Smoking my Life by Martin Cid

I have started a new column on YM (Yareah). The editor is someone I know well. He’s a drunkard but he is a good person. I hope you like it.

Oops, the first column is here. I forgot it!

Or here: http://yareah.com/?p=4409

Or even HERE!

And the first post is called… Goebbels, sex and surrealism but I haven’t talk about them.

The post New Column on YM appeared first on Martin Cid.

Barak Obama

Excuse me if I cannot speak about writing or arts, today but… today I would like to say thanks to one person, one important person from the U.S. Of course, I don’t know him but, from the depths of my heart, I would like to say THANKS to Mr. Barak Obama for his words to Spain, a tacit critic to the Spanish Governments, making us to leave this crisis. His words were the light and has made that we have changed this obscure way we had begun. Thanks, Mr. Obama. If we leave these political errors, it will be by your words. Thank you very much, Martin Cid, a writer.

The post Thanks, Mr. Obama appeared first on Martin Cid.

Read more: http://yareah.com/?p=1607

The post Old Mediterranean artistic flavor appeared first on Martin Cid.

Mauro Maris, White Figure

I would like to talk about a White Figure, a White Lady waiting for her ling soul on her desk. It’s a desk of dreams, her desk of desperation and hopes. Blue of the darkest sky, white of hope, clear blue and weird blue… blue for the horizon of the seas, blue for our short wasted lives, blue for one hope and, finally, blue the nightly oil.

Want to read more? http://yareah.com/?p=2924

The post White Figure by Mauro Maris appeared first on Martin Cid.

A Century of Ashes, by Martin Cid

What impress me more of A Century of Ashes is the atmosphere. That hell created beside the Mississippi river, in Tennessee, U.S.

The Fiodorovich family fights to survive in a snuff plantation during a century: from the middle of the 19^th century, when the first family members start the business, to the middle of the 20^th century, when the last members die… consumed by their own irrational sins.

In this novel, Martin Cid creates a collective protagonist and the Mississippi river is its voice and eyes, the blood of this wild family from Russia. They arrive to the United States when there are slaves and they will be unable of adapting to a democratic society.

Bad men, worse women, they increase their tobacco business during the two World Wars…, no feelings, only money, because all is a joke, the joke of those people who are condemned to Hell, the hell that they have created. They like it, because it is better the known world than the future one.

During a century, they have seen great changes and they dislike them: people keep on suffering and they prefer their known sufferings because they know how to prevent them.

All is ashes… all is a joke. The hell is as good as the heavens if you know how to survive among sinners.

See: http://www.martincid.com

Originally posted at http://isabeldelrio.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/review-a-century-of-ashes-by-martin-cid/

The post A Century of Ashes, reviewed by Isabel del Rio appeared first on Martin Cid.

Ariza, by Isabel del Rio y Martin Cid

Recently, I have seen that my beloved novel Ariza is being selling in Amazon:http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ariza-Martin-Cid/dp/8496806529.
Ariza tells the trip of the Medina family through mirrors and shadows of a lost time, still present. A narrative that flies, like the smoke of the locomotive of those old trains that crossed the Spanish Nothern plateau in the 19th century, to descend to the enigmatic nameless city, near our ears and our feelings, home to the Medina’s dreams.
PLOT:
Proud wheat fields, white factories and medieval houses greet Miguel Medina. He is hardly a child and he is scared. He gets to the train station hidden in a box of oranges, smelling sour. Eugenio Escudero projects new rail lines, thinking of progress. They meet a moment, outlining silences and blames… In the future, they will meet again and Miguel will marry Lucia, Eugenio’s daugther, the silence will grow.
Lucia is the queen in Ariza, a magic farm, always in front of the enigmatic nameless city, unrelated to the wars and problems of the Spain in the next century. His son, Carlos, will look for answers abroad and he will return as a hero without booty, alone, with his music and paintings. But he smiles, slowly, in that Easter of 1930, when the nameless city is singing to the Virgin and waiting for the next train. Maybe this time arrives.
MY OPINION:
Ariza is wonderful. You could consider it an intellectual novel, as it deals with abstract ideas and it has mythological references, but it’s not in the least didactic or boring. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you cry but you never remain indifferent because you identify with the main characters: deep, tender and smart… liars, fighters and losers. I recommend it highly. It’s one of those books which can change your life.

The post Ariza, reviewed by Isadora Sartosa appeared first on Martin Cid.

Ten Masks of Evil

Ten Masks of Evil, Martin Cid’s last book is classic and experimental. Ten short stories to build a novel or, maybe, a novel born of ten evil minds, including the reader mind (everyone has a dark side).

Martin Cid, author of ‘Ariza’ (Alcala publishers, 2008), ‘A Century of Ashes’ (Akron publishers, 2009), ‘Eminescu’s 7 Sins’ (Yareah books, 2010), and ‘Propaganda’ (Akron, 2011) has been playing with time, an abstract subject that scare everybody since it’s beyond rational explanations.

