Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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No Sword and No Sorceress

And so I didn’t make it.
I didn’t finish Children of Shadow in time for the Sword & Sorceress submission (12 hours left, not enough).
The fact that I spent the best part of a day walking up and down a golf course is certainly one of the reasons why I wasn’t able to nail the box of the new Aculeo & Amunet story shut.
By the time I was home yesterday night it was well past nine and I was completely spent.

There is a thing I was discussing with my friend Hell Greco1 two nights ago, that really has something to do with the unfinished Aculeo & Amunet story, that I thought may interest someone out there.
Or maybe not, in which case, skip this post. Continue reading →


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Lawrence Block’s lives in crime

It has been observed—I forget where or by whom—that only kids have heroes. I’m not entirely sure that’s true, but I do think you have to stop being a fan in order to become wholly a professional. You can continue to admire and delight in the work of another writer, but if you’re slavish in your devotion, if you’re stuck in the role of full-blown fan, your own growth will be limited.

51O0k6c2kXL._SX331_BO1,204,203,200_I can really relate to that.
It’s taken from The Crime of Our Lives, an excellent book by Lawrence Block, collecting the author’s essays, introductions and columns about his colleagues and his experiences in the field of genre fiction. It is not as one might think, an autobiography (and I realize the title of this post is misleading), but a collection of personal reminiscences about other people1.
It’s quite a good read – but then, I am a fan… or rather, I admire and delight in his work, without giving in to slavish devotion, and I consider Block’s Telling Lies for Fun and Profit one of the best books about writing I ever read2. And I did read a few.

Continue reading →


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Another sprint

I’ve devoted a lot of space recently to my writing, which I realize is boring to a lot of people out there.
Sorry ’bout that. This is my last writing-related post for a while.
Fact is, you know, that talking publicly about what I am about to do forces me to stick to my guns, and actually do it. It’s good motivation.
So here is what I am about to do: I am about to spend tonight revising the last bits of Hope & Glory – the plot point campaign called The Flight of the Ostrich in particular.21844978
Then I will drop everything else for two days and spend those 48 hours doing a short story about Aculeo & Amunet.
I have a few ideas I need to sort out, I can do that tomorrow morning while I am queuing at the tax office, and then I’ll start writing, and in two days I’ll have a 6000-words story, and I will submit it to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress 32.
I learned too late that the submission window for the anthology closes on the 14th of the month, that is this Sunday. And on Saturday I am away for a job, probably.
So I will have to do a sprint-writing thing, and by the evening of the 11th at the latest I need to have my story.

The anthology guidelines specify

Stories should be the type generally referred to as “sword and sorcery” and must have a strong female protagonist whom the reader will care about.

0c6581662f0d6b2882dded6b8741c36dWill the reader care about Amunet, when she is usually so keen telling us she does not care about anybody but herself? Hopefully so.

I’d really love to get into the Sword & Sorceress anthology – apart from being an excellent market, it is also an excellent showcase for an author.

And if I’ll get tangled in some other thing and I’ll miss the deadline, because it is a well known fact that we must expect the unexpected, well, I’ll have another Aculeo & Amunet story, and I will look for other markets.

The good bit about writing is that nothing gets wasted.
But enough talking about writing!
Wish me luck.


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I’m writing a planetary romance (so there!)

brackettI think I mentioned in the past how much I like Leigh Brackett’s stories.
I loved the Skaith books, and I actually read Bracket’s The Sword of Rhiannon well before I discovered Edgar Rice Burrough’s Marian novels.
You can find a few of Brackett’s stories for free download out there, and I’ll provide links at the end of this post, but the reason I’m writing this is because I’m putting together a 5000-words story I plan to submit to a magazine next month. It’s going to be a planetary romance sort of thing, and it will be set on Mars, and so last night I went to the shelf and took down Sea Kings of Mars1 for a quick recap.
To soak-up Bracket’s language, if you will, to see if I can learn her secrets (wishful thinking). Continue reading →


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Historical mystery set in the Boxers’ China

41J+Xo0NhLL._SY346_Here’s something you might be interested in.
I’m working on the translation of a very short mystery story by my friend Shanmei – that writes Oriental fantasies and mystery stories set in China.
The story, that in Italian is called Un Gioco di Pazienza1 is set in the aftermath of the Boxers’ Rebellion, and centres around an Italian army officer serving in China.
The story is the first one in an ongoing series.

The fun bit is, Shanmei2 based the main character in her story about her grand-grandfather, who actually served in China after the Boxers’ Rebellion – and she was able to tap into the old man’s correspondence and papers for the documentation.
So this is a proper historical mystery, with all the whistles and bells.

This is going to be a sweet and fast job, and quite fun – after all, I set my Cynical Little Angels around the Italian compound in China, some thirty-five years after the event of Shanmei’s story, so it will be a little like coming back home.

I’ll let you know when the ebook is available with a post here on my blog.
Stay tuned!

  1. that in English translates as “A Puzzle”, that sucks a bit as a title – I’ll have to come up with something better. ↩
  2. no, ok, that’s not her real name. ↩