The Twisted Biography of the author
ANTON VON STEFAN
Many of the Inrodutions to author
ANTON VON STEFAN
are now posted on this web site. Take a look at how a Gothic Story came to be written by going to:
Part twenty- an enlightenment
I can now truly say I know why our author, ANTON VON STEFAN, has been in seclusion. I also know full-well what he has been ‘working’ on. Not being part of Vienna’s party scene, nor found as a regular at Whistler, its bars and cosy restaurants, I had tracked him down to an outing into Hungary the last time I reported on his whereabouts. The Interpol 'interception' was but a diversion to grant our author room to work and the ability to roam at will.
Jet setting back and forth from Canada to Europe, I found that he had sequestered himself into a spa town in a country I must keep nameless. Therein, in a health resort of some fame, he toiled on-and-off while entertaining guests, who arrived in time for one of his more memorable birthdays. There was amply time for cycling through the rolling hills of the local vineyards, of which the small group found many. There was room for lazy walks through the Vienna Woods, strolls which took one through the millenia of history and along paths once followed by the likes of Beethoven and Strauss; but, most importantly, a lot of time was set aside for writing throughout the summer of 2013.
Unexplainably, he vanished for the better part of two weeks in late July, but he re-surfaced in the same village in Central Europe where he remained at his previous lodgings until the very end of August. Wishing to discover where our author had travelled in that span, an interval which took him into the first day of August, I again had to call in a few favours.
I found that he had once more sought seclusion in Budva, Montenegro. From that most reliable source, I aslo gleaned that he spent nearly every early morning writing under a reed covered cabana until his travelling companions rose. Often rising before the sun made its glorious way up into the eastern sky, he booked two lounge chairs on the Adriatic shore's local beach almost each and every day. It was only a few Euros more than a single, reclining chair, but if one rented two adjacent seats, they apparently included a writing table which was located directly under the centre of one of those palm-thatched, beach houses. Under that hot, summer sun, within that private domain, our relaxed author produced several more introductions to his work, and re-wrote four of the five gothic tales, stories he had brought with him, several times over. It was a very productive ‘holiday’.
In late August, as mentioned above, he returned to Canada to ride in the 200km Trek for Life & Breath as he has these past five years (please see the Home Page on this web site if you would like to contribute to this worthy cause). This bicycle ride, through the Central Fraser Valley of British Columbia in early September, is a part of the B.C. Lung Association's annual fund raising drive. It is one of our author's favourite charities.
Thereafter, he concentrated on his writing, seldom leaving his gated estate south of Vancouver, until the very end of November. Yet, undaunted by the volume of work, he took six or seven works with him on his return to Europe. There, save for Christmas, New Year’s and a week of skiing the Alps in early January, the author worked daily on his Gothic Horror Stories. During his trip to Europe, he again composed more of the preambles to his individual works, including a formal introduction to his first book, “Tales of Terror and Imagination”.
Returning to Canada on the last day of February, he joined the Victoria Ski Club for a week of skiing at Whistler, B.C., Canada. Yet, as soon as that winter excursion was over, he went back into his customary pattern of writing, proofreading, typing, re-reading and generally working on his abundant, completed, handwritten tales. The result has been that he has recently achieved an arduous milestone: fully one third of his first book is set for a final, professional correction prior to being set to type.
When asked what his goal for the year was, he mentioned, “having all of the Gothic Tales of the first book ready to be sent out by the end of May”, a challenge he was able to meet. His work ethics remained on the schedule he set, the time-line achievable as many of the remaining works had already been read five or six times. In reality, well before the last week of May, with parts of the manuscript complete, two to three of the finished tales were sent off to be proof read.
ANTON VON STEFAN continued working on the sundeck of his home, often reading a work as many as fifteen times before he was content with the ‘finished’ product. Yet, as he has chosen a very specific type of English, that of the United Kingdom, the proofreader he employed heralded from Glasgow, Scotland and the results were phenomenal.
Each of the seemingly ‘completed’ stories had hundreds of corrections, changes and editing marks inserted to the right or left of the text. As our author is most serious that his work be correct in the chosen words prior to the point of publishing, he went over each individual edit to ascertain the trueness of the written work as presented. As he worked his way through this process, he gleaned an insight to not only the correct usage of certain words, but to the differences between the Canadian and the British languages. As well, certain settings altered the type of worker who would be found there and the ‘term’ used for these positions needed to reflect this location. Indeed, there were numerous phone conversations where the author challenged the text as corrected. There were also times when a certain word had been used in a way so inappropriately that it was hilarious. Throughout it all, both the author and the proofreader had fun with the manuscript as written.
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