Chiudimi le labbra (Seal My Lips), a one-of-a-kind novel about love, sex, information overload, and the trick of breathing underwater.

From Italy.

Best-selling writer.
Freelance editor and consultant.

Novels published in Italy, USA, Japan, Germany, Spain, spanning various genres (young adult, dark fantasy, modern fables, pop culture, literary erotica) under many different pseudonyms (Joe Arden, Jonathan Snow et al), mostly with an edgy and quirky slant.
More than 500,000 copies sold in Italy alone.
Since 2003 writing mostly under his own name, because he got fed up with all those monickers.

First editor, then senior editor, and from 1997 to 2006 consulting and editing (as resident editor-at-large) for Sperling & Kupfer Editori/Frassinelli's young adult, media tie-in and general fiction/non-fiction lines.

He recently left Sperling & Kupfer Editori/Frassinelli for newborn Elliot Edizioni in Rome.

Heavily tattoed.
Dresses in black.
Charming disposition.

“seal my lips with a kiss, my mouth with your tongue, and then we can talk”

Chiudimi le labbra (Seal My Lips) tagged as a one-of-a-kind novel about love, sex, information overload, and the trick of breathing underwater, already drumming up foreign interest and pre-publication quotes (including a rave from internationally best-selling author Melissa P. of 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed fame), to Simone Caltabellota of Lain-Fazi Editore, in Italy, to be published in May 2005, in a significant deal after a hectic round of bids, by Roberto Santachiara of Santachiara Literary Agency (world).

Seal My Lips is a tale of light and darkness, of arch-reality and magic, exploring the very core of feminine sexuality. A perturbing book of extremes, it begs to be devoured in one single sitting as if you were bulimic.
(Melissa P., best-selling author of 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed)

* * *

Mai come voi (Never Like You, 2004), a dark yet uplifting delicate miniature of a novel, compared both to Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones and Niccolò Ammaniti's Io non ho paura (with a dash of Tim Burton to boot), sold to Sperling & Kupfer Editori in a major deal. Three printings (as of February 2005). Longlisted for the 2004 Campiello Prize. Translation rights to this title are controlled by the publisher.

“Mai come voi is a desperate cry for love… a cry piercing your very soul and slamming open doors you were sure to have double-locked since your angsty teenage years” (La Stampa/T7)

“Giovanni Arduino is Italian literature’s own Tim Burton… Mai come voi is a total original: lyrical, sad but full of magic, and somewhat strangely cozy” (Il Corriere del Mezzogiorno)

“A superbly accomplished, modern gothic fable about being and feeling different from the rest of the world” (Il Secolo XIX)

“Sweet and dreamy but with a bold black heart, Mai come voi is a big, resolute NO! to an uncaring, unconcerned world. It’s a brave, spunky act of denial, and a pretty tough act to follow” (La Gazzetta di Parma)

“A touching, bittersweet love story... a coming of age novel encased in a mystery” (Informagiovani)

For books by yours truly under many different pseudonyms, please do check out www.giovanniarduino.com (in Italian, but with easy-to-find info), my Squidoo lens or my MySpace page (both in English). For further enquiries about available rights, please contact agent, except where otherwise stated.

Recent purchases:

Angelica Jacob, Lying Between Us (CBUK), Things The Grandchildren Should Know (Little Brown UK), Death to All Sacred Cows (Hyperion), The Gemma Doyle series (Dell), One for Sorrow (Bantam), Crooked Little Vein (Morrow), Nemi (Strand/Egmont), Beauty Junkies (Doubleday), Echo (Harper Children), Generation Loss (Small Beer Press/Harcourt), The Blackboard Jungle (S&S), Mickey Spillane's first Mike Hammer trilogy (NAL), Fade (Laurel Leaf), Tenderness (Laurel Leaf), The Goth Bible (St Martin's), The Little Black Book of Sex For Girlz (Annick Press), Knockemstiff (Doubleday), We Were Scenes of Grief (McClelland & Stewart), The Little Book of Plagiarism (Pantheon), From Chocolate to Morphine (Houghton Mifflin), Lenore (SLG Publishing), Ramones: An American Band (St. Martin's), The Satanic Bible (Avon), Shutting Out The Sun (Nan Talese/Doubleday), The No Asshole Rule (Warner), St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves + Swamplandia! (Knopf), Drugstore Cowboy (Dell), Isabel and Rocco (Century), Geek Love (Knopf), Dangerous Angels (HarperCollins Children), The Heroines (Scribner), The Torn Skirt (HarperCollins), Under The Bridge (S&S), A Dirty Job (Morrow).

I'm a Lebowski, You're a Lebowski (Bloomsbury), El cuaderno de bitácora (RBA-Integral, Spain), Heart Shaped Box + untitled novel + 20th Century Ghosts anthology (Morrow), The Book Thief (Knopf), Alanis Morissette untitled memoir (S&S), Peace Mom (Atria), Flory: Survival in the Valley of Death (Harper SF), Desperate Housewives Cookbook (Hyperion), Courtney Love's Dirty Blonde (Faber/FSG), Marley & Me (William Morrow), The Last Templar (Dutton), The Stupidest Angel (William Morrow), Tori Amos: Piece by Piece (Broadway), Desperate Housewives: The Official Guide (Hyperion), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Pocket), The Memory of Running (Viking), Goat (Random House), Madeleine is Sleeping (Harcourt), The Effects Of Light (Warner), The Society Of Others (Doubleday UK), The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud (Bantam), the "Jack Taylor" series (Brandon), Elsewhere (FSG), A Certain Slant of Light (Houghton Mifflin), Margarettown (Miramax), Forever Today (Doubleday UK), Lo stagno di fuoco - The Lake Of Fire (historical fiction from young Italian first-time author: Umberto Eco meets Neil Gaiman), the new "Invisibili" title (Italian best-selling young adult fiction, winner of the coveted Bancarellino Prize).

New-ish stuff:

New Jonathan Snow novel (Il bambino che amava l'oceano - The Child Who Loved The Ocean), a parable roughly in the vein of Luis Sepùlveda (and something more) out now from Sperling & Kupfer Editori, Italy.

New short story, Francesca sta con me, in The Dark Side, a literary dark fiction anthology by Einaudi Editore (late June 2006).

Comic book, magazine and national newspaper editor/freelance writer (Ediperiodici, Comix Editore, La Stampa).
Senior editor at Sperling & Kupfer Editori/Frassinelli (1992-1997) before going freelance.
Award-winning translator (from English).
Independent filmmaker/screenwriter with a feature-length underground movie on his curriculum.

In the midst of some rewrites. New novel(s) on the burner. Stay tuned for more info.