Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: My Projects


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Fine tuning

I think I mentioned in the past that when I am writing I like to fine-tune my words by reading fine writers and trying to soak up their class.
Because hey, dreaming is free, and no writing handbook is better than a classic.

31mtjAjh+nL._SX344_BO1,204,203,200_Right now I am going through three small booklets one of my followers sent me.
These are the small Penguin Modern Classics pamphlets – 60-pages booklets that collect three short stories of a number of modern authors.
The ones I received are Shirley Jackson, Dorothy Parker and Clarice Lispector.
Three great short-story writers, and three great small collections (the postman folded the package in two, so that all three volumes are creased in the middle, but that’s the delivery guys for you).

1218403I think I’ll look up the series and check out more of these small, inexpensive books.
It’s not the first time Penguin does this sort of format. Back when I was in university they had done a series of miniature books to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Penguin. Sixty small books going for 60 p.
It featured authors like Maugham and Dahl and Elizabeth David and Penelope Lively.
It was great.

And yes, writing a gangster story/noir take on an old faery tale while reading Dorothy Parker does have some weird side effects.
Weird, but positive.


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Hope & Glory – some music

I just found this online and I am absolutely delighted – this is the sort of thing I had in mind when designing Hope & Glory, and it’s good to feel like we got the zeitgeist right.

Check this video out, enjoy the music, and then consider the option of supporting the artist (yes, for a change I am pushing someone else’s Patreon)


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Karavansara Free Library: The Well of the Unicorn

I’m writing a story.
Big deal, you say.
But no, wait, because it’s interesting.
The story is set in some unnamed American town, somewhere in 1948 or maybe 1949. As the story opens, the main character works as a reader for an old lady who’s losing her sight. My character spends three afternoons every week in the old lady’s parlor, reading her aloud from a book.
What book?
The_Well_of_the_UnicornNow, the book is not essential in the story. It’s just a prop, something my character can cling to as the events in her life suddenly start twisting in a whole new direction.
A hardback, then.
A good solid hardback she’ll be able to clutch to her chest like it’s an armor in that single scene right at the beginning.

And so I did a quick check.
I just needed a hardback published in 1948.
And Fletcher Pratt’s The Well of the Unicorn was published in that year.
Bingo.
There is something good, for me, about a young woman reading aloud from The Well of the Unicorn, and then embarking on a life-changing adventure. Continue reading →


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Hope & Glory review and a bit about utopia

THE world is undergoing immense changes. Never before have the conditions of life changed so swiftly and enormously as they have changed for mankind in the last fifty years. We have been carried along—with no means of measuring the increasing swiftness in the succession of events. We are only now beginning to realize the force and strength of the storm of change that has come upon us.(H.G. Wells, The Open Conspiracy, 1928)

40651289_1844226848964225_7031900626594299904_nThe first full review of Hope & Glory is in and it is just great – you can read it here, on the Ars Rolica blog. It’s in Spanish, but as usual Google Translate is your friend.

The review really made me happy and I was particularly happy of the fact that the reviewer started out cautious and a little diffident, but finally was captivated by the setting.

All the elements are perfectly interwoven with each other and, as I said before, once that initial caution is saved, it is very easy to get carried away by the exciting combination of genres that Hope & Glory presents.

… and I thought, we made it!

I am extremely grateful to Ars Rolica for their great and in-depth review of our game; I am sure I can speak for my long-suffering partner in this adventure – Umberto Pignatelli, that had to put order and numbers on my somewhat sprawling world – and the guys that did art and graphics. Thank you, Ars Rolica!

There was also a bit that caused me to pause, and laugh, and then an idea for a post, and here I am… Continue reading →


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From Seoul to Ancient Rome, and back

Back from the con, and beached with a bad case of cold.
Happens every time – I am getting too old for this sort of things.
The cold led to some experimentation: hot tea from the local supermarket, brewed real dark, added lemon juice, sugar and powdered ginger. Maybe it will not help with the cold (I put my trust in aspirin) but it’s certainly good for the soul.

seoul

Also, I got an open call for a story set in Seoul (no, the two things, the call and the cold, are not related).
Now, the closest I got to Seoul was when a colleague from Seoul University visited the University of Urbino while I was doing my doctorate. But I have friends in Fukuoka, Japan, that’s pretty close to Korea. I could work out something.

The considerations above had two consequences: Continue reading →


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Going Noir in Faeryland

42989848_10215692319757653_2014258310848446464_nLess than 12 hours after the paintings by Astor Alexander started making the rounds, a call hit the usual suspects, for an anthology of pulp retellings of faery tales.
The only rule: not the ninbe princesses portrayed in the original paintings.
Which is a pity, because I love Pocahontas – Private Eye.
Anyway, that’s what writing to a call means – you go with the publisher’s requests.
And so I did some research, dug out Giambattista Basile, and sent a pitch straight away (and this makes three submissions to three different publishers this week). Continue reading →