No one can linger in the land of Egypt … The time of deeds on earth is only the occurrence of a dream.
(Egyptian Harpist’s Song, XVIII Dynasty)
Category Archives: My Projects
Night Visitors
Do we need ghost stories?
Possibly.
It turns out the house in which I’m living is supposedly haunted – this explains why some of the locals look strangely at me and my brother. Or maybe they are just weird country bumpkins, who knows.
Fact is, by the weekend I’ll have to deliver a learned article – in Italian – about ghostly literature. It’s the spirit (aha!) of the season, I guess.
I’ve been translating two ghost stories for a new publication – a story by Edith Nesbit and one by the wildly eccentric Robert Stephen Hawker, and I’ve been reading on the subject. Continue reading
Researching Egyptian Art for Fun and Profit
And talking about courses…
Today I decided that Dutch is not the language for me. I tried it on both Duolingo and in a MOOC from Futurelearn, and in the end I surrendered. I can’t make it.
Not at this time.
A pity, really, but I’ll save it for the summer to give it another go.
On the other hand, I am about to start a 30-hours introductory course on ancient Egyptian art – because enrolling in an online course is still the best way to research a novel.
And a course on Egyptian art will help me with both the current AMARNA project and the Corsair story I am preparing for early next year.
The course is offered for free by the Open University in collaboration with the British Museum, and I’ll also get me a certificate of participation in the end.
What’s not to like about this?
Three ideas adding up
The idea of writing shorter fiction is not a bad one – there is a market out there that pays good money for stories under 2500 words. As I mentioned a few days back, I am a long-winded sort of writer, but I am working at my shorter fiction.
And then there is AMARNA, and the idea I posted a while back, about doing something with Fantomah, the Daughter of the Pharaohs.
And so I thought… Continue reading
Serendipity and communities
My friend Claire often talks about serendipity.
Me, I’m an old statistical analysis guru, I don’t believe in serendipity. And yet…
One of the things I have been worrying these days – and I was not the only one worrying about it, from what I heard – is what will become of Karavansara and strategie evolutive, my two blogs, now that I also have a Patreon page.
Patreon is a fantastic platform for doing what it does, but it also has a requirement – it wants me to live there, to do my things there. My patrons are hungry for contents, and I am supposed to provide them a steady flow of contents.
But what about my blogs? Continue reading
A good, busy day
What a day!
Today I launched my Patreon Page – and already I have six (count ‘em, six) patrons. Check out the button in the sidebar.
I also did the launch for my Self-Publishing online course for the Italian market – offering both VIP and Regular access.
And I am happy to announce that the VIP Tickets were sold out in five hours – while Regular access is still available1.
All of the above meant I spent most of today juggling Mailchimp mailing lists, DoAttend and Google Class accounts, and checking out various notifications.
It was a very good day, and I want to thank everybody!
Thank you!
Now I’ll prepare my first post for my patrons, and then I’ll complete a rewrite of my New York story, that is badly overdue.
- and I’d love to make this course available in English, too. ↩
Storium and the Writing Game
I mentioned Storium in my previous post.
I found out about Storium when I got hooked up into it as a result of my taking part in the 7th Sea Second Edition Kickstarter.
I took a tour, and was positively impressed.
Basically, Storium is a cross between a storytelling game, an old choose-your-own-adventure game book and a collective writing experiment. Continue reading
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