Question: what did you bring home from one day spent at one of the largest science fiction conventions in Italy?
Answer: not necessarily in this order… Continue reading
Once again into Hell House
My friend Lucy called it “the best ghost movie you don’t know” and she’s right of course, so I spent part of the night of Friday the 13th watching once again The Legend of Hell House.
And now I’ll tell you about it.
I first saw this back when I was in high school.
I remember this distinctively because I caught it one early morning, while I was home alone, in bed with the flu. I watched it on our old Zenith black and white TV set.
It made me an instant fan of Gayle Hunnicutt, but that’s another story.
And really, who in their right minds would schedule this great little horror at 8 am?
This is a British movie, filmed in 1973 and based on a novel called Hell House by the great Richard Matheson, who also wrote the screenplay, moving the location from New England to Old England. Continue reading
Field trip to Milan
Tomorrow I’ll spend the day in Milan, attending Stranimondi, a convention dedicated to science fiction, fantasy and horror books.
Acheron, my publisher will present both Dark Italy and Zappa & Spada two anthologies that include a story of mine each.
It will be a good opportunity to see old friends, and take a look at “the scene”. We’ll have wine and cookies, so it will not be a completely wasted day.
I had proposed to bring along my netbook and hammer out a short story during the day, to give it as a gift to anyone subscribing to Acheron’s mailing list.
Good publicity stunt, I thought, but I was told there is no power outlet available to fuel a netbook for a whole day, so thank you but no thank you.
Pity. Continue reading
Writing in a bar
I know I am a bad person, but every time I read about a writer writing on his laptop in a bar, I am reminded of this.
Nyarlathotep, probably
I mentioned Masks of Nyarlathotep a few days back, talking about the Pulp Cthulhu handbook.
Now, for the uninitiated, Mask of Nyarlathotep is probably the War & Peace of Call of Cthulhu, if not of the whole horror gaming genre.
Granted, Beyond the Mountains of Madness is bigger, and Horror on the Orient Express is probably creepier, but for globe-trotting variety, implied menace, cast of characters and locations, plot intricacies and sheer gaming goodness, Mask of Nyarlathotep remains a classic, sort of the standard against which Call of Cthulhu scenarios are evaluated. Continue reading
I’ve set up a Telegram channel, brilliantly called Karavansara.
You can join here – https://t.me/Kvansara
It will be a low-traffic channel to share lightweight content and for last-minute announcements. Give it a spin, if you feel like.
Shanghai Under Fire
The snippet above is the opening of Shanghai Under Fire: July 1937 – March 1938, a 120-pages book published by the Shanghai Evening Post and Mercury that provides a day-by-day breakdown of what came to be known as The Battle of Shanghai.
You can find relatively cheap reprints on Amazon, or a digitized copy in the Internet Archive, which is the one I am using right now. Continue reading
Karavansara 