Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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If this is Thursday, this must be Peking… no, wait, maybe Shanghai…

As I am planning a special podcast episode for my Patrons to celebrate both my birthday and the Feast of Long Shadows, that is, Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee’s birthdays, I am re-watching for the umpteenth time the 1972 classic “faux Hammer” movie, Horror Express.

A movie I love, and I have watched thousands of times – one about which I believe I know everything.
And yet, five minutes in, the screen announces…

Peking, Russian Concession

… and my brain does a double flip, and I go…

Hold it. There was no Russian Concession in Peking in 1906. Must be Tientsin, or maybe Shanghai. You guys are playing fast and loose, here…

And then of course I kick myself for a pedantic idiot, because I’m here to enjoy the movie, not to edit it, at least until, exactly one minute later…

Peter Cushing: “Ah, professor Sexton! What brings you to Shanghai?”

There, you unknown Spanish title-writer! I was right! And Peter Cushing knows!
And that’s a little sad about me, right?
But only a little.

Onwards we go – the podcast is going to be a smash.


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A special (or two) for my birthday

My birthday is coming up in ten days, and I’ve decided I’ll do something special for my Patrons – because they are my special fans, and I felt like giving them something different.
Why not use my 53rd birthday as an excuse?

In the last few weeks I have started a podcast, in Italian, together with my friend Lucy – basically we sit in front of a microphone and talk about our favorite horror/fantasy/thriller movies. We started with pandemic, post-apocalypse British flick Doomsday, from 2008, and continued with the classic 1972 BBC production of Nigel Kneale’s The Stone Tape. We’re having a lot of fun, and when I asked her, my partner-in-crime accepted to do a special episode of our ‘cast, exclusively for my Patrons.

And why not let them choose the movie?, I said.

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Witches

I have just started working on a new project, translating a book of essays and stories about witchcraft and witches. I at in the very early stages of the job – as in, copying and pasting the original text in Scrivener and breaking it up into chapters – but the book is quite good, the author is an excellent person, and we are going to have this baby ready for Halloween.

After months of gruelling work for the Client from Hell (R), this is going to be like a vacation. It’s a complicated job – lots of local terms to render in English, a few adjustments to be made after consulting the author – but at the same time it feels like taking a much deserved (and needed) vacation.


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And so I wrote my first club story

Club stories are considered out of fashion and boring today, but there was a time when they were a standard of literary and genre magazines. In case you missed them, club stories are defined as stories set in a club or circle or social gathering, usually with regular recurring characters. A story is told by one of the club members, usually with a twist ending.

Asimov’s Black Widowers are club stories, as are the Jorkens stories by Lord Dunsany, and two of my all-time favorites, Lyon Sprague De Camp & Fletcher Pratt’s Tales from Gavagan’s Bar, and Arthur C. Clarke’s Tales from the White Hart. And of course Maurice Richardson’s Exploits of Engelbrecht (that you shouold really check out if you never read them).
And today, working on the latest prompt from the #StoryADayMay challenge, I wrote what I think could by my first club story.
Not that I had planned for it, of course.

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#StoryADayMay, day 4: Clockwork

As promised, every week I will post here on the blog one of the stories written for the #StoryADayMay challenge. I will also post the prompt, so that you can see where I come from. And in all fairness, I’ll add a Ko-Fi button at the end, in case you feel like buying me a coffee to keep me going.
Your call.

And today we start with the prompt provided by author Joe R. Lansdale:

It was easy to repair the clock in the tower after the headless corpse was removed from the gears. Before that, it was thought to be a problem due to the age of the machinery, but except for the decapitated body, its mechanics were functioning perfectly.

And now, my short story… this was written in one hour flat, and I did not edit it save for cleaning up typos.
Enjoy!

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Brushing shoulders with the greats

One of the most interesting bits in the #StoryADayMay challenge I am doing is, the daily prompts we get and must develop into short stories come from professional writers that support the initiative.

And so today I got a writing prompt from Joe R. Lansdale – a giant in the field and one of my favorite writers.
When I opened this morning’s mail I was starstruck for a few moments, then copied and pasted the prompt in the Scrivener file in which I am writing all my stories.
The prompt is really good, and I really look forward to developing it.
And I think – should I be able to write the story – I’ll post the finished work here for you all to read.

Just a little patience.

In other news: I’ve just got contracted for a new story for a forthcoming anthology, and there’s another coming… things are picking up.


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A story a day, for a month … what could ever go wrong?

Let it be known that it is all my friend Claire’s fault.
Me, I was minding my own business, trying to type faster and close as soon as possible all the works I have hanging and…
Really, it’s her fault!

But over at her blog Scribblings, Clare wrote about this thing called #StoryADayMay, the brainchild of writer Julie Duffy.
Basically, they send you a prompt every day, and you write a story.
As simple as that.
And I thought… why not?

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