Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


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The case of the missing library

One year ago, in two evenings, I wrote the first 3000 words of a planned 4000 words of the Contunbernium, in Italian. I was not very convinced by the proposal I had received about publishing a story of mine, and the way in which the story was going left me cold, and in the end I dropped it.

I don’t throw away anything.
Writing is my job, no matter if I like it or not (it’s complicated), and I don’t throw away what I write. So The Cursed Hieroglyph languished in a lonely directory on my PC until I was asked for a story with specific characteristics. Bingo.

So I’m rewriting and finally finishing my story, and as I usually do, I am doing a bit of research on the fly to tighten up the background.
It’s one of those cases in which I wrote first, and checked the facts later.
And, well… damn!

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The last days of August

Back when I was in school, the last days of August were days of frantic work, doing the home-works that had been waiting for three months in my copybooks. Now it’s thirty-odd years since I last had any home-works to do, and yet these are frantic days nonetheless.
I have to close a big translation I need to deliver by the 31st – I’ll probably deliver it tomorrow or the day after that.
Then there’s another important translation to deliver on the first week of September.
I am working on the two Contubernium stories I have mentioned yesterday, and I have two other short stories in the works – one horror, one a straight detective mystery, possibly the start of a new series, with an eye on a very specific market.
And I have a novella that’s long overdue, and that I’ll start working on next Sunday night. The plan is to write 3000 words each night. This way, I’ll have it ready in ten days. Ready, that is, for a rewrite. I plan on delivering it by the 15th of September.

I have also other things brewing – like adding an audio channel to my Patron page, and setting up a proper drive to attract more Patrons.
But these are things that will happen in the second half of next month.

And there’s the projects that are awaiting confirmation – but those are still in the limbo from which deadlines come screeching bloody murder at the end of the month.
I think I hear them calling right now, and I better go.


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Drabble and Double Drabble!

Orson Welles said that

the absence of constraints is the enemy of art

Orson Welles

and I cannot deny he was right. He knew, after all, a thing or two about art and constraints, and he was Orson frelling Welles!

I was reminded of Welles quote this morning, as I got a call for a horror anthology looking for Drabbles and Double Drabbles.
A Drabble is a thing Monthy Python invented for a lark: a novel in 100 words – not one less, no one more. A Double Drabble is, as you can imagine, a novel in 200 words.
And by novel I mean it has to have character development, dialogue, stuff happening, like a proper 500-pages blockbuster.

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Doing business the punk way

While I like the metaphor of the writer as liar and cheat, as stage magician and cat burglar, there is no denying that, as a writer, I am a business. I am a one-man company that builds stories, and then sells them. Sometimes I sell to publishers, that (hopefully) will take care of the marketing and distribution of my work, sometimes I am a self-publisher, meaning that “my company” has to handle most of the aspects of distribution and marketing of the specific products. In both cases I need to be able to keep my company going. Build more stories, develop my brand and expand my reach, find new clients.
Not necessarily the part that I like of being a writer.

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Portrait of the artist with a young cat

My brand consultant tells me it would be a neat move to enhance my impact to have a FinkoPop mini of myself on sale at fairs and conventions, and also via Amazon and this blog.
After all, he said, if David Lo Peng from Big Trouble in Little China has a FunkoPop doll, why not me?

And it turns out that one can actually preview how such a thing would look like.
In this case, like this.

Incidentally, this is the last silly post of the vacation period.
We’ll resume posting about stuff that really matters, such as the top kn/hrs speed of the average camel, tomorrow.