Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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The ’20s – building a reading list

I need your help to build a reading list of history books about the 1920s.
Now, let me explain…
I was told, back when I was in the Air Farce, that we cannot learn anything from history, and that history is just a collection of facts put together by the victors, and has no value.
I do not think so. I did not think so back then, and I do not think so now.

I have been joking about the fact that in a few days the ’20s will be here again: flappers, charleston & foxtrot, and adventure await…
That’s what we normally associate to the ’20s – The Great Gatsby and all that.
But the ’20s also saw the rise of populism and totalitarianism (read the news, recently?), social and financial crisis and the headlong rush towards yet another war.

So I decided I’ll put together a reading list about the 1920s, to see if something can be learned from history, and to be prepared – and what the heck, it could always serve as research for future stories.

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Greetings from Krasnoyarsk

And so it’s finally done, and delivered to my Patrons – Guillotine Wind, the first Pandora story, was one of the hardest nuts to crack in my multifarious writing career. But it also features – if I do say so myself – some of my best writing.
And it’s a first in a series!
And it will go on to be part of the Seven Lives Project, and so it will benefit a bunch of stray cats. The cats will dismiss the whole thing like something due to them by divine right, but who knows, some people might like the stories.

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Translating myself

Having closed Guillotine Wind, my latest novella, I am now getting ready to post it to my Patrons – and this means translating it in Italian. Because it is good to be my patrons, and my Italian-speaking supporters get my stories in Italian, just as my English-speaking supporters get them in English.

This means a bit of extra work, and the hard part is not translating the text, but conveying the tone and the rhythms. And that is, after all, the crux of translating.

I am always dissatisfied with my own translations of my own stories – there is always something missing.

Case in point – the title of my latest novella: Guillotine Wind.
It’s good, compact and yet intriguing-.
Sounds fine.
In Italian it sucks, big time.

Fact is, what wind, and what guillotine?
Is it Il Vento Ghigliottina… but then it sounds like the wind is operating the guillotine… or is it La Ghigliottina Vento, that sounds simply stupid?
Maybe La Ghigliottina del Vento is better, but it sounds lame, and it’s four words instead of two, and it has the wrong rhythm.
Going the other way around, Il Vento della Gigliottina, would possibly suit a story set in Paris during the Terror, but not a story set in Siberia in the ’20s.

So in the end I just dropped the lot.
In Italian, the new novella will be called Vento d’Acciaio.
Steel Wind – a title I would not use for a story in English, because it was the name of a rock band.
See what I mean about being dissatisfied with my translations?

But I’m halfway through – the Patrons will get their story for Christmas.


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Guillotine Wind: the soundtrack

I like to think of my stories in terms of movies – with a cast, shots and camera angles, and a soundtrack. And as I have just finished Guillotine Wind, I thought I’d publish a selection of songs that have been playing in the back of my mind as I was writing.
And so I prepared a cassette.

Just follow this link: GUILLOTINE WIND O S T


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The last adventure of the year

The forecast says rain and possibly snow for tomorrow, and I am boarding a train early in the morning to go to Asti, the provincial capital, in what promises to be the last adventure of this year – braving weather and public transport to meet some people for a writing job.
One more little step to a better 2020, hopefully.

So I am taking along book to read on the train, Kay Kenyon’s At the Table of Wolves, plus pens and a notebook to take notes during my meeting, plus a pocketful of coins for hot drinks machines along the way.

As it usually happens when public transport is involved, I’ll spend most of the day waiting for trains and buses, but that’s part of the game. I’ll keep warm and read a book about Nazis and superheroes – could be much worse, and I like Kay Kenyon’s writing, a lot.

Of course this unexpected last trip of the year will provide me with the opportunity of spending Christmas and New Year’s Day in bed with a cold – but when one is trying to make a living writing, this is part of risks of the trade.

And really, it’s sort of fun.


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1300 Mondays

In the opening chapter of his The Doorstep Mile(that once again, is highly recommended) adventurer Alastair Humphreys writes:

I have fewer than 2000 Mondays left to live. I want to make the most of them, not just tick them off.

This gave me pause.
How many Mondays do I have left?, I wondered.
I made some quick calculation, based on my family data.
Both my grandfathers died in their early seventies.
My father died at seventy-six.
On my mother’s side we tend to be more long lived – we usually get in our ’90s if cancer does not get at us earlier.
I am 52, so… how many Mondays?

Less than 1300 is a good estimate.
What am I going to do with them?

Humphreys’ idea, presented in his book, is to try and do something that makes me happy. Even something small.
Something that does not drastically change my life overtime, but that in due time will make me able to enjoy a lot more those 1300 Mondays, and all the other days.

I am working on it.
Now I have a deadline.