Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Status report

Three-thousand and five hundred words in one afternoon is not that bad, and it is a clear sign that I’m back in the game – nothing better than clearing one’s desk to start anew.

Maybe it’s the change of season, too – the cold cold winter is over, and now the days are getting longer.

Meanwhile, new projects are popping up all over the place, and as I was saying to a friend over the weekend, I’d rather need a few six-packs of 36-hours days. But apparently they don’t make them anymore.

And the reading material is piling up – I have here a nice little essay about the Marxist theory of the Cthulhu Mythos that is really what the doctor ordered to find some distraction and possibly a few story ideas.
The Last StandAnd I’m waiting for my copy of the last Spillane book – because I’m not a fan but it was the man’s centenary, and the ebook was real cheap, and with a fantastic cover, and so I pre-ordered it.

And finally, I’ve been asked to give a demonstration of my Tarot-reading skills, and who knows, maybe I found myself a new job.

So, all in all, two days out of the Astigianistan hills were good for my health and my writing and everything else.
I should take more frequent vacations.


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Spillane at 100

And so, while I was running up and down the local highways to go and sit on a panel in Turin on Friday and get lost at a con on Saturday, Mickey Spillane’s centenary came and went.
Let’s try and make up for that.

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Mickey Spillane was born on March the 9th 1918. He fought in the Second World war and wrote for the comics before he started a very successful career as a crime writer, creating the character of Mike Hammer, and selling – to date – 225 million copies of his books. Continue reading


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Two good ideas at the same time

Don’t you hate it when it happens?
Here I am, with tons of stuff to do, and two huge ideas that push on my brain to get to my fingers and through my fingers and the keyboard on a page and then get printed, and published, and read.

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Two ideas.
Two whole worlds.
Two potential new series.
Heroes, or at least a decent substitute for heroes, already there, ready to have a go at whatever I will throw at them.
So now what? Continue reading


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Time Travel Blogathon: The Time Machine (1960)

We have all the time in the world today, because this is, after all, The Time Travel Blogathon.

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The event has been set up by the Silver Screenings blog, together with the Wide Screen World blog () – so be sure to point your browser in that direction, and enjoy the wide variety of interesting posts on the subject of time travel.
And then find a minute to come back here, because we are going to take a ride on The Time Machine.
The classic one, the one imagined by H.G. Wells, and created by George Pal in 1960. Continue reading


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The hardest week of the year

22096233_10155822851451584_40365599892889573_oThis is going to be a killer week.
I’ll be in Turin on Friday night to present the Dark Italy anthology, and I’ll be in Milan on Saturday to help at my publisher’s stand in the Cartoomics comics and fantasy fair, and to get my copy of Nightbird signed by Lucia Patrizi.

At the same time, I have to nail shut the coffins of three jobs… Continue reading


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A fantasy story, something completely different

So, the votes are in (had we not just left this party?), and unless some last-minute, momentous turn of events happens, it looks like I will be writing a whole new fantasy story for my Patreon supporters.

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Which is fine with me – obviously, or I would not have listed it as an option.
I’m a bit sad about Asteria, but she was always the outsider in my catalog.

But I got more than votes – I got suggestions, too.
And I had plans and ideas of my own, so let’s see what’s on the plate. Continue reading


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I’m going to write some fantasy

The first round of voting on my Patreon page has closed, and my patrons have decided my 12.000-words story will be a Fantasy/Sword & Sorcery thing.
Which suits me fine.

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Now we’ll have to see what sort of story I’ll be writing.
A new Aculeo & Amunet novelette?
Asteria‘s first outing in the English language?
Or something completely different?

I’ll set up a second, final poll…