I have just published my third issue of Odds and Ends for my patrons: free books in Italian and English, Scottish voices and folk tales, the language of poetry, and a tool to find where your house was when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Because it’s good to be my Patrons.
January is now halfway through, my health is improving and I am starting work on a number of collaborations.
Which is unusual for me – I’ve always worked best on my own, both in academia and later as a writer. It’s probably because I am not disciplined enough or, as the mantra goes, I am not a good team player.
But let’s talk about it. My record shows I’ve always performed well when working in a team – I could show Hope & Glory as a witness to the fact that I can work on a team all right (the opinion of my long-suffering accomplice, the esteemed Umberto “Beasts & Barbarians” Pignatelli, is not on record). It can be stressful for me, and it forces me out of my habits and comfort zones, but that’s good.
And really, the last time I was accused of not being a good team player it was by a gentleman whose basic proposal was “you write for free, I sell your stories” – on whose team and at what game was I supposed to play?
But anyway, one of the collaborations – the only one I am at liberty of discussing right now – is with my brother Alessandro. After forty-five years, we should have found a way to work together without killing each other.
I hope to have something to show to you by the end of the month–possibly earlier than that to my Patrons.
It will be… interesting.
I have just signed a contract for my story Sapiens, that just as I had announced a few days back, will be featured in a magazine later this year. The magazine is called Dreamforge, and it’s my sort of thing.
And, also, is now on Kickstarter.
What I like about Dreamforge is their focusing on the positive. While I like dystopias just as the next guy, I really feel the need for something positive and optimistic. Which does not mean a problem-free world, but a world in which problems can be solved.
Continue readingI’m well pleased with myself – not only I sent off the second submission of the year (I’ll have to put a counter here somewhere), but it’s a 1000-words flash fiction, a format I am always very uneasy with. I tend to be a long-winded sort of guy. I like long dialogues, and that’s not necessarily the best thing to do in a flash.
One thing I found works just fine is to have a strong idea of the conclusion. I’d go as far as to say that the last line should be the first thing to write, in a flash fiction.
Anyway, the story is now in the hands of the editors – and their judgment will be final. In the meantime, I’ll start working on the next short-short story. It would be nice to have it finished by tonight – 1500 words, no more.
It’s been now more than one year since I first decided I’d reprise on Karavansara the old cycle of interviews that I had done on my Italian blog, called “Pizza, Chinese or Kebab”. The idea was to interview writers, game designers and other people of a creative bend. Then things got out of hand, as usual, and time passed. But now here we are…
The new series will be called The Takeaway Interviews, and I will try and get involved a few people whose work you can find in English – be it stories or games – and a few artists.
The first interview is being edited, and I have a long list of targets – but if you want to suggest someone, please do in the comments, and I’ll see if I can reach them.
One day someone will compile a list of all bad ideas in movie history, and very close to the top of the list there will be, I am certain, the words “Let’s make the next Star Wars.”
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with being ambitious and setting yourself a big bold target, but the problem with “let’s make the new (whatever)” is that the ghost of whatever it is you are trying to outclass will haunt your production. Which can be bad. Really bade.
Case in point, a movie that was supposed to be “the next Star Wars”, and suffered for it, a lot: Krull. And I re-watched it the other night.
Continue readingI have just mailed off to the editor the first submission of the year, a 3100 words story called The Melancholy of Princess Bilkis – a Tale of Zothique. As I have mentioned in a previous post, this is for me the opportunity to publish a story in celebration of Clark Ashton Smith, an author I greatly admire.
I wrote the whole story last night, starting at 1 am and finishing at 7 am. As soon as I finished my story, LibreOffice, which I used for the final edit and revision, froze three times in ten minutes, each time forcing me to recover the text and start anew. And then my PC hung, and restarted itself.
Let’s consider these hangups a sign that my story is good, and will probably sell, and the ghosts that haunt my house once again tried to make my life a little harder.
Karavansara 