My kind of Disney Princesses.
Beautiful art by Astor Alexander. Click on thumbnails for a larger image.
You can buy prints from this website.
Nine Noir Princesses
Weekend with the Savages
This one that’s coming is going to be a busy weekend.
There is the Comics Fair in Rome, Romics.
There is the book festival I Portici di Carta, where two kilometers of the main street in central Turin willbe turned into a book stall.
And in Milan there’s StraniMondi, the coolest science fiction convention ever, where all the cool writers and readers hang out together in harmony.
And I’m sure I’m forgetting a pair of book or comic or gaming related events that will take place over the weekend.
And I will attend none of these.
Because I will be joining the Savages in Pinerolo, the home base of the old Savoy cavalry and the seat of the Pinerole event – not a convention, more like a bunch of roleplayers spending a day doing what they like: playing. Continue reading
Robert E. Howard’s Horror Stories
A very quick heads up – apparently Amazon is selling the Del Rey collection The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard for a lark, a lark being roughly two bucks and change.
This is a wonderful volume, almost 600 pages and illustrated, and features a lot of excellent fiction by Two-Guns Bob.
It is likely that you already have most of these yarns on your shelf, but in case you missed some, or you just want all of REH’s horrors in one neat, high-class package, check this book out.
It’s an excellent book to usher in the Halloween season.
I don’t know how long the offer will last.
A Piece of the Action
In the end, the story I jotted down in first draft two nights back turned into a 3100-words short called A Piece of the Action, and it’s currently on its way towards the editor’s desk, hoping it will find a slot in the proposed anthology.
My current process is more or less defined.
- I write the first draft in public, working in Google Docs online, in two or three hours, in the evening.
- I let the story rest for about 24 hours while I do something completely different.
- Still in Google Docs, I clean up the file, deleting my in-line live commentary and doing a first revision.
- Then I switch the Language Tools plugin and have a go at the text, catching typos, inconsistencies and wrong phrase construction.
- At this point, I copy and paste the text in a LibreOffice doc and I have a final revision, cutting what can be cut and adding what needs to be added.
- I format the text according to the guidelines, I save it in the requested format, and I send it along to the editor with a brief cover letter.
And that’s it.
Then the waiting begins, because there’s usually a few weeks lag between delivery and final verdict.
But that’s part of the game.
And now, on to the next story.
This thing is working like clockwork.
Tonight I might try and do another, depending on how my plans for dinner work out.
An expensive hobby for rich chumps
Joe Lansdale, a writer I enjoy very much and one of the men that are working harder and with most success to keep high the banner of popular fiction (popular in the sense that people like it, not in the sense that it is cheap), posted the following on the first of September…
Write from the heart.
Avoid self-publishing until there is no other choice, is my suggestion. And if you think I’m telling you that you have to do as I suggest, I’m not. But like it or not, mainstream publishers generally sells more books. I’ve done a bit of it all, mainstream, small press, and even a bit of self-publishing of established books. I would love to see the rise of more small publishers that pay and do quality work, like SUBTERRANEAN for one example. But the thing is, anyone can self-publish, and there’s no vetting.
If you must, do it, but it’s always nice to have someone else validate its worth. Start with paying markets. I truly believe a large number of people who self-publish have never tried the traditional route and don’t want to deal with possible rejection. Rejection makes you stronger, or it did me. I became more determined. The mainstream publishers don’t necessarily know more than others, but they pay, and they pay because they believe the work is valid. Can it be valid and self-published? You bet. But I’ve gotten a lot more exposure to my work, which is certainly not typically mainstream, with mainstream publishers than with anyone else.
Today, an Italian translation of this text has been doing the rounds of Italian writing groups and Italian writers’ walls on Facebook.
See, you suckers? Joe Lansdale sez you shan’t self-publish! Continue reading
In half an hour
I have no idea what I will write, or why, but anyway, I’ll start a session of online writing in half an hour.
HERE
OK; I cancelled the link.
Here’s a quick overview of what happened.
I decided to tackle an open call for a short story themed “Temporally Deactivated”.
I started at 9.10 pm or thereabouts, and I stopped at 11.35, more or less.
I decided to do it like “a rookie’s first day on the beat”, and sort of winged it.
I knew the general direction I wanted it to go, but I found out my POV character was a woman only on the last paragraph.
It’s part of the fun of this free writing thing.
I had a few bad spells and I went down at least one dead end, but I was able to put 3000 words in the bag, with a proper beginning, middle and end.
Now I will let the first draft rest for a while, and then go through a second draft.
Then I’ll mail it to the editor, and see if they bite.
Thank you to the readers that were there to see what I was doing.
I hope my writing was not too ugly.
Remember, it’s all right to write a rubbish first draft if then you are able to edit it beautifully. That will be the real challenge.
Karavansara Free Library: Arnold Wright (and Hope & Glory)
The Internet Archive is a treasure trove. Right now my browser informs me it is undergoing maintenance, but when it’s up (it should be up briefly), you can listen to Old Radio shows, you can peruse pulp magazines, and you can find a number of excellent resources for your writing and your games.
For instance, let’s consider the catalog of books by Arnold Wright, former journalist of the Times of India and then London editor of the Yorkshire post, who made a nice career for himself as an author of reference books about the East. Continue reading
Karavansara 