My Projects | Karavansara

1 July 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Medium Plans

1_emiGsBgJu2KHWyjluhKXQw (1) I need some help.

Fact is, I am just totally fascinated by Medium.
It’s not just that it’s apparently very easy to set up, and promises to pay me if a lot of people read my stuff, but I like the idea of a primarily word-based platform.
Yes, one can drop an image in and all that, but from what I saw while I was working on another project, on Medium word is king (or queen, or whatever). And I like it a lot.

Uh, yes… for the uninitiated Medium is a sort-of-blogging platform that features some classical elements of other social media – like the possibility to upvote articles, and a focus on quality of contents.
And I like it, and I’d like to try and use it.

Only, what could I do on Medium that I am not already doing on Karavansara?
It would be the right place, I think, for more extensive and less improvised contents. I could write longer pieces, complete with bibliography and all the whistles and bells, somehow connected with my writing.
Articles about history, and about world-building.
It could be an idea.
A monthly thing, well-written and researched, but that would not steal too much time and energy from my other projects.

I guess my Patrons would see the articles first, and then I could post them on Medium.
Create a publication, maybe. [which means finding a title, designing a logo…]
Heck, my Patrons could even request articles!
Ah… ideas ideas ideas…
What do you say, ladies and gentlemen?
Help me make a decision.

30 June 2018
by Davide Mana 1 Comment

The Demoness with White Hair

I have just posted a 4000-words short story on my Patreon page, for all the members of the Five Bucks Brigade. Today I uploaded the English version, the Italian version goes up tomorrow.
It’s called The Demoness with White Hair.

As I explained, it all started with a 500-words test I did to apply for a gig as a freelance writer. I don’t have much faith in the result of the test, but I liked my piece, and others liked it too.
I got compared to Harold Lamb, of all things.
As soon as I stopped bragging to my friends, I decided I would like to expand that vignette, and do something more substantial with the barely sketched setting.
And I did it.

So, if you want to read my story, you’ll have to join the Five Bucks Brigade or hope and wait that I manage to sell the story to a magazine. But to kindle your curiosity, here’s some notes about the characters, and the setting. Continue reading →

29 June 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

The dog ate my homeworks

ellison I could justify the delay in the completion of the final episode of AMARNA with some tear-jerker story about how shattered I was at the news of Harlan Ellison’s death.
And indeed, it felt like being punched in the face. Harlan Ellison looked like the kind of guy that would shrug off an inconvenience like dying.
I could make excuses about the fact that I had to work on two translations on whose sale hinges my ability to pay my mortgage.
That, and an article about Journey, the band.
I could simply claim that my PC fizzed as I was trying to update to Ubuntu 18.04, and I lost everything but my way home.

The fact is, I am still 8000-words short of the ending, and I have spent the whole day so far writing something else (distant peal of thunder).
There! Now you have it, what disgustingly undisciplined slob I am!
And I dare call myself a professional? Ah, I should be dragged on the Red Square and shot in the back as an enemy of the Revolution! Continue reading →

28 June 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

At the feet of a giant

41T7fyFa80L._SX350_BO1,204,203,200_ I discovered Harold Lamb pretty late in my life, about ten years ago.
I had retrieved, as a kid, a pair of biographies written by Lamb, I had found in my grandmother’s attic. They were from my mother’s collection of young girl’s reads. I think one was Tamburlane, and the other might have been Theodora.
I don’t know what happened to those books – I guess my mother gave them away. I was not overly interested in historical biographies, at the time I liked dinosaurs.
Only much, much later I found the collections published by Bison Books and edited by Howard Andrew Jones, and it was a delight.
“Who,” my friend Claire asked, “Lamb the one of the Cossack?”

I knew, through my readings, that Harold Lamb was a great author of historical adventure, “always the scholar first, the good fictionist second” as one of his editors said, and I associated his names with Adventure magazine, that to me was possibly more iconic than Weird Tales or Astounding.

Continue reading →

28 June 2018
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

8000 words to the end

The only constant in my writing of AMARNA as a serial has been so far the fact that I usually jettison about 6000 words three days before the deadline.
Today it was different.
Today I jettisoned the whole 10.000 words of the final episode.
We are back to page 1.

But rest assured, I will get you the final episode of the serial by the 30th of this month – and then I’ll start working on the deluxe, content-rich, Kindle X-Ray enabled edition.
And the deluxe paper book.
And all the rest.
Now I only need some time to fit the pieces back together.
Hold on.