Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Putting Portent Idea generator to the test

I just discovered the Portent Idea Generator, that is one of those things that are supposed to help bloggers do their thing, that is, write blog posts.

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Portent Idea generator is a web-based thingy in which you drop a word, the subject of your hypothetical post, and it generates a full post title.
Then you write that post, and people loves it.
Or something.

So here’s what I’m gonna do, what with today being Mardi Gras and all that: I will drop five words in the Portent Idea Generator and generate five titles, and then write five posts… and see what happens as I publish them once a day through this week.

The words are

  • Adventure
  • History
  • Fantasy
  • Orient
  • Old Movies (yes, I know, this is two words, don’t hate me)

We start in a few hours. Let’s see what happens.
And I admit I have half a mind of putting in also

  • Tits & Sand

as a sixth input.

And yes, the title is misleading – this will not put the thingy to the test – it will put to the test my writing chops. Which is good, because we must test our chops once in a while (not bad – sounds like a fake Lao Tsu or Bruce Lee quote).


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Making eyes at Patreon

patreon_iconI’ve been making eyes at Patreon.
Or it’s been making eyes at me.
Meaning I’ve been reading the Patreon documentation material, and it looks like a great thing to expand my work and provide new content to my followers, while making a buck and trying to pay my bills and have more time to create fiction, non-fiction and game-related contents.

For the uninitiated, Patreon is a subscription service for creatives: patrons pledge a fixed amount per month (say one to five bucks, or more), and get exclusive contents and special perks, while the creators get a modicum of steady cash flow. The sort of thing that could help me me improve and expand my blogging platform or my author activity, for instance. Continue reading →


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On fedora hats

According to both my grandfathers,

A man without a hat is a man of no consequence

Both my grandfathers had two hats, one for workdays and one for Sundays and special occasions.
The everyday hat was a simple cap, what I’d call an eight panel or a newsboy, a standard working man’s hat that could be easily rolled up and put in a pocket. The hat for special occasions was a Borsalino. A fedora. Continue reading →


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Missing the Suez canal

Busy day – I got a rejection slip, I submitted a new story to a magazine, I wrote 2000 words of the forthcoming Hope & Glory handbook, and I cooked some top-notch tuna and tomato pasta for lunch.
And just as I was having lunch, I realized I had completely forgotten about the Suez Canal.

suez_canal_drawing_1881Let me explain – in Hope & Glory, after a catastrophe cripples the European Continent, a fleet carrying British refugees sails towards India.
The plan is to split the fleet in two – an as the bulk of the fleet circumnavigates Africa, braving the freak storms and the dangers of the long trip, a smaller fleet, carrying Queen Victoria and a number of VIPs, cuts through Gibraltar and Suez and reaches India through the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Nice and smooth.

Pity all this is happening in 1855, and as Wikipedia promptly reminds me, the Suez Canal…

… was constructed by the Suez Canal Company between 1859 and 1869. After 10 years of construction, it was officially opened on November 17, 1869.

This is the sort of embarrassing thing that will have to be swept under the carpet when reviews will appear praising “the research and historical detail” of Hope & Glory, but right now it’s quite fun, because it forced me to rethink a small piece of the background, and in the end the whole turned out to be much better than it was before.
I was able to add drama, build a little on the mystique about the origins of the Anglo-Indian Raj in my setting, and I also had the opportunity to kill off Prince Albert.
Which is sad, because the guy was all right, I guess, but I needed Victoria to be a widow upon arriving in India.

And I like very much the way in which the setting is mutating under my hands as I write chapter after chapter. Leaving my options open and improvising the details make the whole thing fun, and the setting is much more alive.
And it’s not as time consuming as it might seem.


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Hope & Glory: Glass Houses

I’m very proud to announce that Glass Houses, the first novella set in the Hope & Glory game setting, is finally available via Amazon, RPGNow and DriveThruRPG, in a variety of digital formats.

It’s been a long road, and it is good to finally see this first title out. And I owe a big Thank You! and a colossal, collective slap on the back to all the people that worked on this project.
More books will follow.

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Glass Houses is a steampulp tale set in an India that never was – it is plain old fashioned science-fictional intrigue, and was designed as a stand-alone story for everyone, gamers and non-gamers.

To learn more about Hope & Glory … Continue reading →


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Kalaripayattu: the oldest martial art

Did I ever tell you that reality surpasses fiction nine times out of ten?
Sure I did.
So now I’m finally pushing the pedal to the metal for the Hope & Glory roleplaying game handbook, and it is my habit, having built the general structure of the book, I’m doing some spot-on research to deepen the background and add some vivid, fun and unexpected detail.
And last night (insomnia, remember?) I was checking a few facts and trying something different for the characters in the game to do.
Hope & Glory started its existence as a steampunk setting but has developed in various extra directions, incorporating scientific romance, lost world novels, pulp and adventure stories, and even part of what those pesky kids call decopunk. And in the first handbook it will have a strong Indian flavor.
So I told myself – why not Indian martial arts?

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And it was so that I discovered Kalaripayattu – a martial art that in my eye surpasses fictional analogs hands down. Continue reading →


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Sleepless nights and dinosaurs

This last week has been pretty weird all things considered.
It’s now 2 am as I’m writing this. My usual insomnia made a major comeback, so that I spent most of the nights up, and then crashed into a deep, dream-infested slumber after lunch.
Which sounds pretty lovecraftian, but is really bad for the little social life I still manage to have.
On the plus side, I spend the nights writing, and have now hit a solid 8000-words per day rhythm, and I am now actually hitting all of my headlines in time, if not with a certain advance. Right out I’m putting the finishing touches on a story I’ll submit tomorrow morning – if I can dream up (ah!) a suitable title.
And I’ve been following online courses.
Apart from the course I am following about heart diseases (because I saw what happened to my father and I want to live), I’ve been brushing up my Spanish (because I want to leave this country, and Spanish is quite widespread) and I’ve just spent a few hours refreshing my knowledge of dinosaurs with a wonderful MOOC from the University of Alberta, called Dino 101: Dinosaur Paleobiology. Because, dinosaurs.

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By the way, this course actually starts officially next week, and if you like dinosaurs, it’s highly recommended: clear, in-depth, fun, and with some spectacular interactive support.
Check it out.

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