Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Books


by 4 Comments

You must be a f#cking moron or, how I liked the Sword of Shannara

In my long and somewhat undistinguished life so far, only three times I have been called “a f#cking moron” because of my tastes (or lack thereof) in matters of music and literature. And before you ask, yes, I have a very long memory for certain things.

  • The first time was when I candidly admitted that I’d rather listen to J.S. Bach than to W.A. Mozart.
  • The second time was when I expressed my preference for Jefferson Airplane over Pink Floyd.
  • The third time was when I said I had actually liked The Sword of Shannara.

And this being Karavansara, you will guess what I am going to talk about next.

Continue reading →


by 6 Comments

Return to Joiry

They say we need to turn our negative experiences into opportunities for good – and I have found that it’s an excellent advice.
So, having just wasted eight minutes of my short life watching one of the most asinine “video essays” I ever saw, what can I take away from it and turn into an opportunity?

Well, the tragically inadequate “nerd expert” that wasted eight minutes of my life explaining to me what sword & sorcery is, said

sword & sorcery deals with rough, uncouth, muscular barbarian heroes wielding big swords

And I thought of Jirel of Joiry.
And thinking of Jirel and C.L. Moore is always a good thing.

Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

Sherlock Holmes & the Occult Detectives

I am happy to report that the massive two-volume collection published by Belanger Books and presenting a wide selection of mysteries and adventures featuring Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives is available both in paperback and ebook through Amazon.

In these stories, Holmes must work with some colleagues of his that are better versed in the ins and outs of the occult and the supernatural, while not relinquishing his powers of observation and deduction.

The first volume includes my story The Case of the Manchester Mummies, the first outing of the delectable miss Valerie Trelawney. More adventures of miss Trelawney will hopefully see the light in the future. But it all starts here.

I hope you’ll check out these books – they are absolutely fabulous.


by Leave a comment

Birthday book haul

And so the day of my 53rd birthday is coming to an end. I’ve celebrated with a quick jaunt to the last pizza place open in the area, and I’ve had dinner with my brother and a friend. The rest of the day, I spent reading – because it was my birthday, and I received a lot of books as gifts.

And I might as well share, so, here’s a list of all the wonders my friends gave me. In no particular order…

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Better Than Literature

This morning I saw a snippet, posted online by a contact of mine, off a school anthology book. Now, school anthologies are often the first impact with literature for a lot of kids. They know fiction through movies, and comics, and cartoons, but especially these days, the written word, the textual storytelling, may come late in a kids life.

And this snippet made it clear that (i quote from memory)

one must distinguish between serious literature and the simple fiction whose only purpose is to amuse and entertain

… and from there it went on to explain to the out-of-luck kid that might chance to read this sort of crap, that basically…

  1. if you like it because it’s fun then it’s gotta be rubbish
  2. if it’s prop’r litch’r’chure you should not have fun reading it, and you’re not smart to get it anyway

This sort of nonsense makes me SO angry.

Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

The long and short of it

I write mostly short stories and novellas. The main reasons, I think, have to do with time – on one hand, I often write to pay my bills, and writing fast is OK, but shorter works can be mailed out to publishers faster. But there is also another element, and it’s got to do with my impatience – as I often write to see how the story will go and what will happen to the characters, by writing short I get my answers sooner.

The same goes, I believe, with reading – as I grow old I find myself more attracted to short stories and novellas than to longer works, and I tend to prefer one shot novels to lengthy series.

But there are exceptions.

Continue reading →


by 1 Comment

Growing up with Yoko Tsuno

Today my heart broke for the second time for something that happened a long time ago – sometimes in the mid ’90s, my collection of Yoko Tsuno comics, the first ten volumes, was lost – my mom, god bless her, decided it was time to clear some space, and gave the books away, as a gift to the son of a friend of hers.
I was serving in the Air Farce at the time, and when I found out, it was too late.
Heart broken.
And today, a friend reminded me of Yoko, and my heart cracked again.

For the uninitiated, Yoko Tsuno was the main character in a series of comics created by Belgian artist Roger Leloup in 1970 – a series of science fiction thrillers featuring a young Japanese woman, an electronic engineer, as the main character. The series had a run of 29 volumes, the last being published in 2010. Leloup also wrote a novel about the character (and that I still have – hooray!)
The first adventure was The Curious Trio – in which we were introduced to the heroine, her team-mates and the blue-skinned aliens that would become a fixture of the series.

Continue reading →