Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Books


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The right book at the right time

Selection_805There’s a big stack of For Dummies handbooks about tech jobs and productivity available at the Humble Bundle website, one of my one-stop places to stock on reading matter on a tight budget.

This Bundle looks like it’s perfect for me (productivity and job seeking) and my brother (a code monkey looking for a career).
And this one pictured here is the first I’ll check out, for reasons my last post should have made obvious.
We invested one buck in the basic Bundle.

You might like to go there and invest a few bucks yourself – you also help a charity doing so.


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The new Aculeo & Amunet – why not post a preview?

I am juggling ten thousand different projects – a 15.000-words story I have to deliver in ten days, a 70.000/130.000 words novel I need to to start and finish by Christmas, two ebooks to go as stretch goals for my (very successful! Yeah!) crowdfunding, the next Buscafusco, the new Corsair, and then I need to start planning my online courses…
Whew… my mother was right when she said that as a shop clerk I’d have an easier life.

Anyway, as it usually happens, as soon as I am buried in work, something different comes to my mind.
Like, the start of the next Aculeo & Amunet story, that goes more or less like this… Continue reading →


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Through the corridors of Souffre-Jour

livres-les-chroniques-des-crepusculaires-310As I said a few days back, I’m currently reading Mathieu Gaborit’s Chroniques des Crepusculaires, and if the going is very slow – about one hundred pages in about one week – I must say that I am impressed.
No, not impressed by my ability to actually read (very slowly) a pretty literary novel written in French.
The volume is actually the expanded edition of three original novels: Souffre-Jour, Les Danseurs de Lorgol and Agone
No, what impresses me is the book, its style, its worldbuilding.
And mind you – being now about one fifth of the way through, there is still a lot i must discover, as this is one of those books that start by piling questions upon questions on the reader, and then drag him in.

This is a fantasy, but also a mystery of sorts, and a strange phylosophical tale.
With swordfights. Continue reading →


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Belated birthday post

With all the things going on these last few days, yesterday I missed Edgar Rice Burroughs’ birthday, so I am posting this belated piece to make up somehow.

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Edgar Rice Burroughs was a master storyteller and one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Live with that – his impact on popular culture was second to none, and he was probably the first true transmediatic author.

And he was (most of the times) quite good.
Don’t believe the naysayers – if you never read Burroughs (really?!), and if you think Tarzan is just Johnny Weissmuller, check out one of ERB’s books (I’d suggest either The Land that Time Forgot or At The Erath’s Core or The Master-mind of Mars) and have some fun.

Incidentally, you can download these books for free from the Gutenberg Project of Australia.

ERB was a writer and a storyteller – let’s celebrate him by reading one of his stories.
There’s no better way to make writers happy.


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The end is nigh

I just passed the 10.000 words mark, and the halfway point in my planned outline.
The end of the story I am writing is finally in sight.
As it usually happens, now that all the pieces are on the chessboard and things should begin to finish, I need a moment to carefully plan the next moves.
What will happen, in what sequence, where.
I need to up the action.
All three major characters will have their big action scenes (one each, carefully mapped and choreographed, and one involving the whole team), the evil plot will be revealed, justice will triumph and the main bad guy will have his just desserts.
Which means roughly 8000 words…  Continue reading →


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August reading

I spent most of the last two weeks reading instead of writing.
Granted, three books of mine came out in the last four weeks, so I can’t really complain, but I know there will be hell to pay to hit deadlines and be good. And yet, right now fatigue both physical and mental was such that I needed to stop and recharge my batteries.
I’ve found out I slowed down somewhat, and gone are the summers in which I’d read three or four novels per week. But it’s not a race, so it’s OK.

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My friend Claire over at Scribblings did a post on her reading week, and I thought, why not?
A simple list of what I’ve been reading recently.
Just for fun. Continue reading →