Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Books


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AMARNA, episode 1

Amarna preview smallAnd so we made it, despite the revolt of the Amazon oompa-loompas.
Because you see, I spent almost one hour uploading the text and the cover of the first episode of AMARNA on Amazon, and when I hit publish the thing just vanished.
[snaps fingers] Like that!

And so I said to myself, what the heck, I’ll use Gumroad1.

And so, here it goes – a simple zip file including both the epub and the mobi versions of the first episode of my serial, DRM-free, that you can buy on Gumroad for the same price you’d pay for the mobi alone on Amazon2.

And what’s more, on Gumroad you can SUBSCRIBE to the whole series, and get the files in your mailbox as soon as they are released, saving up to 22% on the retail price of the six installments.
Is this cool or what?

And now, what about a little preview?
Want to see how it starts?  Continue reading →


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Graustark

And talking about small imaginary European states…
I guess everybody out there is familiar with Brewster’s Millions, if not the original novel from 1902, at least with the Richard Pryor movie of 1985, directed by Walter Hill. One of the dozen or so movies based on that novel, that was written by George Barr McCutcheon.

Now, McCutcheon’s other claim to literary fame is the creation of Graustark, a Ruritania-like, romantic European micronation that he explored in six novels.

mapa-ruritania-en-austria-hungria-1911

Indeed, such was the popularity of McCutcheon’s novels that if a whole genre is known as Ruritanian Romance thanks to Anthony Hope’s The Prisoner of Zenda, that same genre is also known as Graustarkian Romance. Continue reading →


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Drachenstal: halfway report

I am terribly late – and the bout of flu did not help – but I’ve been working on the Hope & Glory: Drachensthal mini-supplement this last month.

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The thing will be small but hopefully pack a nice punch:

  • a small gazetteer of the Grand-Duchy of Drachenstahl
  • a game Master’s section
  • a scenario
  • five quick adventure hooks

As all the Hope & Glory material, this corner of the world will also come with its own flavor – in this case, political intrigue and revolution. Continue reading →


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The House of the Gods

I am very proud to announce that my new novel, The House of the Gods, published by Severed Press, is up and running on Amazon.
And I am damn proud of it.

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The story is set on top of one of the forbidding plateaus that rise along the Brazil/Venezuela border.
The crew and passengers of a charter flight come face to face with a “pocket lost world”, filled with dangers, wonders and dinosaurs.
Then the bad guys with the big guns arrive…

I will do another post in the next days, or maybe two, about the background of the story and the characters.
But right now, my new book is out, is published by a publisher I admire, and I am in a catalog that features some of my favorite writers.
So I’ll take a break and celebrate.


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Seven Stars unabridged

aa117ebe2ef23034997a167da91a67ffMy first exposition to Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of Seven Stars was through the Hammer classic 1971 movie, Blood from the Mummy’s Tomb.
Yes, the one featuring Valerie Leon.
I can’t remember where I first saw the movie – I was probably in the last year of middle school at the time, or on my first year of high school, and anything with the Hammer logo was a cherished treasure for me and my schoolmates.

Dark_detectivesI later read a cheap paperback translation, and found it somewhat boring.
I appreciated a lot more what Kim Newman did with the central themes of the novel, in his Seven Stars, which is contained in Stephen Jones excellent Dark Detectives, that I read at least a decade later.
Admittedly, I was never a Stoker fan, being more in the Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard field.

For the uninitiated,1 in what is considered to be the first modern “curse of the mummy” story, young Margaret Trelawny (daughter of a famous Egyptologist) is possibly the reincarnation of ancient (and fictitious) Queen Tera, whose astral body’s been preserved in as a mummified cat.
But it’s more complicated than that. Continue reading →


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The man from the Nile

In July, 1878, when serving as lieutenant in H. I. H. the Crown Prince Rudolph’s regiment, the 19th Foot, on the Bosnian frontier, I received a letter from General Gordon, inviting me to come to the Sudan and take service with the Egyptian Government, under his direction.

Rudolf_Carl_von_SlatinRudolf Carl von Slatin, later known as Slatin Pasha, was born near Vienna in 1857. In 1873, while attending a commercial school, he heard about a German bookseller in Cairo that needed an assistant, and he left for Egypt.
He ended up in Karthoum, and he traveled extensively before he had to return to Austria to fulfill his conscription in the army.
While in the Austrian army, he was contacted by Gemneral Gordon, ad mentioned in the opening of his 1896 best-seller Fire and Sword in the Sudan.
Because when he finally accepted Gordon’s invitation, things got interesting: appointed governor of Dara, and when rebellion erupted in 1882, Slating tried to face the music, but without much success. Continue reading →