Introducing GONDOS: The Novelization of the Major Motion Picture "Gondos"
a serialized novel!
Hi, it’s Jon Mooallem, journalist and non-fiction author. In 2023, I wrote a novel—just to see if I could do it—and wound up having loads of fun. It’s called Gondos: The Novelization of the Major Motion Picture “Gondos.”
I serialized the book via this newsletter—totally for free (because why not?! Because I’m bad at business, that’s why!) You can read about Gondos below and click through to each chapter.
Excited, antsy and amused to be trying something new,
Jon
by Jon Mooallem
in association with Eli Horowitz Entertainment Solutions
For centuries, they were whispered about in local legend as schifosi, or “the disgusting ones”—but no one in Venice imagines they’re real.
When an invasion of these rampaging sea monsters threatens the citizens and tourists of the world’s most beautiful city, it’s up to an ad-hoc team of scientists, soldiers of fortune and traditional gondoliers to battle them back—in militarized, Batmobile-style gondolas called . . . “gondos.”
Millie Brooks—the daughter of itinerant Phish heads, raised by her swamp-rat grandpa in the Everglades—finds herself, at age 29, barely scraping by in Venice as a scientist-for-hire. Her employer is the shadowy ELAINE Corporation, an engineering firm constructing a state-of-the-art seawall to protect the floating city. But, Millie discovers, ELAINE’s innovation is also birthing new dangers in Venice’s now-stagnant lagoon.
A palazzo mysteriously collapses. A trail of floating carnage accumulates in the city’s storied canals. To save Venice from a threat much grislier than rising seas, it will take a combination of Millie’s microbiological expertise and a treasury of secret lore passed down through generations of Venetian gondolieri . . . plus some very tough, very heavily-armed, aquatic killing machines.
From the mind that brought you many acclaimed works of serious journalism, and also a podcast where he just walked in the woods and didn’t talk, comes a working draft of a novel inspired by the paperback movie novelizations of our youth—an action-packed parable of how good it feels to stop despairing about the environmental unraveling of our planet and start kicking some butt.
Independence Day meets The Da Vinci Code in . . .
Gondos: The Novelization of the Major Motion Picture “Gondos!”
Read it . . . TODAY!
Viva GONDOS!!
"raised by her swamp-rat grandpa in the Everglades," made me immediately think of Where the Crawdads Sing and I burst out laughing. I'm in.