Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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An idea for a new series

Ideas are everywhere. Last night I was recording the new episode of my podcast, Paura & Delirio, about the 2001 French movie Brotherhood of the Wolf, by Christophe Gans. And as we were chatting about the two leading ladies on the movie, my friend and partner in crime Lucy enthused about the blade-tipped fan used by Sylvia (Monica Bellucci), and we both lamented the fact that the main character at the end decides to go away with the pretty but rather insipid Marianne (Ăˆmilie Dequenne) instead of accepting the offer to work as a secret agent for the Vatican teamed up with Sylvia.

And I pointed out I’d pay to watch a series of movies – or a good, high budget TV series – based on that concept.
Or, missing that, write it.
No, really, follow me…

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A bit of philosophy

And today I sold a short story. My SF short-short Singularity will be published in a British magazine some time in the future. I found out about the sale this morning, and by lunchtime I had signed the contract.
This is another hit in a string of good turns that happened to me in the last 72 hours – so I think it is just fair mentioning that this morning I also got a rejection slip: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

The story is a short humorous piece, a club story about The East Wexford Knitting Society that I mentioned last May – as I mentioned in the old post, I expanded it a little for submission, but it’s still under 2000 words.

So to celebrate I took the day off – and I only wrote 500 words on my current novel (title still pending), and then sat down to read The Courage to Be Disliked, a philosophy book by Japanese authors Ichiro Kishimo and Fumitake Koga.

I am not normally much into self-help books (but then again, I’ve been known to read anything, even the back of cornflakes packs) but I had read a lot of reviews of this one, and I had picked up an ebook copy for little more than a buck a few weeks back. Also, the title suggested it could be something I might like reading.

The interesting thing is, the book is built as a dialogue – which makes for easy going – and is about Adlerian psychology as philosophy. A subject I knew nothing about, but that is providing much food for thought – not so much in the helping myself department, as in terms of story ideas and world-building options.

And a good non-fiction book is always a good way to cleanse the synapses after a long bout of writing/editing/worrying-about-stuff.


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My non-fiction book is done

One hour ago I put the finishing touches to the final revision of Piemontesi ai confini del mondo (The Piedmontese at the world’s end), a book about 19th and early 20th century travellers, adventurers, explorers and other oddballs from Turin and Piedmont, that is set to be published in time for Christmas by a small but high-quality local interest publisher.

We have treasure-hunters in Egypt, African colonial adventurers, spies and soldiers in the Far East, missionaries, botanists, political mavericks, aristocratic thrill-seekers, polar explorers, painters and photographers, mountain climbers and mariners, spread over five continents, from the very beginning of the 19th century to the World War years. The only common trait, they were born in the industrial towns and the wine country of Piedmont, in Western Italy, right here where I am sitting.
They were all bogianĂ©n – the nickname that is usually applied to us Piedmontese, and that means “don’t move”; but it does not mean we stand still, it only means we hold our ground.

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Numbers II – Write Faster

And today I mailed three more stories, early this morning, thus managing to post six submissions in roughly 24 hours. Should all six stories sell (unlikely), at the rate proposed by the respective publishers, it would mean six months of mortgage covered. It would be good.
It will not happen, but it would be good.

And I am writing on – not only my new novel (about which, more in a future post) but a story for another submission. I started it this morning, and hopefully I’ll have the first draft ready before midnight. The target word-count is 4000, of which I have already about 1600.
Then I will let it rest – the call opens officially in two weeks, and it’s good to let the new stories sediment for a while before revising and mailing them off.

Finding out yesterday that I have been slacking in my writing and submitting this year made me feel bad. Not only working for an abusive client has caused me health problems and a devastating amount of stress, but it has really come close to damaging my ability to earn a living.

This, more than anything else, has caused me a sort of frenzy.
Something that was supposed to help me has massively damaged me, and as a result, for a change, the future is bleak.
In such circumstances, all I can do is (like good old Ike Asimov said) write faster.


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I’d kill to write a story about these two characters

Autumn is obviously approaching, as ideas are once again flooding what’s left of my brain, and the need to organize the days becomes essential if I want to have a chance of doing everything and maybe be able to pay the bills. So…

  • morning – my ghostwriting project
  • lunch – put some order in the affairs of the podcast
  • afternoon – close the edit of the historical essay
  • dinner – a movie?
  • after-dinner – personal writing projects

Nice and smooth.

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On the road to find out

Sometimes, I think I mentioned this in the past, the best way to relax, for me, is just to fire up a Scrivener file and start typing, letting the ideas flow. A character – or two – some snippet of dialogue, a place, an idea. Just to get back the pleasure of imagining and putting in words a scene.
Yeah, I know, I’m weird.

That’s what I did this morning, because I knew I would spend the afternoon working on a dead end project (but it’s paid, so OK), and I wanted to enjoy my vacation a little more.

So, as a result, by the end of the morning I found myself with 3000 words of a new story, the general outline of a 40.000-words novella (but it’s likely to get longer), a working title, a list of characters, some reference images and I found the time to research…

  • casting calls for actors and for dancers
  • bra cup sizes and their differences between UK and US
  • the career of V.C. Andrews and her post-mortem career (and her incredibly expensive ebooks)
  • witchcraft in 20th century America
  • TV advertisement practices in the early 2000s
  • burlesque and exotic dancing
  • architectural terms

And it was a smash.

And while I have a lot of stuff in my file, part of the fun of this thing is that I am making it up as I go along, letting events branch out, and giving my characters ample manoeuvring space.
It’s like following a road just to see where it leads.
And right now it saeems to be leading in a fun, unusual direction.

So now I’m planning to write this baby, in my spare time, and with half a mind of getting it out for Halloween – this being a Gothic ghost story and all that – self-published, maybe both in Italian and English (I am writing it in English) possibly under a nom-de-plume.

Nothing very hush-hush – I might even go for “Davide Mana writing as … “
Because it’s a Gothic Ghost Story but it’s my sort of G.G.S.

But on second thought, not straight away. I’ll save that for the second edition – let’s give time to my anti-fans to buy the book and rave about its quality, maybe even post a few reviews and try to get in touch with my alter-ego to ask for (unpaid) stories. It happened in the past.
And then let them find out…


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Creative mumblings

Among the many things I’ve been toying with, while I am trapped in a time-consuming, soul-killing writing job, there’s a ghost story. I’d love to write a “proper” ghost story, more or less novella-length, set in modern day and with a classic structure.
I even have a working title – The Cold Spot.

And this morning, while I was doing a modicum of chores, I set my brain to thinking about it, and a question came up – would I be able to do something different with such a story?
Because, really, writing classic ghost stories in a world where the readers can get Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House or Peter Straub Ghost Story or, indeed, M.R. James’ collections, the risk is an exercise in futility.

Now there are two indexes, so to speak, by which I can measure a story, these being, for lack of better words, fun and significance. A lot of highly entertaining books are like a glass of water – they pass and leave no trace.
Others leave a sign, and offer us better insight in the world we live in.

It would be good to do a fun, significant story.

But on the other hand, there are moments what we need is just a tall cool glass of water, to bring us back to life.
So maybe all this is just a part of me trying to avoid the fact that I should sit down and write the damn thing, and get it out of my system.
It would be nice to have it in time for Halloween.
Or for Christmas.

But first, I have to clear my table.