A few things worth knowing

G. C. Marti is a pen name. It isn't hiding anything about the work — the work is the whole point — it's just keeping one door closed so the focus can stay on what matters.

I'm based in Venice, a city that has strong opinions about who gets to be visible and on what schedule, which turns out to be a useful place to write from.

The books get outlined obsessively before a single scene is drafted — sometimes the outline is longer than what it becomes. That's representative of my belief: that structure is a form of art, and that you owe a reader a story that knows where it's going, even when it pretends it doesn't.

There's also a harder rule underneath the process one: no book gets written without something real at stake in it. Not a moral, or a quick message tacked on a the end — I write because I have a genuine question about power, who gets erased and how quietly, who gets to be fully seen without paying for it. Representation isn't a box to tick. It's the reason to write.

Off the page, the reading diet is mostly classics and nonfiction, with a long-standing, slightly unreasonable loyalty to The Count of Monte Cristo — a book that understands patience and revenge, which is more or less the whole project here too.