“See you in Prague,” Graham Nash used to say – and today marks the 400th anniversary of the Defenestration of Prague, a rather obscure to most but pretty violent episode of European History that traditionally marks the start of the Thirty Years War.
Now, I am quite fond of the Thirty Years War, and this despite the fact that Continue reading
I guess you guys out there have heard about the big noise that started when SyFy announced it was dropping The Expanse, the series based on James A. Corey’s novels and now in its third season.
The fans really got militant on that one, and I feel rather bad because I am a big fan of both the novels and the series, and sitting here in this corner of the universe, I’m pretty cut off from a lot of the action.
Sure, I signed the petitions, and withstood the blank stares of my friends that basically don’t get it (more about that later on) when I told then You should watch it!.
But it’s a little too little.
This post will not make things different, but at least I’ll give me the opportunity to point out a few things that I love about the series not only as a viewer, but also as a storyteller.
This will ramble a bit.
You’ve been warned. Continue reading
I’m currently working on a new pitch – a very long shot, this one, about which the less said the better.
An alternate history crossed with a supernatural horror/dark fantasy.
The call has some very specific elements, and somehow it got me thinking of vampires and King Arthur.
Pendragon… Dracula… I’m using Son of the Dragon as a working title.
So I’m jotting down ideas, but in the meantime I was reminded of the beautiful The Dragon Waiting, one of the best fantasy novels I ever read.
It was published in 1983, and written by John M. Ford, that always struck me as an author deserving of more success.
The novel, subtitled A Masque of Time won the World Fantasy Award for best novel, but never received the accolades it deserved.
Let’s just say that it’s a weird mix of alternate history and fantasy, set in the middle ages but with the long shadow of the Roman Empire hanging over the proceedings. And yes, an Arthurian myth.
And vampires.
I cannot recommend this book enough – it was reprinted in 2002 as part of the Fantasy Masterworks line, and that’s when I discovered it.
If you like sword & sorcery and supernatural fantasy, check it out.
And so I missed a post, yesterday.
Boy I hate it when it happens – it broke a streak that had lasted more than two months.
Drat!
But I’ve been busy – I’ve spent most of the day editing and setting a new book that will be out soon, in Italian: a collection of eccentrics and their adventures.
Strictly non fiction, what I usually call pulp history – spies, adventurers, loose women.
This will be a 280-pages paperback, fully illustrated – and putting it together, and clearing the typos and everything else took all of the day. Now Amazon has it.
The book was overdue – I had announced it for Christmas, and never got around to finishing the design work. Then, Saturday night, during my hangout with my Patreon supporters, one of them mentioned the book, and how she had planned to give four copies as gifts for Christmas.
It’s very bad letting our readers and supporters down.
So I got to work, and finished what I had started – and while I was at it I added some 10.000 words of extras.
Should, as I hope, the book hit the shelves this week, it would be my fifth title published in five weeks. Not a bad track record.
And this leads me to my hangout with my supporters, and its immediate effects on my state of affairs.
Because it was absolutely great, and the sort of thing that I must absolutely do again.
Writing is a terribly lonely business, and solitude piles on solitude when you are living in a hole of a village in the back of beyond.
Feedback becomes a lifeline – a cure for depression, a sign that what we are doing has an effect out there.
And there is nothing better than a long friendly chat with intelligent people – and my patrons are all very intelligent.
So I’ll do it again – maybe next week already.
And this week I’ll open my hangout for English-speakers. This Saturday, 11 PM UTC.
What do you guys say? Anyone cares to join in?
The story that started its life as The Boy’s Night Out is now available, after a quick editing and some revision, as She Who Mauls, via Gumroad.
The ebook will not be published on Amazon.
I decided to put it up as a Pay What You Want ebook – after all, it was born as a publicity stunt, I’ll keep using it as a publicity vehicle.
You can get the story for free, or set the price you think is right.
Check it out!
I am proud to announce that my story Black Frog and Black Scarab is included, side by side with many excellent horror detection stories, in the fourth issue of Occult Detective Quarterly, the finest occult detective magazine out there.
In Black Frog and Black Scarab we’ll meet again centurion Nennius Britannicus and his contubernium, last seen fighting a giant stuffed crocodile in The Hand of Isfet.
It was high time the guys got their own series – and I hope this is the first of many stories.
It was back in 1985, I think, that I discovered the art of Chris Achilleos in a book called Beauty and the Beast, originally published in the late ‘70s.
As a graphically inept individual, I was always fascinated by art, and fantasy art in particular.
The cover of that volume was graced by a picture that, I found out reading the book, was the cover for a series of novels about a character called Raven.
I was rather curious about the whole thing – based on the covers, it seemed the series was some kind of sex & violence fantasy filled with weird monsters and scantly-clad women. Cautious inquiries about the books revealed the author to be one Richard Kirk. In the end, I decided the series was not worth the expense of ordering in those pre-Internet days.
But I was still curious. Continue reading
Karavansara 