Just a very quick note to let all interested parties that the fourth episode of AMARNA is now also available on Amazon.
Get it straight away on your Kindle through this link.
Enjoy!
Read like a writer
I said I would be reading a book, and I am.
I am reading Joseph Brassey’s Skyfarer, that I got me in paperback for the price of a pizza, and is proving to be quite fun. Highly recommended, based on the initial premises, and I’ll tell you more once I’ve finished it (won’t be long, it reads like a breeze).
The only problem, I had to turn off the “little voice” in my head.
I guess you all remember Magnum PI, and his little voice…
Magnum: [narrates] When I write my book on how to be a world class private investigator, I’m going to include a chapter on listening to your little voice. Everybody has one, and mine was saying to stop Marcus and find out the real story behind his new car. Of course I didn’t, which is another chapter, things I should have done, but didn’t…
OK, so my little voice starts talking as I start reading, and points out all the neat things the author did with his story: nice turns of phrase, killer characterization, great dialog.
“See,” my little voice tells me, “that’s how it’s done. You should try it too! Take notes, you fool! Learn from the good ones!” Continue reading
Labor Day 2018
Tomorrow is Labor Day here in Italy.
There will be a celebration, and most workers will have the day off. And while I will still be thinking about those that have no job, I will celebrate anyway.
It’s two years now that writing (and related activities, such as translating) has become my day job. It’s paid the bills (barely) and kept my bank if not really happy, at least not too worried1.
And writing – telling lies for fun and profit, to quote Lawrence Block – is great fun, but it’s also hard physical work. Anyone that denies that never did it seriously.
You get aching hands, swollen ankles, back pains… and that’s when you have a properly set-up workstation, and do a modicum of exercise.
Headaches, too, and eye pains.
And it never stops. Not on weekends and holidays, not while you are queuing at the supermarket, because our mind is constantly writing… hearing dialog, taking notes on people and places, catching ideas as the fly by…
We must strive to take some time off.
That, too, becomes a physical effort.
Anyway – I’ll take these 36 hours off, if you don’t mind. No writing, no translating.
I’ll read a book or two, maybe.
Or I could try and outline a story idea I got last night…
To all of you that are working out there, and those that are out of work too, have a happy May Day.
Things will get better.
- and why should they worry? Should I default, they keep the house. ↩
AMARNA 4 on Gumroad!
And not a minute too soon!
The fourth episode of AMARNA finds Valerie Cazaret and her allies in Tel el Amarna, the lost capital of the Heretic Pharaoh.
It is time for Valerie to get some answers…
… and to face some new menaces.
The story is beginning to end, and things are going to become interesting.
Well, more interesting than before.
The zip file for sale on Gumroad includes the mobi, epub and PDF versions of the ebook. You only have to unzip and upload the file you prefer on your ebook or software reader of choice.
Enjoy!
Oh, and just in case, you can get the first three episodes in a single zip, and at a special price – just click HERE.
I split the party
Don’t split the party is one of the basic unwritten rules of roleplaying games, and one that players usually learn the hard way.
Splitting the party makes it hard on the game master, and it weakens the party itself – and a weak party plus an irritated game master is a recipe for disaster.
But I did it.
As i was writing the fourth episode of AMARNA – currently being edited – I did split the party.
Valerie and Tenn on one mission, Charles and Lavinia Throckmorton on another. And because we are following the story through Valerie’s first person narrative, we basically miss the whole Chuck & Vinnie part of the adventure.
Which is unavoidable.
Or is it? Continue reading
A Ballad of the Salt Sea
And so I went and did it – I re-read A Ballad of the Salt Sea, the first Corto Maltese story, serialized in the magazine Sgt. Kirk starting in June 1967, little more than one month after my birth.
For this re-read project I am using the Panini Comics/L’Espresso color edition of the book that was published in 2006 – 10 volumes collecting the whole series, in chronological order1, with extra contents and articles.
So, let’s begin – how does it feel like, reading “Ballad** at fifty? Continue reading
Cast away on the island of Tambu
This is becoming one of those down-the-rabbit-hole sort of things.
It all started with the exhibition in Lyon about Hugo Pratt and Corto Maltese. I did a follow-up about the Corto series, and I got this idea of doing a re-read of the whole Corto Maltese opus, starting with A Ballad of the Salt Sea.
Which led me back to The Blue Lagoon by Henry De Vere Stacpoole, and from there, while casting glances at Folco Quilici and Thor Heyerdahl, to Morgan Andrew Robertson (that was probably an influence on Edgar Rice Burroughs too).
Whew!
But it gets weirder than that, and as the rabbit hole gets deeper, I feel compelled to talk about The Lost Islands. Boy but I loved that show as a kid! Continue reading
Karavansara 