Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Writer

Yesterday it was Friday the 13th and there was a full moon, so I met a friend who’s a fine horror writer and we went for a bite and a long night talking.
Of course we would have done it even had it been Monday the 19th and a quarter moon, but the whole day/moon thing was a nice touch.
We were assigned table 13 in the diner where we stopped, and that did not escape our notice.

As it usually happens in these situations, we ended up talking shop, and the discussion turned to our professional designation. Writer, that is.

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The League of Extraordinary Lady Writers

Looks like I chose the right time to brush up my French: yesterday, French publisher Les Moutons Electrique (which is the French for Philip K. Dick’s Electric Sheep) announced the launch, in March 2020, of a new line of novels, collectively known as La Ligue des écrivaines extraordinaires – The League of Extraordinary Lady Writers, that is: five novels written by five popular French writers, featuring a bunch of popular writers against a bunch of popular creatures of the night, the lot currently open as a crowdfunding.

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Nuts & Bolts, or how I wrote a book without really trying

I was checking my archives today, and realized that in the last six months I have put together about 22.000 words of ramblings, ideas and what-not about writing and making a living of it (or at least trying), in the form of 1000-words post I do periodically for my Patrons and that go under the title of Nuts & Bolts.

The series started in February, and this being September, it looks like a good idea to collect all those pieces under a cover, add another few thousand words of extra stuffing and secret sauce, and then see what happens should I release it as, say Nuts & Bolts, Season 1.
Both in ebook and paperback, and free for my supporters .
The fun thing is, I’ll be able to release the book simultaneously in Italian and English, because my patrons get the articles both in English and Italian.
And then I’ll keep going and start Season 2 on Patreon – after all, my Patrons seem to like it.

But watch this space, because there’s more things happening on my Patreon page, and I’ll post the news here.


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From Hell they came…

There was a time, more or less when I was in high-school, when horror was big. And I mean BIG. I have this clear memory of the girls in my high-school class swapping big fat books: Stephen King, Peter Straub, Dean Koontz and V.C. Andrews most of all. There was this sort of underground book club going, and there were always new titles coming, mostly from a paperback publisher called Sperling & Kupfer.
Boys did not read, or if they did they went for science fiction or comic books, and fantasy was small and read by both boys and girls, but at least in my biased memory, it was the female of the species that really loved horror novels.

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Let somebody else do the thinking

About twenty years ago (my goodness, is it really been this long?) while my mother was resting after a major surgery event, she used to spend her afternoons watching German-produced TV movies based on the novels by Rosamunde Pilcher. She said she found the locations beautiful, and the stories were engaging, “even if in the end they are all the same story.”

I sat with her on a few of these afternoons, and at a certain point, I picked up a notebook and started sketching a diagram – I had seen three movies, and they all shared the same structure, that I could sketch quite easily. I made a point of catching a few others and yes, there was a formula, not only in the sequence of events, but in the characters and their relations. Just as in the Commedia dell’Arte or in any good pantomime, the cast was the same, the roles were the same, the interactions were the same.

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Greetings from Dry Gulch, Colorado

I am pleased to announce that Tales from Dry Gulch, the weird western collection edited by David B. Riley, is available in both ebook and paperback via Amazon.
The volume features my short story Hank’s Ghosts.

Welcome to Dry Gulch, Colorado. The year is 1881 or so, the gold mine has played out, but there’s talk some company from back east is supposedly putting in a zinc mine near town. Folks are friendly in Dry Gulch. Don’t forget to stop by the bakery for a loaf of sourdough bread from Miss Wendy’s secret recipe, then wet your whistle in the saloon next door. Just be sure to tip that piano player. You can get your prospecting supplies from the Dry Goods Store. And you can catch up on Mrs. Duncan’s cat in the pages of the Gazette. Keep an eye out for Henry, the town drunk. He likes to tell folks about the ghosts he sees, if you buy him a drink.Dry Gulch is easy to get to. Just saddle up and take a ride out to the weird, weird west.

As you can see, in my messy and dark workspace, I am well pleased to have my own copy handy.


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Arthurian Planetary Romance: Sword of Ages

I have received as a gift the first volume of Gabriel Rodriguez’ Sword of Ages, a big, colorful comic book that lasted me back to the years spent reading Heavy Metal or L’Eternauta, and later 2000AD: science fiction, action and adventure in surreal, exotic locales, beautifully drawn and engagingly narrated.

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