my food (I need this to live) and my Hot Wheels collection (I need these to live too). My employer’s parent company is an Italian company so every year they fly us over to Bologna for an annual meeting/conference for all the teams to go over how they did the past year. It’s very corporate and a little boring but it’s a free trip to Italy and we get food and drink so I’m not and never will complain. Last year was my first time on the trip and also my first time in Italy and I had a great time so I was excited to go again. Bologna is a beautiful city with a lot of culture and amazing food (all of Italy has amazing food to be honest).
I have to do a little bit of work while on the trip but not a lot thankfully so I can spend some time at the pool, being a tourist and also doing some writing. I’ve always wanted to book like a week in a sunny city and just write for that week so I’m using this as a little test run of that. I think I’ll focus on Project Tentacle while here as I’ve been itching to get back to it and I don’t need to get to the final script for S.P.D. yet. As you can imagine, sitting out on an Italian alleyway, drinking beer and eating ragu is amazing for the soul and makes writing even easier. Though might not put you in the right frame of mind for writing horror!
Okay, I think I’ll take my time writing this and add a little every day of my trip so I’m going to stop here and then come back (though you won’t be able to tell as the post will just continue on, but feel free to take a break here and come back yourself). I saw what looked like a book shop slash comic book shop slash wine bar while walking up here so I’m going to go check that out. I am symbolising this break with a picture of the cured ham sandwich thing I got in Zurich airport while waiting for a connecting a flight. It and the bottle of coke cost the low, low price of euro17.70. What a deal! (Thank Christ I can charge it back as a travel expense).
(I forgot to save the pic so just pretend it is here.)
Okay, we’re back. It’s been two days for me since we spoke. But for you it has been however long you took looking at the above picture. So what have I been up to, well I did end up going to the book shop wine bar (turns out it wasn’t a comic book shop but they did sell graphic novels and manga). It was very cool and a great idea since book readers usually enjoy alcohol. I picked a few things up including Lady In The Lake a book that sounds very interesting and caught my eye due to the beautiful cover (they say don’t judge a book by its cover but that’s only said by people with bad covers). I was a bit fearful the book shop would be exclusively books in Italian but thankfully they had an English section too. Here are some pics I took in the shop.
There is also a film festival of sorts on at the moment, every year in Bologna they put a massive screen in the town square and show movies on it at night. They do this throughout June and July. They were showing an old Italian movie on the first night I was there but it was getting late and I needed to get a taxi back to the hotel so I wasn’t able to stick around and watch it but it is a really great initiative and something more cities should do. It is run by Cineteca do Bologna, a local movie shop and film archive that archives lots of old movies. I was able to pop into their shop and check it out and got myself a pen and a sticker but almost ended up leaving with a lot more, they had a lot of cool posters, books about film history and of course DVDs. Here is some pics of the setup of the big screen as well as some pics I took in the store.
Bologna is a beautiful city with a lot of culture, it is also a lot more artistic than I thought. Obviously, Italy is a country with a deep history of art but Bologna is seeping with art and culture. When I was in the book shop I found a book by an English writer who moved to Bologna when he became a full-time writer and I can see why he did. If I ever was lucky enough to secure a novel publishing deal with a paid advance which allowed me to go full-time then I think I’d absolutely move to Bologna for a few weeks just to write. The little bit of writing I have done since I got here has been a joy to write, things even feel to come more naturally.
I’m writing at this moment from the hotel pool on my last day here, I’ll be flying back to Ireland tomorrow morning and will already be in Ireland when you read this. I would have liked a few more days here but beggars can’t be choosers and this is a paid-for work trip. I’ll have to just organise a personal holiday here at some stage. One thing that I saw while here which I never thought I would see was thunder and lightning. I went to go for a run on Thursday morning and when I stepped outside it began to rain and lightning flashed across the sky, I thought both of those things were illegal in Italy but it seems not. With that anecdote I’ll stop writing again and finish this post once I’m home to the beautiful Emerald Isle were it absolutely is not illegal to rain. Here is some pics of writing by the pool.
Okay, so this paragraph is the Irish paragraph. I arrived back in Ireland on Saturday after an early morning flight (which I had to sit on for an hour before takeoff because of a technical issue). My last night in Bologna was an enjoyable one with an Italian co-worker taking some of us to a beautiful restaurant that made some of the best food I’ve ever eaten. My flight was at 6am, meaning we had to leave the hotel before 4 to get there on time. I decided against getting a few hours of sleep and instead stayed up to pack and also kill time watching Italian TV. Everything was of course in Italian but it didn’t bother me, Predator is so enjoyable I can even enjoy it in a language I don’t understand. They also showed a Charlie Chaplain silent movie so I was able to watch that. I spent most of Saturday sleeping once I got back to Ireland and a lot of Sunday sleeping too but I feel back to regular energy levels now and I’m ready to jump back into as much writing as I can squeeze in. I didn’t want to fill the newsletter with pictures so here is a few more of just random pics.
That’s about it for my Italian adventure. Definitely a different kind of newsletter entry than usual but I hope you enjoyed reading it. Alright, chat later. Remember to stay healthy, happy and hydrated and most of all. Keep it sexy x
All the best,
AAL