Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Media


by 2 Comments

The Ministry of Thunder OST

The Ministry of ThunderI mentioned in the past that – despite what Raymond Chandler said about people working with the radio on – I use a lot of music as background when I’m writing.
This means that my stories have a sort of soundtrack.

Yesterday, thanks to my brother, I discovered I can share my soundtracks pretty easily – using a free service called Kaseta.co.

So, here goes – the official soundtrack for my novel The Ministry of Thunder, courtesy of the fine guys of Kaseta. A selection of the tracks that were playing in background as I wrote and revised, and some songs that I associate with characters and situations.

As usual, WordPress won’t allow me to embed the cassette (curses!) – so I’ll just give you a link here (you can also click on the cassette here).

Screenshot from 2014-12-20 15:58:54

It’s my novel re-imagined as a movie, and the soundtrack features modern and old-time jazz, some world music, and like the soundtracks of those action movies I used to watch as a kid in the 80s, there’s a great song on the end titles.

Below the jump, you’ll find the scene/track list.
Enjoy!

Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

Amelia

Sunday.
A song about Amelia Earhart, written by Jomi Mitchell and covered by the fabulous Dave Stewart* and Barbara Gaskin.

Both Earhart and Stewart-Gaskin are favorites of mine in their respective categories, and this seems in line with the themes of this blog.

And so here goes.
Enjoy.

———————————–
* Dave Stewart the keyboard master of Hatfield and the North, not the guitarist of Eurythmics


by 1 Comment

A Robert McGinnis gallery

mcginnisI’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time browsing the gorgeous The Art of Robert E. McGinnis.

Now, Robert McGinnis is the first artist I learned to recognize and actually actively seek on the cover of the books I read – before Frazetta, before Hannes Bok or Virgil Finlay, or Michael Whelan.
In the early ’80s there were a lot of Italian editions of thrillers and adventure novels that used McGinnis’ artwork – and I soon learned to associate his trait with “interesting read”.

And every single image suggested a story in itself – and they still do: to browse through the artbook is to be flooded with story ideas.

So, to celebrate this artist that was certainly instrumental in putting the idea in my head about writing adventure books, I’m posting a small gallery of his varied, always extraordinary, works.

Enjoy! Continue reading →