Moving

Dear friends and visitors: after a few months trying to keep up with a portuguese and an english language blog, I had a genious idea: why not making them one? So, after today, I’ll be using another adress, with posts both in english and portuguese. Please update your links and come visit.

bernardomoraes.wordpress.com

Influenza

            “I have something to tell you.”

Maybe it was the flu, but I didn’t t want do hear what Jennifer had to say. She could be gorgeous, she could had those fantastic lips, the perfect body, and that small of champagne and strawberries; I wasn’t sensing any smell anyway.

            “Listen, Benjamin, I have something to tell you.”

            She kept saying that, but I didn’t want to hear. I kept blowing my nose and watching Oprah.

            She hold her head between her hands. Then she stared at me for a long time. My eyes were burning, and all my body ached. Finally, Jennifer got tired and got up; walked to the table and took her purse.

            “I’m leaving, Benjamin. I can’t talk to you like that.”

            She slammed the door and left. I snoozed. The digital thermometer showed 42 °C. Of course I couldn’t talk to Jennifer like that. I never knew any Jennifer.

Old West Showdown

         Billy, the Kid, and I sat in a very small and smoky room; the walls were all covered with a collection of beer cans. Between us there was a table with the solitaire game we had been playing for hours. Which is strange, because solitaire is a game for one person only.

         – I’m a legend. Give up – he said.

         I got my Colt and shot him in the guts. Billy, the Kid, fell over the table like a bag of old potatoes, spreading the cards everywhere. I blew the smoke off the gun and put it back in the belt.

            – Stupid kid – I said, and spit on the floor.

The Last Letter

by Bernardo Moraes

 

         It’s been so long since I’ve written the last time, Zelda. I always say it’s the last time. I know, you must be used to it now. Do you remember that time, when the house was surrounded by zombies and I thought it was the end? Well, it wasn’t. And there was also that time when the meteor hit the Earth, or when that big wave destroied the whole city. I keep writing the last letters of my life, but the future ends up proving me wrong.

         My love has not grown smaller, Zelda. We have been apart for so long now, since I left with my backpack and a plane ticket to Genebra, willing to find the cure for the virus that turned so many people into zombies. I did not succed that time, but so many things happened sice then…

         We live in a caotic world, but I’m used to thins things that we considered bizarre before. So I decided, after a lot of time, to write you again. I received, two weeks ago, the letter from the Army saying you died in action. But I don’t think this is the end. As sson as I finish this letter, I leave to the mountains of Nepal to talk tho this Monk who claims to reach the dead. I already tried mediums, psychics and a whole bunch of charlatains. I did not survive a metor, a tsunami and an attack of hungry zombies to give up know.

 With love,

 H.B.

About me (a poem)

They say

Show me your leader

And I say

Where does all this rain come from?

 

They say

You are dead

And I say

I still haven’t finished that book

 

They say

Love and death

I say

Milkshakes and superheroes

Update or not

Well, it’s been really a while, bes rest assured: I have been reading your blog, even when I don’t leave a comment. There a lot o secret projects going on around here, and soon a lot of news will come. This year has been really creative, adn I met a lot of great and cool people.

Keep creating, keep having fun! And thanks for all the visits and comments!

Fantasy Books

I´ve been revisiting my fantasy books. Between all of them, I chose four that mean the most to me, mostly because they inspired me to write stories.

1. The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien: classic of fantasy classics. I read Tolkien because I was playing Dungeons & Dragons and one thing lead to another, many many years ago. 

2. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman: a trilogy about parallel universes. The first book, The Golden Compass, is the best of all, with its alternate Oxford and witches and gipsies and travels to the land of bears with armors. More tan once I wante to live in Oxford because of it. 

3. Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling: absolute sucess before the word hype even existed. A book for children and adults, details, a lot of details, charismatic characters everywhere and no fear whatsoever to show death. Yeaaah baby.

4.  A series of misfortunate events, Lemony Snicket:  it´s literary references are a lot of fun:  Baudelaire, Poe and whatnot. It´s not what you would expect for a children´s  book: no happy ending, you should know from the start. It´s one bad news after another. Perfect.

Is This Art?

From the economic point of view, this was the year video games overtook music and video, combined, in the UK. The industries’ respective share of the take is forecast to be £4.64 billion and £4.46 billion. (For purposes of comparison, UK book publishers’ total turnover in 2007 was £4.1 billion.) As a rule, economic shifts of this kind take a while to register on the cultural seismometer; and indeed, from the broader cultural point of view, video games barely exist. The newspapers cover the movies extensively, and while it isn’t necessary to feel that they do all that great a job of it, there’s no denying that they have a try. Video games by contrast are consigned to the nerdy margins of the papers, and are pretty much invisible in broadcast media. Video-game fans return the favour: they constitute the demographic group least likely to pay attention to newspapers and are increasingly uninterested in the ‘MSM’, or mainstream media.

– John Lancaster on London Review of Books.

The waiting envolved

I haven’t been this excited about writing and reading in a long time. I’m reading The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (which inspired the movie Apocalipse Now) and White Fang by Jack London. Great, classic books.

My second book publishing process is going OK. So far all I have to do is revise it and wait. If you think of it, the process of becoming an author has a lot of WAITING envolved. WAIT responses from publishers, WAIT for the time your book is ready, WAIT so you can gave more experience and knowledge. 

Also, I’m writing a new book of wich I CAN’T SAY ANYTHING about right now, but it’s a GOOD THING, definitely.

Publishing second book this year

Great news! My second book, called “I wish i was a superhero” will be published this year, around december, here in Brazil. It’s a short-stories book about movies, superheroes and books.

My first book was called “Minimundo” and it was published in 2006.

I promise I’ll post some more stories form “Minimundo” and “I wish I was a superhero” very soon.

Now we’re starting the whole editorial process. I’ll keep posting updates here. 

Thanks for the visits and comments!