Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Books


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Princesses in Pulp is out!

ProSe Press’ latest anthology is out, and it can be acquired in both paperback and ebook via Amazon.
It is called Princesses in Pulp, it features a killer cover by Antonino Lo Iacono, and it includes a story of mine, called Away with the Fairies.


The idea was to take a classic fairy tale and turn it into a pulp story – so I selected an old Italian folk tale from Giambattista Basile’s classic collection known as the Pentamerone, a nice Cinderella variation called The Three Fairies, and I redid it as a Black Mask-style noir crime story.
It was fun to write it – I hope it will be fun to read it too!

It is also the raciest story I ever published in my name.

If you feel like taking a look at Princesses in Pulp, right now the ebook is 99 cents.
But I’ll shell out a little more for the paperback, just for that cover…
I’ve placed links to Amazon above – I’m not getting any commission for this.


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Algorithms

Do you get emails from Amazon?
I do.
About once a week, I find in m y mailbox a mail that says, more or less…

Greetings, Consumer!
based on your previous purchases, we think you might also like…

And what follows is a list of books I have already purchased from Amazon, plus maybe one or two of my own books. On special days, the algorithm also throws in an esoteric kitchen tool and maybe some instant noodles.

But the latest “you might also like” mail was special, because the Amazon algorithm decided I might be interested in this…

Yes, it’s a book of mine (available in Italian only, sorry rest of the world!)
You know, ancient Rome, Aegyptian curses, conspiracies, legionaries… the usual.

And yes, it’s out today.

And no, I did not know anything about it.

I was not informed the book had been published – and indeed already sold during the Lucca Comics & Games fair this past Halloween.
I did not see the galleys.
I did not get a complimentary copy.
Or an ebook.

Google reveals that the book was also presented during a live streaming panel, in November – but I was not informed, or invited to participate, and when the panel was announced on Facebook nobody tagged me, and therefore another algorithm decided not to show me any notification.
And no, there was nothing in my spam folder, either.

And yes, the cover is great, and carries my name and the IP house name, so that it looks like I wrote this with someone else.

And finally yes, this is deeply humiliating, because the book I spent the whole summer of 2022 writing has been out there three months now, and I only learned about it because the Amazon suggestions algorithm sucks.

I will not put a commercial link here, because as I said the book is only available in Italian.
It’s likely to be my last novel to be.


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The first book of the year: Understanding Chinese Fantasy Genres

Two days back I finished a big translation job I was eager to get out of the way to clear my desk for the upcoming novel writing job I will be doing these next two months (more details soon).
To celebrate the conclusion of the translation, I awarded myself an ebook, and got me a copy of Jeremy “Deathblade” Bai’s Understanding Chinese Fantasy Genres: A primer for wuxia, xianxia, and xuanhuan.

Now, first of all, how cool it is to have “Deathblade” as a nickname.
I mean, me, my friends call me “Doc”.
Boring.
But “Deathblade”? Ah!

I first became aware of Jeremi Bai’s work through the excellent Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades roleplaying game, published by Osprey. A game designed to simulate the wild action of wuxia movies and novels, and a great alternative to the ubiquitous mock-medieval fantasy roleplaying game.

I was really impressed by the game, and checked out the authors (Brendan Davis collaborated with Bai on the game), and found myself going down a rabbit hole.

Now, I like Chinese fantasy, but I have experienced it mostly through “classical” texts – Romance of Three Kingdoms, the Water margin, Journey to the West etc – than through the more recent multi-volume serials that seem to be extremely popular. And of course I used to watch Hong Kong movies way before it became cool.
And I have often flirted with wuxia in my stories (I do not know how successfully or convincingly).
Jeremy Bai’s primer on the genre(s) of Chinese fantasy is exactly what I needed to put some order in my patchwork knowledge of the tropes, the themes and the trends of a HUGE world of stories.

