I am proud to announce that my story Black Frog and Black Scarab is included, side by side with many excellent horror detection stories, in the fourth issue of Occult Detective Quarterly, the finest occult detective magazine out there.
In Black Frog and Black Scarab we’ll meet again centurion Nennius Britannicus and his contubernium, last seen fighting a giant stuffed crocodile in The Hand of Isfet.
It was high time the guys got their own series – and I hope this is the first of many stories.
I’m checking out time zones.
As I explained in a post a few days back, I’m going to do a public writing experiment – I’ll write using Google Documents and share the link with the public, so that you will be able to look over my shoulder as I do it.
I do not know if it will work, but I am willing to try.
With a modicum of luck, it should take me about five hours to do the trick.
Or I will crash and burn, who knows. Continue reading
I have just launched a crowdfunding campaign to finance the publishing of the Italian edition of AMARNA.
While the story is being serialized in English, the Italian readers will only get a one-volume edition, revised and corrected. I am offering different levels of pledge, and both digital and paper-bound editions of the book.
Also, I am doing a Special Edition for the Italian readers – a deluxe paperback with photos, maps and about 100 pages of extra contents.
Only 12 copies of the Special Edition will be available in Italian.
And what about my long-suffering English-language readers?
Will they ever get the expanded and corrected edition of the story?
I am currently looking into the matter and I am getting the details about doing a deluxe paperback of the Special Edition on Amazon, via KDP.
For sure, all my Patreon supporters in the Ten Bucks Club will receive a digital copy of the Special Edition, in English, just as they have received each chapter of the serialized version.
It’s the least I can do for them.
It must be the spring, or maybe the insomnia – sleep deprivation does have a lot of weird side-effects, after all…
Anyway, I get lots of ideas, these nights. So I’ve decided to try two experiments. One of them will involve only my Patrons, while the other will be open to the public.
Both are unashamedly self-promotional.
Both will probably be quite fun. Continue reading
My insomnia persists (hooray!) which means I’m up all night, and then during the day I feel like a wreck. As I usually do, I am using the non-required waking hours to do a little work, and then to catch up on watching movies.
So last night I tried to take a look at Tomb Invader, then after ten minutes I decided there are better ways to waste my life, and so I dug out two oldies: Orca, the Killer Whale and Rogue Male.
I also thought I’d do posts on both.
Let’s start with the latter. Continue reading
Work is under way on the first draft of my new sea monster story, and here’s a snippet of the research material I put together.
But in the end I did not make it.
I went through a ferocious bout of insomnia, and when I finally could not stay in bed any longer listening to the wind outside, I got up, fired the PC up, and wrote a book.
Not a big book. A short handbook for writers.
Ten thousand words – 76 pages in paperback.
I uploaded it on Kindle about two hours ago, and then as I was at it, I also prepared a paperback copy. It will be on sale in two or three days – in Italian.
Well, OK, I cheated – I had the notes for my courses and workshops here on my hard disk already, so I only had to pick the bits and pieces that I needed, and fit them together, and then add a few examples, and create a cover.
And now I have my own writing handbook – very short on theory, but with lot of exercises, and a quirky approach to prompts, character creation and worldbuilding.
Nothing too original, admittedly – but original enough to be unique on the Italian market, as far as I know.
And hopefully it will serve as a good advertisement for my forthcoming workshops.
And really, back in the days when I created my folk-horror series, I was used to write a story, create a cover and publish the ebook over a weekend.
In the last three weeks I’ve published three ebooks.
Looks like I’m on my way back to the old standards.
Karavansara 