Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Eye candy overload: League of Gods

During lunch break I spent some time watching League of Gods, a 2016 Hong Kong fantasy movie featuring Jet Li, the ubiquitous Tony Leung Ka-Fai and the absolutely gorgeous Fan Bingbing, among many others. I always liked Hong Kong movies, and it is nice to take a break from Western imagination once in a while.
The movie is – pretty loosely, I guess – based on a 16th century novel called Fangshen Yanyi (variously translated as Investiture of the Gods or The Creation of the Gods).

As you can see from the trailer, the movie is heavy on CGI, and has a strange mix of adult situations and somewhat of juvenile humor that can raise a few eyebrows among the audience.
I know my eyebrows did a little gymnastic while I was watching the film. Continue reading →


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New markets: Smashwords

styleguideTime to try something new.
All my ebooks can be found on Amazon, and I never had any real problem with mister Bezos and his umpa-lumpas.
But I have always been curious about Smashwords, where I did buy a few ebooks but was never sure enough of my formatting skills to actually go and upload my works.
The dread Smashwords Meatgrinder was pretty scary, and I heard a lot of horror stories about mangled books and what not.
I read the Smashwords style guides, but still I was scared.
Then, this morning, my friend Brent Millis (aka Made in DNA) published this article

The Minimalist Guide to Formatting Your eBooks

… which is pretty straightforward, and I thought, why not?

So I took the Buscafusco file, added a few things that Smashwords requires, eliminated a few that Smashwords does not like and lo and behold!… BUSCAFUSCO: Women & Children is up and running. Continue reading →


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The Women of Edwin Georgi

Edwin Georgy was an American painter and illustrator that worked for magazines and publicity. He was self-taught, a fact that I find impressive – just as impressive as his experience as a WWI pilot.
He was especially well known for his women, and it seems fitting to post a gallery of Georgi’s women on the International Women’s Day.

Enjoy!

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BUSCAFUSCO: Women & Children

And so the first BUSCAFUSCO story is out.
It’s called BUSCAFUSCO: Women & Children, and you can get it, DRM-free, through Amazon – just click on the links.
It’s 12.000 words story, sort of a warm-up run, something I did in two days trying to get the recurring characters on the page, getting a first taste of the setting, and testing what I’d like to use as a typical story structure for the series, having my character tackle two different and unrelated “cases” at the same time.

All in all, I had quite some fun writing this story, and barring accidents I will try and do another as soon as possible, treating this as a T V series, with two episodes – at least – per month.

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I hope you’ll enjoy BUSCAFUSCO: Women & Children – please leave a review on your review website of choice, and let me know what you think. This is not just vanity, it’s actually what I need to fine-tune my stories.
Cheers!


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Introducing BUSCAFUSCO, a tough guy for the wine country

There’s been a project I’ve been sitting on for months now, and today I decided to give it a spin – the idea being writing a story in one day, and then clean it up, put a cover on it and then load it up in Amazon, and see what happens.
Work with pulp speed and pulp standards, to tell pulp stories.

So I did it.
I started this morning at 9.30.
It is now 5.30 pm as I am writing this, and I have 9000 words down, and about half as many still to go. And it seems to be working.
So, to give myself that extra push, I’m announcing it here straight away, and I’m also giving you a short behind-the-scenes and a cover reveal.
I hope you are interested. Continue reading →


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19 Ways to Become the MacGyver of History

Just the second experiment and already Portent has thrown me a curve ball.
“The MacGyver of History”?
But it’s OK, no really, I can do it, I can do it… MacGyver was a great series and I loved it as a kid, so I owe it to MacGyver.

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What is the MacGyver of History?
To me, he (or indeed, she) is one that can take bits and pieces of history, a paper clip and his trusted Swiss Army knife, and build a radio. Or a rocket.
In other words, we are talking about a writer of historical fiction and historical fantasy. Someone that is good enough to take history, and work in the interstices to create stories that work inside of history while being outside of it. Continue reading →


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How Adventures Changed How We Think About Death

selection_555Now this is a topic, right?
Blame the Portent Content Idea Geneator, that spat this one out when I put in the topic “Adventure”.
And it works, in a certain way.
Let me see if I can get this going – and incidentally, by “adventures” I will mean “adventure fiction”, be it novels, movies, comics or games.

Now, death is a fact.
We all know that we are sitting in this grand theatre and watching this movie, and one day when we least expect it the lights will go out forever, and we will never see how the movie ends.
6186And to be completely honest, that’s what peeves me the most – not seeing how the stories that I see unfurling in front of me will go after I’m gone.
I subscribe to Roger Zelazny’s idea of immortality – eternal life is an eternal sequence of unique moments and experiences, so don’t come and whine about how an eternal life would, in the end, be boring.
Not for me, sorry.
I’m currently going through the roughest time in my life, and I’m having lots of fun.
I’m sorry there’ are other people involved, and I get some very bad moods and I’m often anxious because I could end up living under a bridge in a few weeks, but God forgive me, it’s also exciting.

Which leads us to adventure fiction. Continue reading →