The book is short (148 pages in ebook, that go for less than 3 bucks) and to the point, illustrating the basic ideas and the quirks of wuxia (basically Chinese sword & sorcery), xianxia (high-powered, universe-shattering Chinese high fantasy) and xuanhuan (that mixes Western and Eastern modes in its storytelling).
Short chapters provide cultural background, examples and historical context for the building blocks of the stories. It’s a useful primer for both readers and would-be writers, and has many interesting insights on the issue of translation that, as a translator myself, I found particularly interesting.
A light but highly informative read and yes, one that will lead to checking out more movies, more books, and who knows, maybe will lead to the writing of a few stories.

Highly recommented to anyone with an interest in Chinese and Oriental fantasy.


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Dreams of Fire

I am finally free to share the news that my new novel for the Descent, Legends of the Dark line will be available next summer through Aconythe Books.
It’s called Dreams of Fire, and it’s gonna be hot.

We’ve got dwarves, we got orcs (but not your father’s old orcs), we’ve got necromancy and rock-magic, we’ve got swordsmen-poets and more dragons you can shake a stick at.
And volcanoes.
It’s going to be a blast.

Check it out here if you want more news.


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Re-reading Conan (for starters)

In 2022 I launched an Italian-language podcast called Chiodi Rossi (Red Nails), together with my friend Germano – who is a fine writer and an excellent editor, and a fellow Howard fan.
We started every two week, reviewing and discussing a classic… well, “classic” 1980s fantasy movie – and we started with John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian.

The podcast was well received, and we have somewhat widened our scope – we did a couple movie trailer reviews, we covered the eight episodes of the Amazon Prime series The Rings of Power. Our listeners were reasonably happy with what we did, so we are experimenting further.

And so we said, OK, we are both writers – but discussing our own writing would be in poor taste. Why not discuss the stories that we like from the authors that we love, within the sword & sorcery and fantasy genre?

As a test run, we’ll do an episode about four of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories – having selected two each. We will re-read them, and take notes, and then talk, and record, and inflict the result on our unsuspecting listeners.

The four stories we selected are

  • The Tower of the Elephant
  • Shadows in the Moonlight
  • People of the Black Circle
  • Red Nails

As I mentioned, the podcast is in Italian*, but I’d love to do something for the blog here – maybe a single post on the four stories, maybe a post each.
And then, maybe, do it again with other Conan stories, or other non-Conan stories from Howard, or with stories from other classic authors.
Watch this space.

(* – i can add that I’d love to do an English-language podcast, but first, my spoken English is VERY rusty, and second, in the past I have found out that I am no good when I have to carry a whole episode by myself… but who knows…?)


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Aliette de Bodard’s The Red Scholar’s Wake is out, and there’s space pirates in it

It is not often that I have the opportunity to give a shout out for a colleague’s new book.

Multi-award winner Aliette de Bodard has a new book out, called The Red Scholar’s Wake, and she had art especially created for the novel, and is revealing it today.

Here is an example

If you want o learn more about the book, here is the back cover blurb:

‘So romantic I may simply perish’ Tasha Suri, award-winning author of THE JASMINE THRONE

‘LESBIAN SPACE PIRATES. Enough said.’ Katee Robert, NYT bestselling author of NEON GODS

Xích Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now-her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xích Si expects to be tortured to death-only for the pirates’ enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, to arrive with a different and shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xích Si and herself. 

Rice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Now isolated and alone, Rice Fish wants Xích Si’s help to find out who struck against them and why. Marrying Xích Si means Rice Fish can offer Xích Si protection, in exchange for Xích Si’s technical fluency: a business arrangement with nothing more to it. 

But as the investigation goes on, Rice Fish and Xích Si find themselves falling for each other. As the interstellar war against piracy intensifies and the five fleets start fighting each other, they will have to make a stand-and to decide what kind of future they have together…

An exciting space opera and a beautiful romance, from an exceptional SF author.

And the covers.

Check it out.


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Douglas Barbour Award

I’ve been pushing uphill for weeks now, entangled in a number of projects.
But last night I got a big surprise – the anthology Water: Selkies, Sirens & Sea Monsters, edited by Rhonda Parrish, was awarded the Douglas Barbour Award for the Speculative Fiction Book of the Year by the Book Publishers Association of Alberta (BPAA).

The book includes a short story of mine – The Man that Speared Octopodes.
A small aquatic horror number.
I am proud to have contributed in a minimal part to the success of this anthology.