how to spot a Cylon

And I post this UKeyed bit here, set at a Brazilian New Year party, specially for Rachel's enjoyment! : ) (I'm pretty sure I made some translation mistakes there, though, and I apologize for them.)

Clinically sober, on I walked, looking for something I was too unfocused to find. Mr. DJ had embarked onto a trippy oldies’ séance and I, pre-morning mode on, stumbled at cabbages who wouldn’t take notice at all. Only the cabbaged attend afterparties.

I envied them. While I moved on and kept my mouth firmly shut, I had this grasp on reality: to me, it was yet another year to end, yet another year to come. The lack of seasons in this town would be the thing to freeze me: non-summer, non-fall, non-winter, non-spring.

A bloke was standing right in the middle of the floor, sweating, holding this cigarette he wouldn’t puff. I examined him closely. I took his cigarette and puffed it; I saw no display of reaction. I put it back, but, as his fingers were frozen, it fell on the lino. That was my cue: fed up I tried to walk away, which ended in a thud.

The body I had thumped upon absorbed the shock as firmly as a rock. I lifted my eyes. The stranger had a grip on my wrist.

The man didn’t just look much more conscious than the rest; he looked a lot more nitid as well. He looked like a Real Man.

Labels: books, Brazil, Brazilian fiction, literature, new authors, new Brazilian fiction, novel

link to this post ~ 11:33 AM

I decided to post the translated beginning of my book, which I plan to call Nasty Nights in English. It probably looks a bit different of the version that's been taken to Frankfurt Book Fair, but no worries. Sample it, taste it, enjoy it.

He turns to one side. Four in the morning.

He turns to the other. A woman.

By color, shape and smell of it, it should be Amanda. He checks the face.

Amanda.

The skin under her eyes is shiny. But over her cheek, it’s opaque. She called that a mixed skin type.

Her hair was changed. He touches it. The tresses fall apart in between his fingers.

He cannot tell her new colorwave right in this darkness. It’s probably located between color numbers 3 and 6, maybe a mix between two or more tones in the brown-reddish scale. He knows such things because he’s about to complete twelve years of hair intimacy.

She had a perm on the first time he met her, at Paulinha’s, at a time when he was but yet another boy in a trenchcoat in that miserable heat, and when she was considering to hold off college and go lounge around Europe just like her sisters and cousins had. She had spent the ’88 Winter as a redhead, recycling the half-coats and boots worn during her Hitchcock blonde stage (spiral buns and hair-sticks); in ’91 she mimicked a native girl, long dark straight hair, artificially tanned, tribal accessories, only to appear just before New Year’s Eve with a late-yuppie look. He could barely make out he was married to a blonde.

From his vantage point he could see stars, even laying down as he was. Stars. Shining as if nothing was happening. Whilst somewhere in town people were drunk and naked having dirty hot sex. And laughing as if things were granted and easy, not belligerent and covetous.

So stars were bothersome and he would close them curtains if they existed. But they didn’t. His wife had asked for his input and he had said whatever. Now he sorely repented in a china cabinet.

At least he has nothing of interest to be looked upon.

In the trash bin, he discovers an auburn chestnut color. Its name: Tobacco Honey.

Amanda’s watching turned-off TV. Again.

The first time he busted this behaviour of hers, in the middle of a black-out, he was sure she didn’t sit there every afternoon, first thing when home from work, just to watch TV. No way. She was brooding.

He cooks up an approach.

He opens the cabinet door left of the TV.

There’s a half-bottle of whisky.

He quickly closes it.

She had lightened a cigarette. TV still off. Of course, TV does get worse each day, but the fact that she had stopped to bother turning on the TV before complaining about the quality of the programmes, and even allowing the irresponsible color-show to disguise any darker thoughts, was very worrysome.

Labels: books, Brazil, Brazilian fiction, literature, new authors, new Brazilian fiction, novel

link to this post ~ 11:13 AM

This is part of a synopsis for my second novel, published only in Portuguese up until now, called A feia noite (literally, The ugly night or The nasty night). I plan to call it Nasty Nights in English, which mantains the original sense while keeping a nice alliteration. Sorry about any mistakes and hope you like it.

Francisco is 37 years old. Even though he is a political consultant, out of the office he is an extremely righteous and rule-abiding man living in Brazil, where rule-bending is the only rule. But he feels left out of the great party of life. He is on antidepressants so as to stop his panic attacks and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and also to save his marriage. It’s election year and we’re in January, a high-Summer month crammed between year-end holidays and Carnival festivities, where everybody is out on vacation, including his psychiatrist.
The book starts with Francisco being left by his diva of a wife, Amanda, and breaking down. The following day, he’s unable to remember much. There’s a girl not in his bed, but in the single bed of the children’s room (that he and his wife kept even without children). She’s about to be 21 and her name is Maria Luiza.
Not knowing what had happened between them and not strong enough to show her the door, Francisco offers her shelter, unaware of his own intentions, let alone hers. From this point on the book is divided into “nights”, in a total of fifteen. Francisco is soon to find out that Maria Luiza too is involved with an occupation that is despised by society: a whore’s. A libertine, as she favors. Maria Luiza is just what Francisco has always secretly yearned for: his entrance pass to a world made up of crazy flings and debauchery – but why exactly would she be leaving all this behind?

Labels: books, Brazilian fiction, literature, new authors, new Brazilian fiction, novel

link to this post ~ 2:47 PM