Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Category Archives: Writing


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Ethical Authors

I found the following bouncing on the web, and I think it’s worth to share it.
The idea of authors being “unethical” is often used when it comes to self-publishers and independents.
The sum of all that’s wrong in publishing, self-publishers are said to be sloppy, poorly edited (if edited at all), greedy (selling short stories at high prices), unprofessional and, when everything else fails, unethical.

And granted, there’s people like that around.
But that does not mean that everybody’s like that.

So, here’s a simple set of rules. Continue reading →


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Rewriting Chapter Twelve

Leonid_Pasternak_001And so the twelfth chapter has to be rewritten.
Oh, well, it’s part of the job.

Fact is, my content editor pointed out a hole – the sort of hole through which a zeppelin might fly.
Basically – chapter twelve: our heroes escape from their cell and wreak havoc in the bad guy‘s (the bad gal’s, actually) base.

Enter the content editor: how comes they are prisoner and the bad gal locks ’em up together?
Implied question: is the bad gal stupid? Continue reading →


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Getting (reasonably) organized

Lady-Juggler-2Ok – getting organized.

Right now I’m writing the final 5000 words of my novel (that will probably grow to 7500, but that’s another story) and I’m

. outlining the sequel
. planning a number of proposal for another novel
. getting my full-year writing project underway
. setting up the early stages of a roleplaying game project that will probably also involve fiction-writing
. trying to schedule future outings – short stories, novelettes etc., and the marketing and distribution of the same.

So, two problems, one psychological, one practical. Continue reading →


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Crazy birds

doore02And talking about the secret valley… last night my main characters faced a bunch of crazy birds.
As I mentioned, I’m going through the last third of my novel – this is the final reel of the movie, and everything gets pumped up to eleven.
More bad guys.
More weird critters.
More over-the-top action.

Crazy Birds are not something I made up – they were called Kuangniao in Chinese bestiaries, and were described as five-colored birds with a comb-like beak.
The Kuangniao (which means Crazy Bird, I kid you not) is probably a poor relation of the Feng Bird or Phoenix normally associated with the Chinese iconography. Continue reading →