Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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A tiny snippet of my WIP

That goes to show that I always write about the same things, in the end…

After crossing the Kin Tang bridge, and going east, the Chintang Strasse becomes Corso Vittorio Emanuele, and then turns into Petrograd Prospekt once you have passed Corso Trento. In less than two kilometers, a person who walks along this route will be subject to four different legal systems – Chinese, Austro-Hungarian, Italian and Russian, each administered by its own court. And yet, thanks to extraterritoriality, a citizen of one of the Eight Nations who breaks the law, anywhere in the Tianjin area, will be extradited to his sector. In a surreal variant of the classic joke, if there are an Italian, an Englishman and a Japanese who rob a bank together, if caught, each will be tried by a different court, and will suffer a different sentence. But it’s actually a lot more complicated than that.


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Dreams

No, not the Fleetwood Mac song.
Ever since I was a kid, during highly stressful times I either get insomnia, or I have the strangest, most distracting dreams. As I think I have mentioned in the past, a lot of these dreams take place in the same locale, a white city that is sometimes completely deserted.
Two nights ago it was not.

And yes, I also hate those people that go and tell you about their dreams, so I think it OK should you decide to stop reading here.

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Stuff will happen

And so this afternoon me and my brother filed the necessary paperwork and were enrolled as librarians in the local public library. This is considered a voluntary public utility service for the community – that is, it is an unpaid job.
But, hopefully, fun.

The Castelnuovo Belbo Public Library is a huge affair, having received a few years back a donation of over 8000 volumes, that are still mostly to be catalogued and put on the shelves. From what we saw, cataloguing technology is solidly pre-1990, but we’ll work on it.
And the building housing the collection is considered one of the best public buildings in the whole Belbo Valley and by extension, of the whole Astigianistan.

Of course we have a lot of great ideas, and as old hands at Call of Cthulhu we know everything we need to know about libraries and old books.

As i said, stuff will happen.


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Introducing the Bigàt

Among the too many projects I am currently juggling, there is a side gig as the only person with a iota of sense and some manners in Brancalonia, a project for a D&D 5th Edition sourcebook and resource that will allow brave players to explore the world of Italian folklore, Medieval and Renaissance literature, and spaghetti fantasy.
The sort of game in which Bud Spencer and Terence Hill team up with a non-Disney Pinocchio-style living puppet to go treasure-hunting in the plague-ridden, ghost-haunted, brigand-infested countryside straight out of Verhoeven’s Flesh + Blood.

Cover art by Lorenzo Nuti
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Another idea

People that do not write have a hard time understanding that ideas are everywhere. They’ll come to you and say “I’ve got this great idea for a novel, I’ll tell you so you’ll write it and we can share the money.”
They get it wrong on three counts – first, because they think there really is any serious money in writing (ah!), and second, they believe their idea is unique (it’s not).
Third, and final, you can’t write a book based on a single idea. You need at least two good ideas to rub together for a long work to have a hope in hell.

Ideas are everywhere, and a good writer – well, a decent writer… let’s say a serviceable hack – is the one that can recognize them as they pour around him.
A general rule of thumb is, when you are overworked, stretched thin and at the lowest point of a low period, you’ll start getting all these brilliant ideas.
It’s like an Egyptian curse.

Let me give you an example.

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Kickstarting Holmes and his Occult Colleagues

I am very pleased to announce that the kickstarter for Belanger’s Books new anthology, Sherlock Holmes & The Occult Detectives is now live, and seems to be going quite nicely. The books are coming, and by backing the kick, you can get them at a special reduced price, with some added extra perks thrown in

The massive two-volumes anthology will collect 21 new stories featuring the Great Detective and a small army of his unusual, eccentric and occult colleagues, from Carnacky to Hesselius to Van Helsing, and many more – including my very own Miss Valerie Trelawney, in The Adventure of the Manchester Mummies.

Because we all know that Holmes does not care for the supernatural, but there are cases when, if you eliminate the impossible, you still need the help of a specialist in things that go bump in the night.

The Kickstarter offers many perks and extras for those that will feel like putting a higher figure on the plate, in the form of a number of other collection of Holmesian apocrypha.

Check out the page of the Kickstarter for details.


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Quarantined

So, we got a suspect Coronavirus case in our region, and Piedmont is locking up with a “preventive quarantine”, while the population is panicking. Here in Astigianistans, schools will be closed until the 2nd of March, and the same apparently will be true for museums, cinemas and theatres all over the region.
And we don’t know what next.

A few of my contacts talk about supermarkets being either empty, or being assaulted by shoppers eager to stock up before they lock themselves up in their homes.

And yesterday in a bar in Asti I heard a guy say “the only way to handle this” is to barricade ourselves up in our farmhouses, and shoot on sight anyone that comes closer.

Ten years ago, the N1H1 scare had a hundred times less impact, while being a lot more dangerous than Coronavirus.
But back then we did not have political propaganda to whip up panic and meaningless (and frankly racist) reactions all over.
Like, deserting Chinese restaurants or anything vaguely oriental – including “that supermarket where a lot of foreigners go”.
Or, really, seriously advocating shooting on sight of potential zombies, with a straight face, in a public place, while the people around you nod and say they’ll check their shotguns.

So, now the question is… what would a writer do, in such a situation?
OK, order a pizza for dinner, but then, what else…?
Ah! Watch this space for news…