And now something special.
My cellmate Alex Girola is expanding into the world of indie gaming, and I just got my copy of Il Sonno della Ragione (The Sleep of Reason), a neat little game that’s so cool, I blackmailed Alex into allowing me to contribute material.
And while the Mana Brothers are hard-at-work already on a set of scenarios, we are also discussing an English edition of the game.
It would be cool.
So consider the following a sort of preview. Continue reading
Summer movie
Shambleau
Translating Lavie Tidhar’s wonderful Central Station brought back memories of C.L. Moore’s Shambleau.
Easily one of the most influential short stories in the history of science fiction, Shambleau was published in 1933 in Weird Tales. It introduced the character of Northwest Smith and more importantly created the alien, parasitic Shambleau and its mythos. Continue reading
A novel about a writer (not) writing a novel
Today I took the day off – I did not write, I did not translate, I did not teach. I did not plot, I did not outline, I did not pitch.
I slept late this morning, I went to the supermarket soon after lunchtime, and then I spent the day reading.
And if it is true that I feel guilty – because money is tight, and I need to work work work to cover my bills – on the other hand it is indispensable to pause once in a while. I already talked about this in the past: fatigue, burnout, anxiety fits… it is not fun.
You have to learn to pace yourself, like Billy Joel used to sing. Continue reading
Teaching foreign languages through adventure fiction
A few days back a friend asked me to give her English lessons through the web – to improve her reading and writing skills first and foremost, and then to help her with her spoken English.
I was happy to comply – she’s a friend, and also, it’s a good way to start a new project and possibly a new source of income and help me pay my bills through the rest of the year.
I’ve taught English to Italians and Italian to English-speaking foreigners for a number of years, about fifteen years ago, and I had developed a few tactics to help my students
- Get familiar with the basic phrase structure – to learn, in other words, what goes where in an Italian or English phrase.
- Acquire as large a vocabulary as possible
- Keep going and practice while having fun
A story of the non-wanker kind
I just submitted a story for the 20th anniversary issue of Inferno!, the Black Library magazine covering Warhammer 40.000.
After my post yesterday a WH40K-playing friend of mine pointed out to me the open call for the magazine. It was sort of, OK, mister so-superior-to-this-stuff, let’s see if you’re so hot.
The submission requested a one paragraph pitch and a 500-words scene.
I checked the deadline – April the 10th.
And I thought, why not?
The worse that could happen is, I might get a rejection slip and lose two hours of my life. I can live with that. So I wrote a positively non-wanker story set in the WH40K universe, and sent it along. Let’s see what happens.
Karavansara 