Dark Divinations: Damnation in Venice

The Inspiration Behind “Damnation in Venice”

By Joe L. Murr

I saw the call for submissions for Dark Divinations a week or so after I read Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. So I had Venice on my mind. I had the character of Gustav von Aschenbach – the sickly, doomed writer and his unrequited passion, a self-portrait of Mann – on my mind. Then images from Nicolas Roeg’s film Don’t Look Now – the foggy passageways of Venice leading to a death foretold – flashed into my mind. And all of that suggested a story and characters. The final story evolved into something very different from what I originally had in mind – but that was the moment the seed was planted.

Joe L. Murr has lived on every continent except Antarctica and now divides his time between Finland and the Netherlands. His short fiction has been published in magazines such as Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Chizine and Noir Nation, and most recently in the anthology The Summer of Lovecraft.