Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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The Second Annual Bette Davis Blogathon: Death on the Nile

And stay close to Bette Davis
‘cos hers was such a lonely life

The Kinks, Celluloid Heroes

Was she the greatest actress of old Hollywood?
To be completely honest, I don’t give a damn – Bette Davies had such power and subtlety, such an energy charge, that she “pierced the screen” like they used to say.

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And this is the Second Annual Bette Davis Blogathon, and I invite you to follow the link to In the Good Old Days of Classic Hollywood blog to find the complete list of all the fine blogs that will entertain you and inform you with posts about the movies of Bette Davis.
As for Karavansara, you know what our topics are, and so we’ll go for a true classic of exotic adventure and mystery – Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile

Continue reading →


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No matter what happens, as long as it’s interesting

Considering the **huge*+ success of yesterday’s post (no, it’s OK; it’s OK), I thought I’d expand a little on the subject.

I am a geologist and palaeontologist by trade, but I’ve been doing odd jobs for over four years, ever since my father’s health started deteriorating in 2013 and I dropped everything to help him. Basically I did all the sort of stuff you can do while attending a sick person and changing adult diapers and emptying catheters: translations, writing, the odd private lesson. My brother was here with me, helping along.
Then our father died and we were left with huge bills to pay, a mortgaged house, no work, and no income. It was scary.
It still is.

So, while I started sending CVs just about everywhere, and it soon was obvious there would be no reply, I sat down and did what I could: I started writing and translating. I started doing it faster. With my brother we started RE:CON, a shoestring venture to provide research and contents for writers, game designers and other creative types.

We paid our bills, and put bread on the table, and paid off most of the manageable debt.
But the mortgage was still there, and is still there, and is about to swallow us up whole.
No house, no money. Continue reading →


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Future online activities

OK, ladies and gentlemen, I need your help.
Let’s say that, barring disasters (that are always possible) in about one month I will have access to a fast, stable internet connection.

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Of course after years of exile beyond the Digital Divide I will have a huge celebration, but afterwards it will still be a matter of making ends meet.
And let’s say I’ll be trying to do something that might be

  1. fun to do
  2. interesting for the public
  3. capable of bringing in some money

For instance, in Italian, I will re-launch my courses on Taoism and Zen – only instead of using a blog platform I will be offering them as a mix of online articles and live sessions on Google Hangouts.

So I am wondering, what could I propose to my English-speaking audience?

  • Courses, lectures… about what?
  • KaravanCast live events (if possible)?
  • Pulp-based Italian classes for English speakers?
  • Online roleplaying gaming sessions?
  • A reading group?
  • Some kind of writing workshop?

I am open to suggestions – please use the comments.
And thank you.


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Clio’s Days Off

An interesting question was raised a few days back from my friend Giulia, that manages the Liberi di Scrivere lit blog (only in Italian, sorry).
The question was, more or less

how much leeway do we have when writing historical fiction?

Meaning, how much can we change, distort, manipulate or basically rewrite historical fact to fit our narrative?

Now, I’m sure my friend Claire covered this subject somewhere on her Scribblings blog (and if she did not, she should), and Giulia’s question received lots of answers, some I liked, some I liked a lot less.
And right now I’d like to expand on my answer, that did go more or less like this: Continue reading →


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The World Poetry & Forests Day

Today is both the World Poetry Day and The World Forest Day, so it looks like the right time for doing something featuring both verses and forests.

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But I’m not so hot on poetry – a few contemporaries, some classic Japanese and Chinese poems, and then of course Poe, John Donne and that other chap, that Shakespeare.
But I found something that in my opinion fits this blog, and my current mood, and is from a great great writer that is not so popular anymore, alas: George Meredith, who gave us The Shaving of Shagpat and, of course, Diana of the Crossways.

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He was also a poet, and wrote this, which is called Forest History.
Enjoy, and happy Poetry & Forest day. Continue reading →


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Distraction-free

WordPress implemented a new blogging interface a few days ago.
It’s pretty cool, it’s designed to be distraction-free, and basically on my countryside connection it makes posting a blog a one-hour affair instead of the usual fifteen minutes.
Because the interface is beautiful, but it’s heavy on my connection resources.

NewWordPressComPostEditor

But this is not the real problem – I already write my posts using a text editor caller ReText (but any plain text editor or notepad works) and then copy-and-paste them in WordPress anyway.
But while I was waiting this morning for the interface to load, I found myself with ample time on my hands and started thinking…distraction-free? Continue reading →