Karavansara

22 March 2019
by Davide Mana 4 Comments

Monkeys

In the end it was a matter of money: I had this Amazon gift card, and I was going through one of my periodic book hauls. There was a book I had been curious about for years, and there it was – the paperback edition, priced 5 bucks, exactly half the price of the Kindle edition.
So I ordered it, and today the postman dropped it – and boy does it look ugly.

The book in question is Monkeys with Typewriters, the “reading and writing” handbook by Scarlett Thomas. I like the works of Thomas a lot, and as I said I wanted to read her writing handbook forever. I sort of collect writing handbooks, and this one looked like a good addition to my collection. Also, a few friends highly recommended it.

I hate the cover. I am sorry, because I realize it’s the work of someone that put skill and effort in it, and I get the whole ironic/postmodern idea. It’s just that I don’t like it.

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21 March 2019
by Davide Mana 4 Comments

Valerie

yesterday I pitched a story featuring a sort of revived (yet again) and slightly improved Valerie Trelawney – and should the pitch bounce back, I might try and write something anyway, because going back to my old character has been like meeting an old friend.
Or an old girlfriend.
Who knows what will come out of all this?
Myself, on Karavansara, February the 8th, 2019

Well, the pitch did not bounce back, and it was indeed accepted.
Hooray! So now I’ll have to re-acquaintance myself with Valerie, and then write the story.
And it’s going to be fun.
Just like meeting an old girlfriend.
I will tell you more in detail.
For the moment, here’s a good song…

21 March 2019
by Davide Mana 3 Comments

The RPG shelf: Atlantis, the Second Age

I took out of storage a few roleplaying books last night, for a project I’m about to start, and while I was at it I took the opportunity to retrieve a game I like a lot and have not played enough, that I wanted to move to the shelf of my favorites, the games I play more often.

The game in question is called Atlantis, the Second Age, that is a game with a complicated history – there’s at least three different editions that I am aware of: the first by Bard Games (when it was just called Atlantis), the second by Morrigan Press which is the one I own, and recently a new edition was released published by Kephera Publishing (I do not own it, but all reviews are glowing).

What we are talking about: a fantasy, decidedly sword & sorcery-oriented game that runs on a modified version of the old Talislanta engine (we are really talking gaming archaeology here) and that comes with a huge world for players to explore and romp through.

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20 March 2019
by Davide Mana 6 Comments

The Riddle of Steel

I had an interesting and instructive discussion last night, on the Facebook group devoted to my friend Umberto Pignatelli’s Beasts & Barbarians roleplaying game, about John Milius’ 1982 movie Conan the Barbarian, and about the riddle of steel in particular.

The Conan movie has been an object of much debate ever since its first screenings, and Howard fans in particular tend to be often quite critical about it. For my part, I’m one of those guys that will tell you “the book is better”, but I do like John Milius’ film. I like its looks and its composition, I like Basil Poleduris’ score, I like Sandhal Bergman a lot (and the poor, late Valerie Quennessen!), I like the characters of Subotai and Mako’s wizard, and most of everything else I like the movie’s structure. The way you can split it scene by scene and see perfectly the story arcs, and the mirror-like pivot points that make the whole narration symmetrical.

And then there’s the quotes, and among these, Conan’s father’s lengthy monologue about the Riddle of Steel.
And be warned, because from this point on there are SPOILERS (but really you never saw Conan the Barbarian? What are you doing on my blog?)

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19 March 2019
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Astounding

Today is father’s day, and I am no father, but I got myself a gift. One of the periodic Amazon gift cards landed in my mailbox yesterday, and I invested the contents in something for my edification and entertainment.

And in a record 24 hours, the mailman delivered a big box containing a hardbound copy of Alec Nevala-Lee’s Astounding, a book whose tagline is “John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.”

A book about the history of the pulps – and a very specific pulp in particular, and the literary consequences thereof.
You can see why this interests me.
It’s like my birthday before time.

Now the real problem will be finding the time to read it.
But who needs to sleep anyway?

18 March 2019
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

Kagemusha

I am about to put the finishing touches on a fantasy novel that I will deliver to the editor before midnight. It is work for hire, so it will go out with another guy’s name on the cover, and I will never be at liberty of revealing that I am the author. Of the book, and of the whole trilogy. With a modicum of luck, the royalties will pay for my dinners throughout the autumn.

It’s something rather different from what I usually write, but I am convinced I put in it some of the best characters I ever wrote (there’s a lot of them, it’s a trilogy), and some of the best dialogues. I am, in other words, reasonably proud of what I am doing.

I was discussing this with my patrons, earlier today – the idea of publishing books that have somebody else’s name on the cover. It’s a topic worth discussing, and analyzing.
How does it feel?

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