I started reading about Amelia Earhart back in university, after stumbling on a slim book called I Was Amelia Earhart, a fictionalized account of Earhart’s final days.
Most obviously fictionalized because nobody knows exactly what happened to Earhart after she disappeared somewhere over the Pacific in 1937, together with her navigator Fred Noonan.
The book was strange, not exactly what I had expected, but what the heck, there was a mystery in there, one I had heard mentioned for ages, but never got into.
So I started reading on the subject. Continue reading
Category Archives: Books
Night Visitors
Do we need ghost stories?
Possibly.
It turns out the house in which I’m living is supposedly haunted – this explains why some of the locals look strangely at me and my brother. Or maybe they are just weird country bumpkins, who knows.
Fact is, by the weekend I’ll have to deliver a learned article – in Italian – about ghostly literature. It’s the spirit (aha!) of the season, I guess.
I’ve been translating two ghost stories for a new publication – a story by Edith Nesbit and one by the wildly eccentric Robert Stephen Hawker, and I’ve been reading on the subject. Continue reading
Back on the Nile
I’m not a fan of Agatha Christie.
I think what turned me off was starting with the Miss Marple mysteries, after viewing the old Margaret Rutherford movies. My late aunt, that was a great fan of Christie gave me an omnibus edition with a number of Miss Marple books, and I hated them.
There.
But as I think I already mentioned, I love the Poirot movies featuring Peter Ustinov, and when it comes to Death on the Nile, in my house we are divided – to me, nothing surpasses the Ustinov movie, while my brother, that is a David Suchet fan, prefers the TV movie. Continue reading
C is for Cabbage
I mentioned I would give you a heads-up when finally C is for Cabbage would hit the stores.
Well, it did.
This is a collection of horror and fantasy stories for kids (and for grown-ups, too). All the royalties go to a charity helping children with terminal illness.
It’s a great Christmas gift for kids that like fantasy and spooks and weird things going bump in the night. And it’s a good thing.
Free Historical Fiction
Among the many fine books free for the taking (you might like to sign up on the author’s mailing list, and leave a review somewhere online), you’ll also find Cynical Little Angels, by yours truly.
Not the Ahab story
The Miskatonic Whale Run is out,and you can get a copy for 99 cents.
An experiment in mixing horror and humor, I hope it gets at least one of the two right and does not fail at both.
The story is set in Arkham in 1958, and it is actually based on two “true stories” circulating about two Italian university, plus a true event from the heroic history of early palaentology.
So, when it’s all said and done, I did not invent anything.
But I’ll save the true stories for later.
Working on the Whale
I have just posted a new story on Amazon KDP, and right now the oompa-loompas in the service of Jeff Bezos are busy working on a conversion of the text.
The story is a Lovecraftian pastiche called The Miskatonic Whale Run, a short piece written under the nefarious influence of one-too-many viewings of John Landis’ Animal House.
Watch this space – I’ll let you know when the ebook’s available.
Karavansara 