Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Ocean of Storms

It’s been fifty years, give or take a few days, since we first set foot on the Moon. One of man’s greatest achievements, one we should be all proud of.
I was there, sitting on the floor in front of the telly. I was two years old and I only have very confused memories of the screen and the excitement around me – and probably they are second-hand, false memories.

The doorstep of the universe, and we had finally placed a foot on it.
Then things went differently than what we dreamed.
We had to think about “real important stuff”, I guess, like building bigger cars.

But moon dreams are what pays my bills, so I wrote a story.
A short hard SF number, about the Moon, and the future, and us.
It’s called Ocean of Storms, and I’ve just delivered it in various formats to my Patrons.

Because it’s good to be my patron, or so they say.


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Without a Blog: the Earphones Diaries

And so I’ve gone and invented me another thing, a game of sorts to keep my brain going and get away from writing and reading 24/7.
It will be called The Earphone Diaries, and it will live only on my social networks: my Facebook profile, my Instagram page, my Pinterest boards and my Twitter. Much as I love blogging, there will be no blog supporting this guerrilla project.

The Earphones Diaries will be a series of daily post, presenting a record I am currently listening to. I’m going at this without a plan, the course is once again uncharted: no genre tags or other hang-ups, just the music that’s currently playing in my earphones, presented in short, less-than-2000 characters posts.
Just for the fun of it.

The first post will go online in a few hours.


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The new book has been outlined: now comes the fun part

This morning I put together the first proper outline of a book that will supposedly see the light in early 2020: a non fiction book for a small but classy Italian publisher dealing with one of the topics of this blog: travelers and explorers in exotic parts, between 1800 and 1940-something.

The trick will be weaving together the lives of at least twenty historical characters, so that the volume will be a homogeneous narrative and not a series of episodes.

So I spent quite some time trying to decide whether to use time or space to tie the story together.

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Either drop it, or write a s#it first draft in two hours

My friend Lucy is a terrific writer and a wonderful woman, and has the sort of clarity of vision that is one of the fundamental powers of “the Other Half of the Sky”.
I was talking with her about my current plight, and she doesn’t see no problem…

Me: I hate this story, I can’t write it, it’s making me waste more time than the money can justify, and it’s making me deeply unhappy.
Lucy: Have you been paid an advance for it?
Me: No.
Lucy: Then drop it.

And that’s the only answer, really, but… let’s start from the beginning.

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When holy souls get going

There’s a saying in the place where I grew up, “When the holy souls get going…”, that’s used to describe an unexpected bout of bad weather, especially when you have planned to go somewhere.
This is a play on the fact that saints should be accompanied by bright light and pleasant colors when they manifest – but you decided to go somewhere, and now it’s pouring, or snowing or something.

In the last 36 hours various parts of Piedmont were hit by hailstorms that left the streets choked with ice. And here in the Valley of the Belbo, black clouds have been piling up since early this morning.

“It was for tonight, right?” my brother asked, referring to our planned Microadventure.
“Tonight, yeah,” I said.
And it started raining like there was no tomorrow.

So, it’s for another night.
The plan is to do a circuit among the hills, on foot, leaving somewhere around 7 pm and walk up past the graveyard and the old chapel, and then up to the plateau where my family used to have some land. It’s only vineyards up there, but about six kms from the village is a country-style roadhouse/pub that’s open late into the night. The idea is to get there, have a bite and a drink, and then start down on the other side, finding a nice place to look at the stars and do some night photography, and then be back home by dawn.

But not tonight – it’s raining so much a couple of giraffes stopped by to ask for directions, and the road to the old chapel is a waterfall.
When holy souls get going…


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The French Swordmistress: Julie d’Aubigny

I am about two thousand words into a story that starts with a swordfight between a woman in a green silk dress and a nun, in the smoke-chocked corridor of a burning convent.
This will be my entry – should the editor deem it worthy – in the new collection of Italian sword & sorcery published by Acheron Books.
And the woman in green is, obviously, inspired by mademoiselle de Maupin. And really, I was sure I had posted about her in the past but I did not, so here we go.

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Procrastination: a five-weeks plan

I’m trying new things this summer. Nothing particularly momentous, but I am convinced we need to keep our brain working: I saw the effects of ennui and apathy and they fill me with dread.
So in the last two years I’ve been keeping an eye out: learn new things, explore new ideas, and what else. Keep the neurons firing.
After all, one of the first explorations of new topics I undertook was a course called Aging Gracefully, and they made it very clear that to age gracefully you need to keep the brainbox clicking (and live long enough, of course).

So this summer I’m taking on three new – or not so new – projects:

  • I’m trying to refresh my Japanese (target: be able to understand a movie or a song)
  • I’m planning my first microadventure (next week!)
  • I’m taking a five-weeks plan about time management and procrastination

I already talked about the other two projects, let’s talk about the third.

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