Remember when I said in my last post that it was possible someone was searching for articles about the Snake? Well, something interesting just happened: I went to my Stats page, and I find someone was referred to my blog after putting in the search terms “Camerlengo Mafia”. I was shocked, because Camerlengo–meaning “chamerlain” in Italian–is the name of the mafia family whose members the Snake stalks and attacks. Now, beyond this blog, I haven’t really discussed the Snake in great detail to anyone beyond that he’s a serial killer who hunts the mafia. I haven’t shown anyone the first draft, and I only told the psychologist the name of the mafia family when I gave him the Snake’s history in order to form a diagnosis (which, by the way, turned out that the Snake doesn’t fit a single diagnosis).
I wondered if this was some sort of strange coincidence, so I went to Google and typed in “camerlengo mafia” myself. To my surprise, the only other articles beside mine were Wikipedia articles about various mafioso and cardinals, and a few Italian dictionaries that involved words like “mafia” and “camerlengo” appearing in the same section. So someone’s been searching for the Camerlengo Family, possibly to see if there’s an actual family by that name (and if there is, they don’t have a website), and lately I’ve been getting a lot of hits from Russia that coincide on days when either Snake articles are being read and the search terms either involve the word “snake” or the Cyrillic word for snake. I’m no detective, but I’m starting to wonder if this is somehow all connected.
If it is, I find it a little flattering that someone’s looking for the Snake so much. Hopefully I ‘ll get the novel out soon, but I don’t plan to start editing for a little while yet. Be patient though; I’ll have something out soon, God willing, and perhaps it’ll feature a serial killer who speaks Russian and uses Russian torture techniques.
Oh, and if there is someone who is searching for the Snake, and that person stumbles across this blog post, thanks for visiting and feel free to leave a comment. Just make sure it’s in English when you comment, because I’m not sure if a comment in Cyrillic will be translated or sorted as spam.
Rami Ungar The Writer 