Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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What writers like: Farinata

So we spent a few days last week with my friends Hell and Silvia, and it was a pleasure to introduce Silvia to a local dish – basically a form of street or finger food – that she had never tried before: farinata1.

farinata-genovese

This culminated in an evening in the best place in town for this simple dish, with four writers and a Jack the Ripper expert around the same table (yes, we did attract a few worried looks), eating the stuff and drinking artisan beer.

So, this being now the official food of local (and not so local) indie writers, I thought it would be fun to post the recipe here.
Enjoy!
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Oh, damn!

So I spent most of last night listening to some music (I’m currently on a Shiina Ringo/Tokyo Incidents bender) and fitting together the little pieces of a short story based on the guidelines I posted yesterday.
You know, the one about the wrong sort of leading lady.

It was not easy, it required a lot of staring at the screen and playing solitaire and what not.
But finally, I got all the bits and pieces in place, and the mechanism worked like, well, clockwork, while still leaving me enough margin to improvise and keep the narrative lively.

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New tools

logo_todoist_schemaI just started using a tool that is likely to improve and streamline  somewhat the way I attack my workload. It’s pretty popular, as far as I know, and it’s called Todoist.
Basically it is a list-making tool, a scheduler.
You put in the stuff you have to do, with dates and details. You can flag and prioritise the single entries, and it’s got a lot of nifty bits.
You can use it on your smartphone (I don’t) or on your PC, where it appears as a plugin for both your browser and your mail client.

I usually key in

  • Title, brief description of each interesting open call
  • The URL with the complete call description
  • The deadline

And this is helping me a lot. Continue reading →


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Shopping suggestions mystery

What would be our life without a little mystery.
Here’s my little mystery from the last two weeks or thereabouts.

I get mails from Amazon.it.
My favorite pusher of books and assorted stuff sends me a mail once in a while suggesting stuff I might like.
fadfae60-1061-4d45-b1ab-b2f7e14d41cdBecause evidently Amazon.it likes to play it safe, these lists of stuff I might like usually include ten items, eight of which are taken from my Amazon wishlist and/or from my recent browsing history, including stuff I have actually bought, with two other titles thrown in for good measure.
Now I find it markedly stupid on Amazon’s part to suggest to me I buy something I already wish to buy, but who knows, maybe it’s one of those psychology things.

Anyway, I got three such mails in the last ten/fifteen days, and something weird happened. Continue reading →


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More writing, more stories

Some people make their plans for the new year in December, but I still have this schoolboy attitude, to me the new year begins in September.
Or something.
Anyway, I think I mentioned my idea about writing more stories, and submitting them to magazines and anthologies and publishers. Sort of a good proposition for the coming year.
Well, the experiment is working.
In the last thirty days I have submitted five stories to as many publishers, for a total of about 20.000 words.
Two thrillers.
Two science fiction shorts.
One horror story.
This not counting the things I wrote for my Patrons, and my other stuff that I will self-publish, or my gaming material.

pulp_writer

Not bad, but it could be better.
What I would like to do would be to double that number, settling for 10 stories per month, roughly 40.000 words, while keeping the bouncing stories circulating.
It’s a tough call, but I think I can do it.
Right now, I’m revising a story I’ll submit tonight.
Then I have five more calls aligned over the next two months.
It’s a start.
The trick will be do this while still working on my other stuff, my stories and games and translations.
But after all, that’s the way it’s got to be if I want to pay my bills and get out of this place.

I wish to thank my friends, my readers and my supporters that have pointed out new markets, new resources and new open calls to me.
You know who you are guys, and you are helping me a lot.
Thank you.


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Pulp fairies

Cenerentola_ARI have just mailed my publisher a 10.000 words story called Away with the Fairies, a hard boiled, noirish retelling of The Three Fairies, a rather gruesome version of the old Cinderella tale from the 17th century.

In the original story, a girl meets an ogre, travels to the underworld and meets three fairies. They reward her for her kindness. When her evil stepmother tries to befriend the fairies and get herself and her ugly daughter a reward she is punished.
The girl then meets a prince,m and they fall in love, but the evil stepmother interferes again, and the prince is about to marry the ugly stepsister.
But a fairy cat intervenes, and in the end stepmother and stepsister die a very ugly death, and everybody else lives happily ever after. Continue reading →