In his comment to my Robin Hood post, Keith Taylor said…
Just put me down as a fan of Robin Hood from way back, and of King Arthur too.
Which came just at the right time as I had been walking down memory lane with a few friends, here, these days, reminiscing about Arthur of the Britons, a 24 episodes British series that first aired in 1972 and I caught the next year when it was distributed in Italy.
And boy I liked it! Continue reading
And so it turns out my friend Clara Giuliani, over at Scribblings, does not like Robin Hood, and actually finds a certain sympathy for John Lackland, of all things.
While I nursed my broken heart1, I thought that I do like Robin Hood and therefore, today being the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of King John Lackland, why not make a post about the best Robin Hoods out there?
Let’s recap the basics: Robin Hood is the character in a number of ballads and folk tales, and later stories, poems and romances, whose historicity is debated and does not really interest us here right now.
From th every beginning (that is, from the 14th century), Robin is described as an anti-clerical champion of the lower classes, very respectful of women (probably because he is a devout of the Virgin Mary), and an excellent archer and an enemy of the Sheriff of Nottingham. What’s not to like, I wonder!
His companions from the start include Little John, Much the Miller’s Son, and Will Scarlett, while Maid Marian and friar Tuck will come later with the reteling of the story.
Continue reading
This is the month of the indies, and this is an indie-related post in more ways than one.
I was having a talk with some friends, yesterday, about self-publishing, indie publishing and such, and as it usually happens, recently, we ended up repeating a mantra, a meme of sort that is growing popular by the day in our select circle:
I should start writing porn under an alias
Which, in all likelihood (or at least according to some persistent legend), would be an easier way to pay the bills than writing fantasy, or science fiction, or horror, or westerns, or whatever.
At that point, usually, the party splits in two fields: on one side, there’s the ones that list the technical problems of such a line of action, such as establishing an alias and market the new books; on the other side, there’s the guys that simply say they couldn’t do it because they find porn repulsive, they’d be ashamed of themselves, or the sole idea of writing smut makes them start laughing.
I’m a “I’d start laughing and end up writing a farce” sort of guy, and yet I normally side with the technicalities-minded. Continue reading
It is with a mix of excitement and dread that I wait for the coming of October the 11th.
…
Nice little Lovecraftian start, innit?
Let me go back to the beginning.
A few days back, answering the call of Amazon, I announced I will devote some space to independent books through the month of October.
Because indies are important – they are where the exciting stuff happens1
As luck would have it, on the same day I received a fat Amazon gift card from one of my readers.
And therefore I burned a fair chunk of it in ordering a paper copy of Raphael Ordonez’ second book in the Enoch Series, which is called The King of Nightspore’s Crown, and that does fully qualify as an indie book.
The first book in the series, Dragonfly, I reviewed here and it was one of the best fantasy stories I happened to read in a long time.
So I’m very excited about the fact that the courier service will drop my copy in my mailbox on Tuesday the 11th of October.
I explicitly chose the paper book over the ebook because I consider myself a fan, and I want the whole series on my shelf. I love the way these books look and feel like those old Ballantine Adult Fantasy titles from my misspent youth.
The dread I mentioned comes from the fact that, knowing myself, as soon as the package gets to me I’ll stop everything I’m doing and I’ll spend the following days reading the book. And then writing a review.
And then maybe going back to Dragonfly and read the two of them back to back.
You get the idea. I’ll have to exercise all my (less than abundant) discipline, to try and do some work next week.
I’ll keep you posted.
Well, it’s not every day Amazon – yes, that Amazon – asks for your help.
And yet, this morning I got a communication for an initiative Amazon just launched: a celebration of Indie authors, throughout the month of October.
And being myself, sometimes, an indie author (or an author/publisher – sort of a D&D multiclass), I think this is a swell idea.
So here’s what I will do – as I noted in a previous post, I’m overworked at the moment, but I will do all I can to read and review at least one indie book a week throughout October, and then post using the above hashtag, #PoweredByIndie, in order to let it have the widest circulation possible.
I’ll also collect a few posts I made in the past about some great indie books, and overhaul them somehow.
And no, I will not push my own books – if there’s something I learned as an author/publisher is that by talking about good work by other authors I usually get a boost in sales anyway. There, the best of both worlds. Who knows, maybe it’s karma at work.
According to an article I read during the weekend, the best way to fend off depression and stress is to turn Facebook off for a week.
I more or less agree.
The last few weeks have been pretty heavy:
. lots of work to do to try and pay the bills
. lots of offices to visit and calls to make to settle the succession taxes and relative documents
. not many highlights on the human front
But I’ll leave my bureaucratic odyssey and the general fact that human beings tend to suck for another post (if ever), and concentrate on the overworked/underpaid situation, and the stress and depression thereof. Continue reading
My friend Dalmazio reminded me yesterday of a movie that I re-watch usually once a year, and that would fit my highly hypothetical guide to sword & sorcery movies, despite the fact that it does not feature any sword that I can remember, nor is the sorcery so prominent.
The movie is called Circle of Iron, but is also known as The Silent Flute, and was originally written by Bruce Lee, that would have starred it.
The movie was planned for 1969, and should have featured James Coburn (who also had a hand in the original story) as a co-star, but then the project fizzed.
It was produced nine years later, with David carradine in the role that should have been Lee’s, and Jeff Cooper in the role that had been imagined for James Coburn or Steve McQueen.
The first mystical martial arts adventure… well, it is a way to put it. Continue reading
Karavansara 