Ten Masks of Evil is past, present and future. Ten Masks of Evil is time because evil (as an opposite of goodness) has been present from the beginning, from that moment when skies fertilized grounds and life started.

The characters change in every short story, they live in different times and places…, all but one: Milton Mills, an enigmatic figure, smart and filthy, always clever to accord and lie with everyone. A game of cards, a game of blood, played for the pleasure of playing but for ambition too.

However, this experimental structure, this new way of describing characters, has a classic background: the Hell of Dante Alighieri, the mythic Faustus or, even, the Holly Books.

Every short story can be catalogued in a different genre:

Chapter 1: ‘The Mask of the Player’ is Mystery. Five gamblers in Sad Bride, cheating and trying to solve a mystery, which just beginning.

Chapter 2: ‘You cannot smoke this Opium without a Mask’ is nearly a movie script, film noir, developed between the two World Wars in New York.

Chapter 3: ‘The Mask of the Masks: Milton Mills’ is classic narrative and a peak, since we will know the origin of M.M., or at least one of his origins, his Russian origin at the end of the 19th century.

Chapter 4: ‘A Mask into a Tragedy’ is a thriller, with corrupt policemen and bad handsome women, with killers and a murder to solve. Only a murder? Maybe something more. Again in Sad Bride, again in its dreadful legend, around 1960.

Chapter 5: ‘A Mask into a Comedy’ is funny. They are in Madrid and maybe not living but playing a performance in a theatre.

Chapter 6: ‘One Mask, One Drama’ is in a plastic time of a pop New York. It could be realistic fiction by his description of that busy society but the mystery keeps on and M.M. guards still the answer.

Chapter 7: ‘Same Mask, Two Sisters’ is a legend, a beautiful romantic story, dreadful and suggestive at the same time. Old times, legendary women.

Chapter 8: ‘The Green Mask’. The legend keeps on near the sea and death, and M.M. reappears in all his glory.

Chapter 9: ‘The Mask of Creation’. Written with biblical language, told about different myths, Babylonian or Jews myths, the origins of mankind.

Last Chapter: ‘White Masked Nights’ is a biography of Edgar Allan Poe, or maybe a biography of Martin Cid or maybe a biography of the reader darkness feelings. A marvelous end.

Definitely, a different book of a different author. Fresh and different, trying to introduce the reader in the narration and trying to entertain him with quick changes of style and atmosphere. Sometimes is humor and sometimes is fear what we feel, but in general mystery and the search of a solution forces us to continue reading, unable to stop this beautiful powerful narration.

More: http://www.martincid.com/?p=207

On Kindle:  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007Q08CZW

Paperback:  http://www.amazon.com/Ten-Masks-Evil-Volume-1/dp/1470175967/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1333130952&sr=1-1

Posted from Valencia, Valencia, Spain.

The post Ten Masks of Evil, reviewed by John Glass appeared first on Martin Cid.

A Century of Ashes

When my teacher of Ethic forced me to make a work about Tobacco and its good and bad effects on people, I was really angry: ‘My God!, I thought, another stupid boring work about a stupid boring subject that it is only interesting for politicians looking for votes.’
At home, I told my mother about my worries:
‘Oh, she said, I was just now reading a novel about tobacco. It is the story of a family who has a snuff planting in the United States. They obtain a special tobacco, a pipe tobacco very popular before the 1st World War. Afterwards, the new fashion of cigarettes ruins their business. The novel is full of strong jokes and the author tells a complete history of the smoking habit. I think you would like it.’
I started to read the novel and, yes, I enjoyed it. It was hilarious and I liked the main characters. Women were evil and men crazy people fighting for nothing, maybe for the pleasure of being alive (only sex and smoking was ok for them).
I wrote a good work (I think), with a good introduction (3 pages) of the Smoking Habit History, with other 3 pages of its bad effects and other 3 of the smoking pleasures. I concluded that one of the best things that you could do during the 20 century, it was smoking, a quiet habit in a world of wars.
The teacher was disappointed with me. It’s a shame.
I am excited about Martin Cid, my new favorite author.

The post A Century of Ashes, reviewed by Rodrigo Martin appeared first on Martin Cid.

Ten Masks of Evil

(Originally post: Ignacio Zara)

Posted from Valencia, Valencia, Spain.

The post Interview with Ignacio Zara about Ten Masks of Evil appeared first on Martin Cid.

Passport Scotch

Today’s whisky is not my favorite one but you can get drunk with it as well as any other: Passport Scotch. In the label its written Blended Scotch Whisky without the ‘e’… then we can determine that it’s so Scottish as Sean Connery… or maybe a little less, it’s impossible to be as Scotish as Sean Connery.

The best:

-You can get drunk.

-Low price. You can read two days with the same cost of one bottle of Jack Daniel’s.

-Design. It’s a good bottle in fights. Thanks to its rectangular lines, you can walk down from the streets of Dublin with no fear.

The worst:

-No 1 liter bottle option. Maybe we can think that 70cl are very little.

Posted from Valencia, Valencia, Spain.

The post Passport Scotch Whsky appeared first on Martin Cid.