THANKS FOR VISITING!
Please don’t mind the noise and the dust
– we are still putting stuff up,
and designing certain elements of this blog.
Things will probably change in the next days.
Sorry for the inconvenience.

* * * *

This is the first post on this blog.
So, for the time being, a word of explanation and some hints at what’s coming.

As stated in the Info thingy, this blog is currently my English-language home.
I’m a paleontologist, moonlighting as an independent author.
I mostly write fantasy and pulp stories, and I’ve also published a number of essays on wild historical subjects such as explorers, dinosaurs, strange planets and old writers.
Some of them were also published in English (a list is forthcoming – with links and buying options).
While I keep blogging and writing in my native tongue – Italian – I’m also trying to expand into the English-reading world.

So, I need some practice and some time to get my bearings, and a reason to keep going despite my chronic lazyness – and in my experience, writing a blog is the best way to keep in shape, to keep the writing juices flowing, and to create a sense of commitment.
Hence, my new blog – Karavansara.

Karavansara is the Persian word meaning caravanseray – the place where travellers rest along their travels.
It belongs to the lexicon and mythology of the Silk Road – which happens to be one of my favorite obsessions, and the subject of one of my ebooks.

It’s short, distinctive, easy to remember, and sums up beautifully what I’d like to do with this blog, what I’d like to cover in terms of subjects and ideas.
And it had not yet been taken as a URL, which is important.

So, what’s next?

Right now, I’m planning a tight posting schedule, with three posts per week – on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Subjects – my obsessions for the Silk Road, for old explorers and adventurers and their books, for the Arabian Nights and related subjects, for the East, and for what I like to call “pulp history”, which is the pulpiest, two-fisted, often weird side of “regular history”.
And probably anything else that will strike my fancy as we go on.

I hope you enjoy reading this blog as much as I’m enjoying writing it.
More things, hopefully, will follow.

Comments (and corrections!) are, of course, quite welcome!