Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


by Leave a comment

Writing a serial? Or a series?

So, it’s been proposed I may write a series – a supernatural horror series.
Which is no big deal, one might think: I always write thinking in series.
Aculeo & Amunet is a sword & sorcery series.
The Corsair is an adventure series.
The Ministry of Thunder was conceived as the first book in an adventure/fantasy series (and yes, I have the second book growing here on my hard disk).
And my Italian language bestseller, Gli Orrori della Valle Belbo is a supernatural horror anthology series.
And so on and so forth.

manhunt5

It comes, I think, with the sort of books I grew up with. Cycles of novels, series of short stories. Characters with continuing adventures.
And then of course there were all those BBC and ITC TV series I grew up with as a kid – from The Avengers to UFO and all that.

So, basically when I write I think in terms of series.
Even the story in Alternative Air Adventures was developed as a possible pilot for a series (not that I told that to my publisher). Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

3000 in one day

Olivetti_L32_MToday I’m putting myself to the test, both for fun and profit.
The idea is to write a 3000+ words horror story on spec, aiming at an anthology whose deadline looms closer.
The check is enough to put food on my table for a week, but apart from that I feel like flexing my writing muscles, and placing another story with my name on it out there.

So I’ll write, revise and post it today.

Right now I’m about 1500 words in it, and it’s going pretty smooth – despite a blink in the electric system that caused my computer to flip this morning, and so I lost 500 words.
But the rewrite is actually better than the lost original, so there.

Back to work.
I’ll keep you posted!


by Leave a comment

Parisian Mermaids

corsair firt proof coverSo,let’s see… the new Corsair story is about to be published, and the first one is of course already available, in both paperback and ebook, and it’s called Chasing the Mermaid.

So, why don’t to something special, for this Friday, prompts and all?
Why not a good gallery of mermaids?

Curiously enough, La Vie Parisienne, the epitome of the girly, “French” magazine from the early 20th century, did show a certain obsession for mermaids.
And considering the magazine had some great artists on its bankroll, the following images are all pretty racy, they are often funny, and a few of them are absolutely gorgeous.

… and they might inspire a story or four.

Enjoy!