Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


Leave a comment

Too old for Young Indiana Jones, too young to die

Yesterday I mentioned that there are things in the past that should be let to rest – case in point, the pseudo-science/UFOs/ancient mysteries books of the seventies, that I loved as a kid and now find insufferable.

Another case in point – The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, the spin-off series telling us the early exploits of Henry Jones Jr., before he went looking for the Lost Ark… and even before a number of the tie-innovels.

I re-watched the a few episodea yesterday night.
Goodness was it boring! Continue reading


Leave a comment >

Once an editor handed me a raw deal, and I went with a howl to my friend Bill for advice. He was a writer of twenty years’ experience, and a man of wisdom. He heard my howl, and then smiled.
“Remember one thing,” he said. “Before you do or say anything rash, just reflect that the editor is the man that sends out the checks.”
(H. Bedford-Jones, This Writing Business, 1929)


Leave a comment

Cursed by the pharaohs

md22104412845I tried.
No really, I tried.
I took the afternoon off, a nice bowl of tea, and I attacked Curse of the Pharaohs, the book about Tutankhamen’s curse I had found at a free giveaway a few months back – you’ll remember I posted about it.

Considering I am currently sketching an Egypt-related project – plus of course the Aculeo & Amunet and Contubernium stories, and the idea of re-playing Masks of Nyarlathotep… all this considered, a nice afternoon reading about Egyptian curses looked like a nice way to have fun and do research at the same time.

But what the heck… Continue reading


Leave a comment

Done!

634432And so The House of the Gods is finally on its way to the publisher, a 47.000 words manuscript full of dinosaurs, adventure and cliffhangers.
Including a real cliffhanger, because I am worth it.

I normally send to my publishers multiple versions of the file – odt, rtf, docx and PDF.
This way I’m pretty sure at least one will read no matter what system they are using.

And as always, hitting the send button causes a long shiver of fear.
Is the story good enough?
Did I leave in some embarrassing typo or some ugly grammar blunder?
Did some chunk of text get scrambled, or vanished, or slipped thirty pages on?

But then the mail goes off, and it’s over for a while.

And as the manuscript goes out, a mail comes in from a publisher I submitted a novelette too.
It would be great were it twice as long, they say.
Well, I’ll make it twice as long – heaven knows how much I cut to stay in the novelette wordcount.

But first, I have two other novellas to write.
Today I’m on vacation, reading Curse of the Pharaohs, but tomorrow we are on the run again.


Leave a comment

Aethercon VI

Aethercon_LogoThis is con season – and after crawling to Milan for the local con, I’ll be taking part in a virtual, online con… Aethercon VI, on the 10th, 11th and 12th of November.

The Aethercon is an online gaming convention – you get to meet game designers and publishers, you get to try new games, you can attend panels and burn a few bucks in the virtual vendor area.
Isn’t this internet thing great? Continue reading


12 Comments

The Hepburn & Tracy Blogathon: The Iron Petticoat, 1956

THE SPENCER TRACY AND KATHARINE HEPBURN BLOGATHON IS HERE, and despite my fevered state, here I am to do a post about the wonderful Katharine Hepburn, and one of her films.
Not one of her best films.
Not by a long shot.
But what the heck, it’s got Katharine Hepburn in it, so it can’t be bad, right?

picmonkey_image-2

But first, please direct your browser to the In the good old days of classic Hollywood blog and get a full list of the participating blogs.
Enjoy the sights, read the posts, discover or re-discover movies that are well worth a view.
Yes, even The Iron Petticoat, the 1956 movie we’ll be talking about here, on Karavansara.
The movie Greta Garbo called

the worst film I have ever seen

Nice, uh? Continue reading