A long time ago…okay, I’ll admit it was 1952 but please remember that I’m only chronologically old, not old in any other way…I was living in New York City and wrote a story for children called The Legend of Weapons. I was going to illustrate it but had so much else to do that I sent it to Gian Berto Vanni, an Italian artist friend, asking if he’d like to take it on and I would then try to find a publisher. He liked the story and, always looking for new opportunities, soon produced a batch of inventive, tongue-in-cheek, sophisticated black line drawings. I put the text and drawings together and sent the ms to several publishers who rejected it, nicely. One of them accepted but later changed their minds. I kept trying to interest others but time went by, life went on, and gradually I lost touch with the Vanni family and the Legend of Weapons went into my overflowing box of unborn projects.
It’s now 2022, 70 years later. A wonderful independent Italian editor of children’s books who published a new edition of a book illustrated by Vanni asks Ruggero whether his father ever illustrated any other stories for children. Yes, says Ruggero, but we lost touch with the author, Natalie. Then the artist son of artist Gian Berto Vanni finds me out of the blue. He lives in New York. We connect, we email, we talk online. Gian Berto died a few years ago and Ruggero took on the task of keeping his father’s work alive and well.
I find my old manuscript. Ruggero finds scans of GB’s illustrations. We prepare a PDF presentation of The Legend of Weapons (in Italian). I’ve re-titled it Per Caso or Accidentally in English. The Italian publisher loves it. They’re going to publish it. We’ve signed a contract. The book will be out early next year in Italy and foreign editions will happen too. Of course I will say much more about it and post some of the images in due course.
May the blue be good to you!
2 comments:
That's so exciting! We're eager to see your illustrations in due course.
I'm working on a series of posts titled Filling a Fifty-Year Gap which will describe in detail my life between 1963 and 2002.
Here's a brief extract:
I call them "my lost years", in the sense that I was never able to write about them here or anywhere. I was inhibited by severe regret, and shame above all; for dragging those dear people into the results of all my foolish impulse. Between them, my children attended about eighteen different schools, because we moved to a similar number of addresses. I've felt I've let down both wives by letting them down emotionally, not to mention several adulteries—I've no intention of mentioning them!
But now I want to celebrate those lost years, inspired by many phone calls with my elder son Tristan. He's long had his name changed by deed-poll, so his anonymity remains intact, except those who know him personally. I shall only give real names to those in my narrative who are no longer with us.
In a sense, this whole blog charts the story of my life. It's an attempt at autobiography, arranged by category, as listed in about this site. The fifty-year gap stretches from 1960, when I arrived at the University of Birmingham, to 2002, when I met Karleen. In this time I encountered a number of young women, married two of them, fathered four children, who've had three children of their own, so far.
Hi Vincent, I'll be very interested to read those posts and certainly will do so.
Hope all's well with you healthwise and otherwise?
My resurrected children's book (as I mentioned, it was written by me but illustrated by an Italian artist) will be published early next year in Rome and foreign editions will follow in due course. I'm just amazed and pleased by this unexpected happening!
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