Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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There’s a dead body in the library…

“All right, gentlemen, I need three volunteers.”
A chorus of groans and curses greeted centurion Nennius Britannicus as he entered the barracks of the contubernium. The sun had touched the horizon to the west, and the men were off duty. In one corner, hunched over a clay bowl, Brennius and Ranulphus were playing a game of dice. Festus Cimma was sitting on his bunk, cleaning his short sword, and on the next bed Scorsonides was reading one of his books. There was the smell of cooking in the air, and Troglodites was setting the table for dinner.
Dunius Clericus, the decanus of the squad and Nennius’ second in command frowned. “Trouble?” he asked, standing and smoothing his tunic. Then he turned to the room. “You’ve heard the boss,” he barked. “Three men, move it!”
More groans. Cimma slipped his gladius in the scabbard and stood, buckling it to his waist.
“A guy turned up dead in the Library stacks,” Britannicus said sourly.
Scorsonides put down his book. “You mean in the Great Library—?” he said eagerly.
Nennius Britannicus grinned. “Get your gear on, kid.”
In the corner, Brennius shook his head and dropped his dice with a sigh. “We’ll finish this when I am back.”

There are currently two Contubernium stories in the works, one being written from the bottom up and another being translated in English after laying abandoned and lonely in a folder on my hard disk because it was better that way than wasting it on a cul-de-sac anthology.
Both stories have a prospect place to go, hoping the respective editors of the two projects I’d like to contribute to will like them.
The two stories (8000 words and 5000 words respectively) are set along the Nile and in Alexandria, and are called Crocodile Island and The Cursed Hieroglyph.

This is going to be a fun week, writing-wise.


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Into the Empty Quarter

Wilfred Thesiger’s Arabian Sands was one of the first true-life adventure books I remember reading, about thirty-five years ago. The book was published in 1959, and collected Thesiger’s notes about his travels in the Empty Quarter of the desert of Arabia between 1945 and 1950.

The book is apparently on the Excluded Products list on Amazon, so while you can still buy the ebook through this link, I won’t see a single penny for the sale. But I don’t give a damn – this post is to recommend a fine book, not to make money. And screw Amazon.

And as I am at it, here’s the short version of the movie of the expedition Alistair Humphreys and Leon McCarron undertook in the steps of Thesiger a few years back.


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The Earphones Diaries are back

I am pleased to announce that The Earphones Diaries, my daily unrequited and mostly unwanted reviews of the records I am listening to, is back online after a two-weeks hiatus due to somebody signalling my Instagram account.
You can find The Earphones Diaries here, or down at the bottom of the sidebar.
It’s music.
Maybe music you don’t like, maybe music you don’t know, maybe music you’d like to check out.



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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.

Continue reading →


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Writing to make sense of the world – Bella Hardy in Yunnan

Here’s an interesting by-product of my continued exploration of what music can be found out there (and of my currently-on-hiatus Earphones Diaries).
Bella Hardy is an award winning British folk singer, and I do listen to folk music, so I was interested in checking out her recordings. I became even more interested when I discovered that Hardy’s 2017 album Eternal Spring was written and recorded in Yunnan Province, China, and included English lyrics set to traditional Chinese music.
Then I found a short documentary about Hardy’s Chinese adventure – it’s called From the Mountains to the City Lakes, it is extremely on topic here on Karavansara, and here it is, for your enjoyment.


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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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A Kickstarter for a Clark Ashton Smith-based movie

OK, guys, we need to move fast: the Kickstarter for The Last Incantation, an indie fantasy movie based on a short story by Clark Ashton Smith will last only 9 more days and the crew needs still about 500 dollars to hit the target and actually make the movie.
You can see all of the details here.
If you read this blog, I don’t need to tell you who Clark Ashton Smith was, what an indie fantasy movie is, and why these could be the best ten bucks you spend this year.