A couple of updates while I hack away at yet more deadlines while trying to squeeze in creative work, as per this, earlier, mini-essay on the travails of cramming in too much work out of necessity, but against the interests of what we can very loosely call ‘the soul’.

While the summer continues its sweaty churn without wanting to give us any respite — though thankfully, our sojourn in Helsinki seems to have spared us the worst of it — a couple of happy developments have snuck their way into the pigeon-hole of life, much like the rare but welcome evening breeze that sometimes visits us during these meterologically trying times.

Here they are.

Awguri, Giovanni Bonello is up for the National Book Prize!

For all its deadline-based hardship, this past year has also come with a number of fun commissions. Perhaps chief of them was being asked to contribute to Awguri, Giovanni Bonello — a festschrift in honour of Judge Giovanni Bonello turning eighty, and which was made up of a collection of historical fiction inspired by Bonello’s own forays into micro-history.

It was a sandbox I got lucky with, as my corner turned out to be a delightfully sordid and sensational one. Caterina Vitale was my subject — an ‘industrial prostitute’ who took over her husband’s pharmaceutical business soon after his death, and who is said to have used her erotic advances as a way to extract handy information from well-placed Knights of the Order of St John.

So of course, I went to town with it and turned it into a vampire story. ‘Bellicam machinam vulgo petart appellatam’ — not the snappiest of titles, I must admit — was great fun to write, especially since the subject matter gave me license to employ a highfalutin’ literary style that apes the Gothic tradition in more ways than one.

Complemented by sharp-and-pretty illustrations from Marisa Attard, the bilingual collection is a solid representation of where Maltese writing is right now. The eclectic roll-call of writers, summoned to respond to intriguing prompts, also suggests that more of such anthologies may be a good way forward for the local publishing scene.

I think we just may have a shot at this prize.

Editing Encore Magazine!

Another exciting development is the news that, as of its 11th issue, I will be serving as editor for Encore Magazine — a quarterly publication dealing with arts and culture on the Maltese Islands.

While having served as the Culture Editor for MaltaToday for some years now — a post that I will continue to occupy week-in, week-out, I hasted to add — I also look forward to building on what Encore’s previous editor — my dear friend Veronica Stivala — established with the previous ten issues of the beautifully designed and put together magazine.

One of the main things I’m looking forward to with this particular project is being able to get out of the weekly grind when planning and writing articles. I’ve already been contributing to Encore for a few months now, and already the one-month deadline to pen a piece which, partly by dint of its quarterly publishing schedule, does not require one to be limited by micro-topical happenings, was something of a relief.

Coupled with always maintaining an international perspective on things — while always using the Maltese scene as a starting point — I hope we can continue to give the local cultural scene a good dose of ‘slow journalism’.

Because acceleration is the last thing we need right now.