Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


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I should be writing

Today it was a strange day.
It started early this morning, as I delivered the first draft of a 100.000-words novel I wrote as a ghostwriter.
Then I was contacted by a perspective client for a translation – “everybody tells me your translations are terrible, but depending on your price I might give you the job.”
And goodness knows I need the money – summer is always a hard time, and coming just after the lockdown, it is twice so – but there is a limit; my dignity will not pay the mortgage, but neither will accepting this sort of blackmail.

Then I submitted two flash fictions to two different magazines – which brings the total number of submission this year to 27. Not bad. I do not have many hopes for the two flash fictions, but well, if you don’t mail them they won’t reject them, but they can’t buy them either.

And finally, I did an interview on Facebook – on the page of the popular Italian lit blog Liberi di Scrivere, I took all comers, and answered their questions. It was a fun way to spend one hour – and I hope my interviewers were as pleased as I was.
As soon as the interview is out, I’ll ask permission to translate it, and post it here.

And now here I am, doing a bit of research for a short folk horror story I’d love to write and submit before the weekend.

Thank goodness I still find writing an endless source of fun.


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Get in, do it and get out

Let’s talk about crime, shall we? As those that have chanced to read my BUSCAFUSCO novellas probably know, I’m not that much into homicide. It was Agatha Christie, I believe, that said that a proper whodunnit should feature a homicide, but, really… c’mon, Agatha, there are so many crimes that are a lot more interesting!

And mind you, I like a good murder mystery just like the next guy, but having the possibility, I do prefer softer but trickier crimes.

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As easy as one-two-three

Today it was a good day.
I finished the first draft of the Job from Hell.
I finished the second draft of my historical non-fiction book.
I mailed off the first of three historical articles I plan to write and sell this month.

Of the three, the Job from Hell is the only one that is problematic – ghostwriting for a client that basically believes he knows better than me what this writing business is all about has meant wasted time, humiliations and a somewhat shell-shocked feeling on my part. Now I’ll tell the client the first draft is done, and he’ll tell me it’s not, and ask for changes that could easily be done during second draft…
See what it’s doing to me? It’s very hard to live with this sort of anxiety about what you do, and how it will be received.
But anyway – first draft done.

The historical essay is going as smooth as silk – and by the end of the month, barring accidents, and after a couple minor adjustments, we’ll have the final draft and hand it over to the publisher. If everything works out fine, and the Turin Book fair will take place in September, we’ll be there with our book.

And the article was fun.
It’s not every day you can quote The Black Amazon of Mars, by Leigh Brackett, in a learned piece about the history of science.


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Write what you know

Back in the days of yore (meaning, for all practical purposes, the summer of 1993), with my brother we got this strange idea of joining the Friends of the Egyptian Museum in Turin. It made perfect sense: we were both interested in archaeology, and my brother was taking a university course in Egyptology. We spent a lot of time in the museum, that at the time was still in its old, “classic” configuration.

So we went looking for the Friends of the Museum office, and were quite surprised when we discovered

  1. it was only open one morning per week
  2. it was not open even then

But being young and persistent, and this being summer and we on vacation, we basically staked out the place, going there every morning for two weeks, until we finally found the door to the office open, and walked in.

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Fugue a deux

This morning I woke up and I wrote a story, in 35 minutes flat. Not a long story, of course – 1200 words. I spent about an hour straightening it afterwards – moving words around, and doing all the little checks and tweaks one does before submitting. Then I formatted the five pages in the Shunn format took a deep breath, and mailed the story to the editor.
Now the wait begins.

I submitted the story to a very quirky, high-profile anthology – and should it be accepted, it would mean being published together with authors I respect a lot.
The story is called Fugue a deux, and it’s a short piece about make believe, the purpose of fantasy and love – or at least that’s how I described it in the cover letter. It came out more or less spontaneously, and it’s pretty raw, and silly.
It might be “inspired by real events”, but that’s a detail.

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One story per week

Today I have mailed off to the editors two more stories – a 1700-words piece and a 4600-words one – bringing the total count of this year’s submissions to 20. Which makes 4 stories per month. One story per week on average.
Of these, five have been sold so far – which is a nice 25% sales rate.
Good, but I can do better.
Now I have two 8/10.000-words stories to write – having been contracted to write them – in the coming month. If I want to keep my average of one story per week, I’ll have to mail away two more.
Thankfully, the opportunities abound, and there’s no shortage of ideas – but right now I am rather low on energy, and somewhat overworked. A job I should have closed in April is likely to drag for another six weeks at least.
Bummer.
But so far, as the guy said, so good.
And now I can start and plan dinner.