I quote an online definition of the word guerilla:
“A guerrilla is someone who fights as part of an unofficial army, usually against an official army or police force.
Also known as an insurgent or irregular, a guerilla usually exists outside the mainstream and typically has taken a position of active revolt or rebellion against the established ruling power.”
Synonyms: freedom fighter, underground fighter”
End quote.
Someone once referred to my biography of Rudolph Valentino, which I titled Affairs Valentino... as a “guerrilla book”. I was then contemplating issuing a revised version and was told because it was a guerilla book, I should never change a single word.
I'd never thought of the book in that light but it described succinctly a critical point in the saga of its publication. By the time I finished my work, I was under fire, taking flak and had barely survived two years of battles; some won and some lost.
There was something heartening to learn the book was being appreciated for its guerilla action. I respected the advice given and to date despite various editions, I have not changed the manuscript from its original publication in the spring of 2011.
That firestorm I referred to? I have been talking about that in the previous audio notes here.. and I direct you to a website dedicated to the documentation of this story. I organized the site's content by year, intending to bring it current. For now the material covers the years until 2016 with the link being.
Suffice to say...Affairs Valentino was the first and last book my late husband Renato and I promoted, or even mentioned, in anticipation of its publication. We could not give the enemy a second to organize because with every book we published their assaults began within hours.
Subsequently after Affairs Valentino, we researched, wrote and published our books in guarded secrecy.
I can say that in hindsight, I was very naive regarding the opposition/firestorm I would face. I first stepped out on a literal stage to share my Valentino discoveries and research at an international conference on Valentino held in Turin in February of 2009. The conference was sponsored by the University of Turin and co-sponsored by the Italian National Cinema Museum. It was held in the prestigious Reading Room and under a great chandelier seated before audience of International film scholars, I let loose and addressed the subject through the history of literary reference...of how Rudolph Valentino came to be known as a gay icon.
I was invited to deliver the speech by the conference's scientific committee and I spoke for thirty minutes. I closed the conference with my speech being on the final day. And thus my hell began and the firestorm was raging within hours. I came under vicious online attack by those I now refer to as the Rudolph Valentino Death Cult.
In 2010, online bullying was still in its infancy and those bullying me were getting away with outrageous behavior. One example: now most people know doxing means to post someone's personal information online as an invitation to do harm to them. Back then the term had yet to be coined and it was freedom of speech and freedom to terrorize online all the way.
By the spring of 2010, I was finishing writing Affairs Valentino and my online search and that of my book was a bloody cyber battleground. I was being savaged. I was devastated.
With my manuscript completed, I realized I had nearly a zero possibility of marketing the book to publishers as it was already mired in epic lies and horror online. Many people have told me over the years that they did not believe all that was posted about me but “where's there's smoke there's fire”. There was no fire, other than Affairs Valentino... but all that smoke? ... all lies.
My name became synonymous with coffins, sexual perversion, drugs, criminal activities, incest, child abuse to name a few. Reports of my death were everywhere with people sharing my fake obituary. And all of this happened before Affairs Valentino was published. The carpet bombing of my life and work was motivated to prevent the book from ever reaching publication and to defuse the power of my speech in Turin.
By the spring of 2011, I was stricken to the bone realizing the book I had just spent ten years researching and writing was in tatters before its day one. How could I possibly publish it under those conditions? I was demoralized, angry and the last words of the book were written from a dark place emotionally for me.
I was proud of conducting the historically valuable first testimonials from Valentino's manager George Ullman's family and both of his godfather's families... proud I uncovered one thousand pages of Valentino court records with those endless revelations and more. By the spring of 2011, I felt all of this research and the fantastic story of Valentino's true life I uncovered... would never be known because no one would want to be targeted by that level of crazy (as someone once called it).
Some time around the end of 2009 I was contacted by a silent film blogger, living in Hollywood. She defended me on her blog after my Turin speech and as a fan of Rudolph Valentino she was having her own problems with the cult magus and his pit bull number one. She was also indie publishing silent film books and told me she would publish Affairs Valentino. So great I remember thinking... I will publish Affairs Valentino with a person already at serious and even legal odds with the cult. What could go wrong?
Considering my emotional state at the time and the hopelessness of ever reclaiming my book's truth... I do not blame myself for thinking I should accept any manner to have the book in print and move on with my life.
It really involves an academic level of study to seriously understand what this young woman and I were facing in the 2010 onslaught from the cult.
In hindsight I believe this young woman published Affairs Valentino as an act of revenge for what she was going through with the cult. At the time she lived about a half an hour away from me and I began to negotiate how and if it could happen.
My time was short because I was moving to Italy and Affairs was no small manuscript at five hundred plus pages of blistering revelation about The Great Lover, the Sheik... It would take some work to get it done and I was not sure this woman could even technically pull it off. But I thought I had nothing left to lose and said ok.
Every aspect of beginning the work to publish Affairs was fraught with conflict between this woman and myself. It was too big a project for her and she was too involved in the topic to not interject her angst.
By then she was deep in her cult legal battles with lawsuits and counter suits filed and restraining orders sought... consequently while she was formatting Affairs Valentino, she was being served with legal summons almost every day or so for one thing or another. She was also devastated with the situation and preparing to leave Los Angeles and move to live with her family out of state. Legal summons arriving at her door, her belongings in boxes which she lugged out to a U-Haul truck parked outside; it was under these conditions she managed to organize Affairs Valentino into a book format and have it online for sale on Amazon.
The day before my flight to Italy, the first test copy of the book arrived. With all of my belongings in a storage unit and my airport shuttle scheduled to pick me up at the crack of dawn the next day... I found myself at eleven o'clock the night before flipping through the test copy. Ten years of research and work, and instead of feeling thrilled to see it as a book, I felt despair. This was not the way I envisioned the moment to be...let's say that.
Of course I immediately saw changes that should have been made but there was no time or energy for that. I left with the test copy, tossed it in my suitcase and thought well that was that. My young publisher was driving out of Los Angeles and I was on a polar flight to Milan. Good bye to that hell or so I thought.
I tossed my only copy of my guerilla publication... under the bed after I arrived in Turin. I could not deal with it at all. Renato, on the other hand, read the book and began working to find a way to right the wrong.
The cult had the book removed from Amazon within days by claiming it was defamatory and Amazon told me to work it out with the people objecting. Good luck with that...
The book was only in print for a few days, unedited and in hindsight primitive. A guerrilla book? Yes I think it was but my publishing Affairs Valentino was not an act of revolt. I had every right to put the book in print and if anything I consider it an act of bravery, courage under fire and defiance.
Of course the cult exploded with the wealth of new material to attack, even mocking my publishing the book the way I did by saying every publisher refused the book. I never submitted to a single one. More about the reaction to that first edition of Affairs Valentino soon.
The few copies distributed in those few days are now hard to find and some consider them rare indeed. I am selling one of mine on Esty at:
https://www.etsy.com/shop/EFArchive
For more please visit my blog at:
https://evelynzumaya.blogspot.com/ and www.zumayawinslawsuit.com
Also subscribe to my Patreon account:
https://www.patreon.com/AffairsValentino
Thank you for listening and reading and from this side of the Alps I say Arrivederci!
My Guerilla Affairs Valentino