Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Writing a serial? Or a series?

So, it’s been proposed I may write a series – a supernatural horror series.
Which is no big deal, one might think: I always write thinking in series.
Aculeo & Amunet is a sword & sorcery series.
The Corsair is an adventure series.
The Ministry of Thunder was conceived as the first book in an adventure/fantasy series (and yes, I have the second book growing here on my hard disk).
And my Italian language bestseller, Gli Orrori della Valle Belbo is a supernatural horror anthology series.
And so on and so forth.

manhunt5

It comes, I think, with the sort of books I grew up with. Cycles of novels, series of short stories. Characters with continuing adventures.
And then of course there were all those BBC and ITC TV series I grew up with as a kid – from The Avengers to UFO and all that.

So, basically when I write I think in terms of series.
Even the story in Alternative Air Adventures was developed as a possible pilot for a series (not that I told that to my publisher). Continue reading →


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Another online course

Thank goodness I’m not watching TV anymore.
I’ve moved my work station from my room back into the library room where it was supposed to be from the start.
Which means that either I’m at the PC writing or doing stuff, or in the kitchen cooking lunch or dinner, or out walking or doing some shopping.
The TV remains in my bedroom – where I’m either sleeping, or reading books.
I prefer books.

But cutting on the TV and living chained to the PC means I’ve got time and means to follow MOOCs – of which I’m a sort of addict. Continue reading →


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Learning Italian?

I just saw this post out there

The Top 5 Reasons To Learn Italian

… and ok,  a couple of points are pretty silly – but they do underscore how there’s a lot of Italian in the language a lot of English speakers speak.

So I thought, what with my current need for work and all that… what about offering my services as a language teacher, via Skype?
After all Continue reading →


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100.000

Last night, around 11.15 pm CET, this blog reached a total of 100.000 visits since I opened it in January 2013.
This is an important landmark for Karavansara – a small, backwater blog with a rather niche set of themes and a very erratic schedule.
Karavansara is growing – I don’t know if fast or slowly… but it’s growing.
This is reason enough for celebration.

Boris Vallejo - Conan ouvrant une bouteille

So I’m taking a moment to say thank you to all my readers.
To all those who started a conversation in the comments.
To those that stamped a Like on my posts, and shared them on their social networks.
To those that bought my ebooks or that bought me a coffee – thank you guys!
To all those that made suggestions and sent me emails.

Thank you.

I’ll do my best to keep going, and get better.
A lot of plans I had for this first semester of 2016 have been dashed by real life events.
I’ll work on making them happen in the second semester. And I’ll dream up new ones.
In the meantime – thank you again for being my readers.
Cheers!


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Robert E. Howard, 80 years after

Robert E. Howard died eighty years ago today.
He was a troubled young man, and a writer – not necessarily in that order.
At his worst, he was not very good – but still enjoyable, and entertaining.
At his best, he was a master storyteller and had an extraordinary control over his prose. He infused such an energy in his stories, that it was impossible not to get caught and carried along, dragged along screaming, almost, by the plot, the action, the imagery.

carried away

Howard’s role in the development of imaginative fiction and of fantasy in particular cannot be summarized in a single post on a backwaters blog like this.

But I’m going to list a few good stories – because that’s what we always do, right, when we talk about an author we love?
We suggest a few good titles for the uninitiated to check out and see what it’s all about.
And please, do the same, in the comments, and list your favorite Robert Howard stories. Continue reading →


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It’s not the fall that kills you…

It’s a Chinese proverb – I think – that says you should beware what you wish for, because your wishes might come true.

Well, it’s right.
And I’ll talk about my personal matters for a while, if you don’t mind.

Ever since I was ten or thereabouts, I wanted to be a scientist and a writer.
Both things – I never saw a contradiction in being a scientist, a geologist, a paleontologist, and at the same time being a writer of fiction.
Some did, like the colleague in Turin University that asked me, in a rather chilly tone, how could I hope to be taken seriously as a scientist if I also wrote fantasy stories1.

pulpwriterscopy

And talking about writers, it’s a well documented fact that I have a passion for those old hacks of the pulp era – Walter B. Gibson, Norvell Page, Lester Dent.
Howard, Lovecraft and Smith.
Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, Edmond Hamilton and Leigh Brackett.
Edgar Rice Burroughs.
This is not an exclusive, of course – there’s a lot of earlier and later authors that I love, but the pulpsters always had a special spot in my heart (wherever that happens to be).
The idea of a lone writer, sitting at his desk, hammering out stories at breakneck pace to pay the bills while outside of his window the Great Depression rages on always fascinated me.

And indeed, it sounds exciting, when it’s happening to others. Continue reading →