Even better, none of them speak or read English well enough to get upset about the parallels.

When I read her that family saga, my aunt, more perceptive than the others, said: “Wow, do they know you’re writing about them?” Digging in that darkness is digging around in my genes and the strangers I got tossed in with. Of course, the Spadaros are sexier and cooler than the people I come from. I have a large, dysfunctional family full of rivalries, spite and toxic entanglements (even crimes). See, his two (or three) brothers and how those three (or four) are holding each other down and fascinate and hate and love each other, is actually taken from real life. I then put him in a family story, and then began to realize what the common factor is – the enduring fascination with that character (yep, it can take me years to work out what I’m actually saying). Authors sometimes just have to write this shit out and get rid of it to get to the gold veins. The original story wasn’t so much a “story” as chronicling Silvio’s kills and affairs (he had plenty of both), as well as the lives and careers of various minor characters and hangers-on. I’ve tried a dozen times to put him on the page and banish him out of my head. I never claimed to be completely sane in this. Calvin and Hobbes, just with a mafia killer. I guess you could say he was my “invisible friend” during the more troubled part of my teenage years. In fact, he became something like my favourite hobby, a constant voice that began to comment – bluntly, rudely – on my real life. Silvio is one of the characters I became obsessed with.

It kept me awake in the boring lessons of school – that would be pretty much the whole school day, actually. I didn’t expect anybody but two or three friends to read the story. I was a budding writer with one sale under my belt and no clue. I “met” him first when he was in his early-to-mid-thirties, having just killed what I (faintly) remember was the head of police, of, I think, Los Angeles. At the center of the “Dark Soul” series is Silvio Spadaro, 24-year-old pansexual mafia hitman, at the same time emotionally stunted and very much liberated in his desires and identity.

“Man, I’m in deep shit, I just killed the head of police.” Now, talk about an attention grabber.

It’s like you suddenly have a guest in your head who begins to tell you stories – sometimes just anecdotes or a few sentences. Today Aleks is talking about what inspired that story, and in particular the flawed character of Silvio.Įvery story starts with a voice. This week our guest post is Aleksandr Voinov who’s story Dark Soul vol 1 was reviewed by me yesterday.

Dark Soul Vol. 1 by Aleksandr Voinov