Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, Jr, was born on this day in the year 1899.
Happy Birthday Indiana Jones
Category Archives: Armchair adventuring
Change the plans, reschedule the schedule
So everything was perfectly planned, OK. With calendar, timetables, outlines, the works.
The month of July was thoroughly mapped: a week to nail closed the Sherlock Holmes story I owe to my publisher, then three shorts under my various aliases, and then some spare time to finally complete the first draft of a short novel I’ve had laying here for a while.
Perfectly planned. Nice and Smooth.
Then everything went completely hiwire, on day one: July the first, 7.30 am. Bang!
It went like this – and yes, this is going to be long and convoluted, as my mental processes… you’re welcome.
Continue readingWithout a Blog: the Earphones Diaries
And so I’ve gone and invented me another thing, a game of sorts to keep my brain going and get away from writing and reading 24/7.
It will be called The Earphone Diaries, and it will live only on my social networks: my Facebook profile, my Instagram page, my Pinterest boards and my Twitter. Much as I love blogging, there will be no blog supporting this guerrilla project.
The Earphones Diaries will be a series of daily post, presenting a record I am currently listening to. I’m going at this without a plan, the course is once again uncharted: no genre tags or other hang-ups, just the music that’s currently playing in my earphones, presented in short, less-than-2000 characters posts.
Just for the fun of it.
The first post will go online in a few hours.
The French Swordmistress: Julie d’Aubigny
I am about two thousand words into a story that starts with a swordfight between a woman in a green silk dress and a nun, in the smoke-chocked corridor of a burning convent.
This will be my entry – should the editor deem it worthy – in the new collection of Italian sword & sorcery published by Acheron Books.
And the woman in green is, obviously, inspired by mademoiselle de Maupin. And really, I was sure I had posted about her in the past but I did not, so here we go.
Palace intrigue and zombies
I am not particularly fond of the zombie craze of these last few years. I watched the classics, I do enjoy the occasional recent movie, I even wrote a story set in a post-apocalyptic sorta-zombie story, a long time ago, as part of a shared universe a friend created, but I find it damn hard to do something new and cool and meaningful with zombies.
On the other hand, when I find someone that’s actually able to do something new and cool and meaningful, I like it a lot.
Case in point: Kingdom, a South Korean TV/Netflix TV series that pits its main characters against a horde of zombies in 15th century Korea.
And weirdly enough, it’s based on a true story.
Summer solstice microadventure challenge
Today I had three revelations of sorts, three proper alarm signals ringing at the same time.
First, I realized that the deadline I had been dreading these last three days is actually still one month away.
Second, I realized the chapter 9 of the book I was to deliver “by Sunday morning, before lunch”, worked a lot better as chapter 5, but this meant doing some extensive rewrite.
Third, I realized it was actually Sunday, and not Saturday as I firmly believed. And yes, I realized it after lunch.
I spent the afternoon rewriting and am now quite satisfied with the end result. I’ll give the manuscript one last check and fine tuning (no more chapter juggling!) after dinner, and then I’ll send it along.
Meanwhile, I also decided that I need to take my mind off writing for a few hours or days, or I’ll have to face a definitive meltdown of what’s left of my mental faculties.
And in a snap, an opportunity presented itself for a brief vacation, and a proper adventure to boot!
Continue readingTired of Tanaka-san: adventures in Japanese learning
My story with Japanese is long and involved. I first got me a copy of Teach Yourself Japanese when I was in high school. I was fascinated by the East, I had a knack for languages, the book was cheap… oh, come on, do I really have to make excuses?
The Teach Yourself book was good but as a high-schooler I had too much to do already. I had much more success with the Teach Yourself French book. We’ll get back to that.
My brother did take Japanese and Chinese in University, and then worked with Japanese artists as a music promoter. Back when he was doing it, his Japanese was good. Today he says he’s out of exercise, but that’s just his perfectionism speaking. He’s good.
Some of it brushed off on me. At the turn of the century I could manage a basic survival exchange, and if my counterpart was not talking too fast, I could understand what they were saying. I could read about sixty kanji. Basically like a Japanese pre-schooler.
I took a formal course, paid with the income from my very first job.
Karavansara 