Now here’s a challenge.
A true challenge.
There’s this big hue and cry out on the web because a guy was caught bragging about how realistic his female characters are, and they actually suck big time. Not the first time we see sucky female characters written by male writers, alas.
So now there’s this social media thing doing the rounds
‘Describe Yourself Like a Male Author Would’
And seriously, it’s pretty fun.
I usually cringe at the sort of female characters that haunt (or should I say infest?) the current catalog of inept fantasy and testosterone-loaded spy thrillers by terminally adolescent male writers. Because while I can accept certain clichés in books from decades past – and indeed love those McGinnis covers and all that, it’s sort of part of the period charm of such books, if you do not take it as a lifestyle suggestion…
While I accept it, I was saying, I find it hard to swallow in contemporary works – because we are supposed to be more enlightened, nowadays.
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And now the third episode of AMARNA is
Getting to the midway point in publishing AMARNA has been a small triumph for me – it’s the first time I write a serial, the first time I try selling it through Gumroad.
Or that a local castle was owned by the Countess of Castiglione, lover of a number of kings (including Napoleon the Third), spy and courtesan, striking 19th century beauty and allegedly a practitioner of the dark arts that used the “Liber Potestate”, a popular grimoire.
Boy was this a close call!
It all started with my cell-mate Alex Girola publishing a roleplaying game based on his work, the stories in the Italia Doppelganger. After years that I kept talking about doing an Aculeo & Amunet game, and got bounced back by publishers, Alex went the indie way with his game, and was quite successful.