Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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I feed on ideas

Pulpy sort of title, what?
I should write a story to it.

But the fact is, you see, I just had one of those horrible, horrible grief and self-loathing attacks as I watched a very interesting video on Youtube: Richard Dawkins interviewing Derren Brown.

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Now, this is a package that has everything to capture me: a scientist and science popularizer I like very much, interviewing a famous illusionist I follow and appreciate.
And of course Dawkins is a colleague (evolution being our plaything) and stage magic is, I often said that, strictly connected with writing. And I did some magic tricks when I was a kid.

So, why the self-loathing? Continue reading →


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A second serving of Enoch…

It is with a mix of excitement and dread that I wait for the coming of October the 11th.
…
Nice little Lovecraftian start, innit?
Let me go back to the beginning.
A few days back, answering the call of Amazon, I announced I will devote some space to independent books through the month of October.
Because indies are important – they are where the exciting stuff happens1

the-king-of-nightspores-crownAs luck would have it, on the same day I received a fat Amazon gift card from one of my readers.
And therefore I burned a fair chunk of it in ordering a paper copy of Raphael Ordonez’ second book in the Enoch Series, which is called The King of Nightspore’s Crown, and that does fully qualify as an indie book.

The first book in the series, Dragonfly, I reviewed here and it was one of the best fantasy stories I happened to read in a long time.
So I’m very excited about the fact that the courier service will drop my copy in my mailbox on Tuesday the 11th of October.
I explicitly chose the paper book over the ebook because I consider myself a fan, and I want the whole series on my shelf. I love the way these books look and feel like those old Ballantine Adult Fantasy titles from my misspent youth.

The dread I mentioned comes from the fact that, knowing myself, as soon as the package gets to me I’ll stop everything I’m doing and I’ll spend the following days reading the book. And then writing a review.
And then maybe going back to Dragonfly and read the two of them back to back.
You get the idea. I’ll have to exercise all my (less than abundant) discipline, to try and do some work next week.

I’ll keep you posted.

  1. and mind you, in the field of imaginative fiction, there’s always a lot of exciting stuff happening, but indie authors are those that are often trying to do something new. ↩


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Other People’s Pulps: Weird Tales Online

A quick heads-up, tonight, for a very thorough and interesting article on OpenCulture.org, about the available contents of Weird Tales magazine online.
Turns out you can download, or browse online, a number of issues of The Unique Magazine, for free.

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And it is indeed an illuminating experience – if you like pulps, or supernatural fiction – because you can read the stories in their natural environment, together with the illustrations, the ads, the letters column etcetera.
Quite a different feeling compared to reading the same stories in an anthology.

The article also points to a number of other resources, and it is quite a find.


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#PoweredByIndie: my plans for October

Well, it’s not every day Amazon – yes, that Amazon – asks for your help.
And yet, this morning I got a communication for an initiative Amazon just launched: a celebration of Indie authors, throughout the month of October.

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And being myself, sometimes, an indie author (or an author/publisher – sort of a D&D multiclass), I think this is a swell idea.

So here’s what I will do – as I noted in a previous post, I’m overworked at the moment, but I will do all I can to read and review at least one indie book a week throughout October, and then post using the above hashtag, #PoweredByIndie, in order to let it have the widest circulation possible.
I’ll also collect a few posts I made in the past about some great indie books, and overhaul them somehow.

And no, I will not push my own books – if there’s something I learned as an author/publisher is that by talking about good work by other authors I usually get a boost in sales anyway. There, the best of both worlds. Who knows, maybe it’s karma at work.


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Turn off the socials? Or read a good book?

According to an article I read during the weekend, the best way to fend off depression and stress is to turn Facebook off for a week.
I more or less agree.
The last few weeks have been pretty heavy:
. lots of work to do to try and pay the bills
. lots of offices to visit and calls to make to settle the succession taxes and relative documents
. not many highlights on the human front

But I’ll leave my bureaucratic odyssey and the general fact that human beings tend to suck for another post (if ever), and concentrate on the overworked/underpaid situation, and the stress and depression thereof. Continue reading →


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Circle of Iron/The Silent Flute (1978)

My friend Dalmazio reminded me yesterday of a movie that I re-watch usually once a year, and that would fit my highly hypothetical guide to sword & sorcery movies, despite the fact that it does not feature any sword that I can remember, nor is the sorcery so prominent.
The movie is called Circle of Iron, but is also known as The Silent Flute, and was originally written by Bruce Lee, that would have starred it.
The movie was planned for 1969, and should have featured James Coburn (who also had a hand in the original story) as a co-star, but then the project fizzed.

It was produced nine years later, with David carradine in the role that should have been Lee’s, and Jeff Cooper in the role that had been imagined for James Coburn or Steve McQueen.

The first mystical martial arts adventure… well, it is a way to put it. Continue reading →


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ToHorror Film Fest 2016

The Turin Horror Film Festival, a long-standing and well-respected showcase for scary movies, will take place in the second week of October.

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The big news (for me, at least) is that this year I will be part of the jury, in the Shorts section.
Short films is usually where new talent and raw ideas get tested, and I am very excited at the prospect of spending a week watching some of the best short horror movies around.
I’ll keep you posted!