Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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World Oceans Day 2016

Today, June the 8th, is the World Oceans Day.

world oceans day

The tagline of this event is healthy ocean, healthy planet.
I couldn’t say it in a straighter, simpler way.

My long-standing fascination with the oceans is well documented.
I came this >< far from taking a second degree in Oceanography1.
The sea still features heavily both in my “serious work” (in which I study fossil plankton to help define the state of health of ancient and modern seas) and in my “moonlighting” work as a writer.
The sea is often part of my stories.
But I don’t want to plug my stories today. Continue reading →


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3000 in one day

Olivetti_L32_MToday I’m putting myself to the test, both for fun and profit.
The idea is to write a 3000+ words horror story on spec, aiming at an anthology whose deadline looms closer.
The check is enough to put food on my table for a week, but apart from that I feel like flexing my writing muscles, and placing another story with my name on it out there.

So I’ll write, revise and post it today.

Right now I’m about 1500 words in it, and it’s going pretty smooth – despite a blink in the electric system that caused my computer to flip this morning, and so I lost 500 words.
But the rewrite is actually better than the lost original, so there.

Back to work.
I’ll keep you posted!


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Jet-pack adventures!

I still remember finding the first Rocketeer comic book abandoned on the shelves of the Comunardi bookstore in Turin.
I was in my last year of high school or first year of university – it is a known fact that I spent most of those years lurking in bookstores.

Rocketeer+1

With Dave Stevens’ Rocketeer it was love at first sight – the comic featured everything I loved about pulps and period adventure.
And Betty! Continue reading →