I am happy to say that I have just signed a contract for the publication of the (first?) story featuring centurion Nennius Britannicus and his Contubernium.
I am currently revising the proofs.
As soon as the story will be out I will post here (and everywhere else) the relevant links.
I am very happy (but I guess you guessed that).
Let’s talk about names.
And not just any name – primitive names.
Names for cavemen – and I don’t mean Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.
My primitive fantasy story requires a hero, and a heroine, and what else… and if I have a way to play fast and loose with Atlanteans and Lemurians and assorted campers, the name of the hero is too important an element to improvise.
So, for “lost civilization” cultures, I’ll use a few Minoan names, shuffling a few consonants about.
And if Didikase and Kubaba are a silly name for bad guys, Kitanetos might work with a little adjustement.
And the female name Kitane is quite good.
But when it comes to the primitive Homo sapiens, that’s a territory that’s been explored in the past, and it’s hard to be original and effective. Continue reading
With all the stuff that’s been piling up on my desk recently, I failed to post a note about the fact that I am having a lot of fun and a great time all around translating Lavie Tidhar’s Central Station for Acheron Books.
The novel’s so good and the author’s prose is so fluid that it is very easy to go through pages and pages of it almost without noticing.
Which of course means that I have to do a second pass to check all the small bits-and-pieces of the text.
Let me tell you about it… Continue reading
I was absolutely sure I had done a post about The Great Belzoni, but I was unable to find it.
It’s becoming unnerving, this thing that I get an idea for a post, plan it and write it in my mind, and then forget about actually writing it. I am damn scared of Alzheiner, you know…
Anyway, here’s the guy, portrayed in all his barbaric style and Oriental mystery.
Giovanni Battista Belzoni was born in Padua in 1778, but his family was from Rome, and in Rome he studied hydraulics. He flirted with the idea of joining a monastery, fled when Napoleon conquered the city and ended up as a barber in the Netherlands.
From there he moved to London, met and married a woman named Sarah Bane, and they both joined a circus – Belzoni was 6 foot 7 inches, and got a gig as a strongman, but he later got into phantasmagorias and light shows.
During a tour of southern Europe in the early 1810s, Belzoni became acquainted with Muhammad Ali, and went to Egypt to demonstrate a hydraulic machine of his own devising, that would be used to pump water from the Nile.
The machine worked but he was not hired, and therefore he found himself in Egypt, and without a job.
Someone suggested he should look into the local antiques. Continue reading
Three-thousand and five hundred words in one afternoon is not that bad, and it is a clear sign that I’m back in the game – nothing better than clearing one’s desk to start anew.
Maybe it’s the change of season, too – the cold cold winter is over, and now the days are getting longer.
Meanwhile, new projects are popping up all over the place, and as I was saying to a friend over the weekend, I’d rather need a few six-packs of 36-hours days. But apparently they don’t make them anymore.
And the reading material is piling up – I have here a nice little essay about the Marxist theory of the Cthulhu Mythos that is really what the doctor ordered to find some distraction and possibly a few story ideas.
And I’m waiting for my copy of the last Spillane book – because I’m not a fan but it was the man’s centenary, and the ebook was real cheap, and with a fantastic cover, and so I pre-ordered it.
And finally, I’ve been asked to give a demonstration of my Tarot-reading skills, and who knows, maybe I found myself a new job.
So, all in all, two days out of the Astigianistan hills were good for my health and my writing and everything else.
I should take more frequent vacations.
And so, while I was running up and down the local highways to go and sit on a panel in Turin on Friday and get lost at a con on Saturday, Mickey Spillane’s centenary came and went.
Let’s try and make up for that.
Mickey Spillane was born on March the 9th 1918. He fought in the Second World war and wrote for the comics before he started a very successful career as a crime writer, creating the character of Mike Hammer, and selling – to date – 225 million copies of his books. Continue reading
I’m back from Cartoomics, the Milan comic and fantasy fair, and it was a hoot.
Great opportunity to meet some old and some new friends, and get lost in the crowd and the noise for a day.
And talking about the noise – you guys have no idea of what Hell is like if you’ve not been treated to a non-stop loop of Renaissance1 music and Playstation-grade psaeudo-Wagnerian bombast blasted through a pair of cheap garage-band style amps with the dial up to 11. While the MC shouts stuff like “Here comes the Duke of Draconia!” or “Everybody into the Dungeon!” through a cheap mic, the whole in a huge convention hall that echoes like a Himalayan valley.
That was not fun.
When they started doing an impromptu rendition of Frozen – the Musical, things only got worse – and thanks goodness they cut the singing reindeer’s part.
But apart from that, what a great day!
I hope to get my hearing back one of these days.
Karavansara 