Yesterday I suggested to a friend an old book that was one of the most fun, intelligent reads I chanced upon back in… ah, must have been 1991 or 1992.
Turns out the book is still available and quite cheap on Amazon – it’s called Journeys to the Underworld and was written by British poet Fiona Pitt-Kethley.
It also happens to be somewhat on topic here on Karavansara, being both a travel book and a book about ancient magic in the Mediterranean basin. Continue reading
Karavansara Free Library: Edith Nesbit’s Ghosts and other
I’ve been looking up Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories, for a small collateral project I’m working on.
Now the bad side of this is, alot of my books are still boxed away. The bright side on the other hand is, you can find most Victorian and Edwardian fiction online on the Project Gutenberg pages, or in the Internet Archive.
So I started checking, and of course I ended up with Edith Nesbit.
I admit I have a sort of literary crush for Edit Nesbit.
Deservedly famous as an author of children’s books – including the classic The Railway Children from 1906 – Nesbit was also responsible for adult fiction, often of the ghostly and horrific kind.
And if her children’s books are based on her expanded family and show a good understanding of a child’s imagination, her horrors show a good grasp of human psychology and the dynamics of fear. Continue reading
The right book at the right time
There’s a big stack of For Dummies handbooks about tech jobs and productivity available at the Humble Bundle website, one of my one-stop places to stock on reading matter on a tight budget.
This Bundle looks like it’s perfect for me (productivity and job seeking) and my brother (a code monkey looking for a career).
And this one pictured here is the first I’ll check out, for reasons my last post should have made obvious.
We invested one buck in the basic Bundle.
You might like to go there and invest a few bucks yourself – you also help a charity doing so.
… and blog posts too!
It does not get any more hectic than this…
- Tomorrow I will deliver a new translation.
- Next week an Italian publisher will tell me and my writing partner how many novels they want in the series, and how much they are paying.
- By the 30th of the month I have to deliver a 15.000-words story to my American publisher.
- By the 7th of October I will deliver a 10.000-words SF story as a bonus to the backers of my crowdfunding.
- By the 15th of October I have to (finally) deliver a 50.000-words novel to my publisher Down Under.
- On the 16th of October, two or possibly three anthologies will be presented featuring a story of mine each.
- By the 31st of October I will have to deliver another 15.000-words story to my American publisher.
- By the 15th of November I plan to submit a new 6000-words Aculeo & Amunet story to an online magazine.
- Around the 20th of November, the backers of my crowdfunding will get an EARC of my forthcoming essay.
- By the 31st of November I have to deliver another 18.000-words story to my American publisher (and this will actually make four stories, 66.000 words in total, in four months for this specific project).
- By December the 15th my self-published, Italian-language non-fiction book will hit the shelves.
- By December the 31st I will have to get at least 70.000-words worth of fantasy novel and submit them to Angry Robot.
- And there will most likely be a 5000-words spin-off of Aculeo & Amunet in a highly rated magazine somewhere in 2018.
I don’t think I’ll take part in NaNoWriMo this year, after all.
The new Aculeo & Amunet – why not post a preview?
I am juggling ten thousand different projects – a 15.000-words story I have to deliver in ten days, a 70.000/130.000 words novel I need to to start and finish by Christmas, two ebooks to go as stretch goals for my (very successful! Yeah!) crowdfunding, the next Buscafusco, the new Corsair, and then I need to start planning my online courses…
Whew… my mother was right when she said that as a shop clerk I’d have an easier life.
Anyway, as it usually happens, as soon as I am buried in work, something different comes to my mind.
Like, the start of the next Aculeo & Amunet story, that goes more or less like this… Continue reading
Talk Like a Pirate Day Gallery
Arr!
Today is the International Talk Like a Pirate Day, or so they tell me.
And what best way to celebrate this jolly occurrence but with a nice gallery of pirate pictures?
I always loved Don Maitz’s art… and he’s a specialist in pirates.
So here goes!
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
And I also have a pinboard filled with Maitz’s pirate pics, if you want more!
Karavansara 