Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Pork Chop Express


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Back on G+

… and so this friend of mine comes and tells me, man, you’re not on Google+, your ebook sales will never grow.

what-the-plus-01To which I reply that actually, well, yes, I am on Google+ but, I sort of forget about checking my home page.

To be fully honest – last winter I read What the Plus!, by Guy Kawasaki, and as it usually happens with Guy Kawasaki’s books, I was blown away.
Yes, ok, so it’s maybe a little bit over-enthusiastic about this G+ thingie, but what the hell, it’s still an excellent user’s guide, fun to read, well designed and planned, really a smash.
Then I went to G+ and found out the interface no longer was as described in the book.
The book was written in 2012.
Looks like they changed the thing as soon as the book was out.
Ouch.
That was a big let down – you know how it feels when you’re all revved up and ready to go and all of a sudden it turns out the party is not that funny after all?
Yep… that sort of let down. Continue reading →


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A momentary illusion

As some of my readers may know, I’m looking for a new job – my collaboration with the University of Urbino having expired in February, money is running out.

Today I chanced upon a list of open positions at NASA – somebody posted the link on Facebook as a joke, and I checked it out anyway.
I mean, I’m in working hell, I look at every possible position.
And being a scientist, NASA sounds like a reasonable prospect employer.

np_landing_astro

And there, on top of the list, there’s my job.
An Earth Sciences specialist, with a sideline in Mathematics and Statistics, experience in Remote Sensing.
Wow.
That’s me.
There’s even a $82,642.00 to $126,949.00 / Per Year pay bracket.
And the position is still open!
Where’s my CV, now…
Ooops… There’s one drawback – “This announcement is open to all qualified U.S. citizens.”

Oh, heck – back to square one.
Back in my happy country in which a PhD in Earth Sciences can always hope for a part-time job as a test crammer for high-schoolers – but not during summer.

And you know what’s the worst part in all this?
The jokes.
The people with a job laughing at the idea of submitting a CV to NASA, or to any other big time operation, anything that’ s not “mundane”.
The ones that do not have to worry about this months bills, thinking your efforts, and hopes, and slowly increasing desperation are quite a lot of fun.


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Historically accurate…

… except where I screwed up.

I write historical fantasy (among other things).
My Aculeo & Amunet stories are set in the Third Century AD, and the historical details are as accurate as possible.
I try and keep the world historically real.
Then maybe a be-tentacled creepy horror pops out of some dark corner.
Historical.
Fantasy.

figure 8

Now, thankfully, history has so many dark corners and fuzzy borders, that finding the right place to fit in our invention is usually quite easy, or at least lots of fun (thus compensating the trouble).
The trick is blending history and fantasy as seamlessly as possible. Continue reading →


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Just a girl having fun

9723984I’ve been spending some time reading, and enjoying quite a bit, the Phryne Fisher mysteries, by Australian author Kerry Greenwood, and I’m keeping both the novels and  the TV series based on the novels handy as a defense against the ubiquitous Soccer World Cup in the next few days.

And I was reflecting on the way the characters in the series are delightfully portrayed, and how they are allowed to grow and develop in the series.
The chemistry between the characters and the actors portraying them – Essie Davies and Nathan Page, certainly, but all the cast of the show, really – is something I’ve been observing closely, what with my habit of writing stories about couples and all that. Continue reading →


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Hot licks and rhetoric

Last night I attended a lecture about the ecology of the Belbo Valley – the Belbo Valley being the place where I live.
Being an environmental scientist by trade, you can imagine my curiosity and anticipation.
The end result was an increasingly embarrassing experience – poor contents, not fully understood by the speaker, and badly presented.

Now this got me thinking, on the way back home, about the tools for connecting with an audience.
Because it was doubtless that two thirds of the audience were enraptured despite the horrid lack of contents and unnerving presentation.
How come? Continue reading →


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The Fantasy Guilt Trip

2dw9ugiA rambling post, tonight.
A friend of mine just posted a long and rather disquieting (to me) piece on his blog, about the systematic harassing of women that seems to be an established element in what I’ll call, to be brief, “fantasy fandom” (which to me includes SF, comics, games, the works).
You find it here – it’s in Italian.
The author, Elvezio Sciallis, is an independent journalist and a fine critic.

Now, the idea of women being harassed and discriminated in what I consider my community scares me and pains me on two levels.
The first is, such behavior is not something I can accept – the examples cited really hit me hard.
I hate these guys.
The second level is possibly even harder to stomach – my experience of science fiction and fantasy fandom never caused me to think such problems were in any way widespread, or something more than an occasional asshole to be rounded up and isolated.
Therefore, now I ask myself: have I been lucky, distracted or, damn, part of the problem myself?

Does the fact that I read old pulps and fantasy and SF make me a sexist, racist individual?
Am I instinctively what I hate intellectually?
And as I normally do nowadays, I’m writing to set my thoughts straight – and you are reading my ramblings.
Continue reading →


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Novel Writing as TV Competition

And so the Italian state TV, RAI, decided to do what everybody said would be a bad idea – a talent show for writers.

They gathered 5000 “aspiring writers”, who submitted 5000 manuscripts, and then they did the classic reality/talent routine.
They set up a judging panel of three popular novelists, and let the circus begin.
For the winner, a promised print run of 100.000 copies through a major publisher.

100.000 copies, in a country in which the average citizen reads 0.73 books per year, and 5000 copies are considered an solid success for a well-established author.

The show is ugly.
Granted, a reality show is probably supposed to be vulgar and simplistic, but here we go a lot farther than usual along that road. Continue reading →