Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


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Behind the Copper Mask

arlecchino-maskAnd here it goes: a 5000-odd words story, done in one day.
And then revised while dining (late) and converted rather quickly in a variety of formats, without even a cover or anything.
This is practically a glorified first drafts, with all the problems that this entails.
I’m pretty sure no characters changes name between page 3 and page 16, but everything else is possible.
Expect the unexpected.
But what the heck, I made it.

So, check out below for a preview, and the links for the download from Google Drive. Continue reading →


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Three evenings with the Green Man

Ghost stories.
It’s the season, isn’t it?
ffdgfdgSo, stop me if you’ve heard this one: there’s a haunted inn on the road to Cambridge, called The Green Man. It’s haunted by the ghost of a 17th century dabbler in the mystical arts, a man that was denied a proper burial because of his trafficking with pagan rituals, and maybe because he killed his wife. And there’s the current owner of the inn, slowly soaking himself in scotch, and trying to get both his wife and his mistress in the same bed together. And maybe he sees ghosts, or maybe it’s just DT.
And there’s a bit of satire of the Cambridge environment, and of academia, and of modern people and of modern Church. And God makes an appearance, and everything is so witty, and sometimes so sexy, it’s hard to believe it can also be so scary.

It’s Kingsley Amis’ The Green Man.
Continue reading →


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Getting ready for the Halloween Mask

OK, so tomorrow is the day.
The 31st of October.
The day in which I said I’ll write a new short story and post it on Karavansara for all my readers to read it.

Let’s see, the story will be based on this exchange between my friend Claire and me…

leather_goat_mask_curled_horns_krampus_devil_by_teonova-d7g89twClaire: The moment we prepared in the not-quite-wings, and I truly raised the Copper Mask before my face for the first time (as opposed to trying it on), with the audience’s buzz dying down with the lights, was pure magic. Suddenly I felt timeless, and manipulative, and cruel – and perfectly safe. I hadn’t truly acted in front of an audience in more than twenty years, but really: nothing could go wrong behind the Copper Mask.

Me: And you know of course there is a story, in this.
A small, nasty little horror piece, about the Mask, and its cruelty…
I’ll send you the first draft.

So the story will be called Behind the Copper Mask. Continue reading →


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AMARNA

brush_PNG7389I have just contacted and contracted an excellent artist for the cover of my new project.
I have already mentioned I am going to do a serial, a number of self-contained episodes pushing forward an overarching plot, so that readers will be able to enjoy each episode but in the end will also have a full novel in their hands.
It’s the first time I try something like this seriously.
Writing a proper serial, I mean.
I did something that might have looked like a serial when I was in high school, to entertain my classmates and try to win the affection of a certain blonde. It was fun, and it did fit my extremely underdeveloped ability to carry a story for more than thirty pages. And in the end I won the affection of a brunette.
But in retrospect, it was not a very good story. Continue reading →