Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Flights of the Phoenixes

Rewatching old movies… and not so old movies.

I remember watching Robert Aldrich’s The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) as a kid, with my parents.
I found it mind-numbingly boring.
I was ten.
Ten years later or so, I saw it again, and at that point I was old enough to appreciate the tension and sheer cinematographic quality of this film.
The cast is colossal, and the story itself (based on a 1964 bestseller) is simply great in its simplicity.

Later, I was rather excited about the remake when it was announced. And I caught in a cinema. Continue reading


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A new feature: Worldbuilding

As a spinoff of the massive work I’m doing on the Hope & Glory project, I’ve rebooted my old collection of Worldbuilding Resources as a new feature page here on Karavansara.
You find the relevant link on the top bar, under Features.

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The page collects articles, books and software for writers interested in worldbuilding – that is not only the Tolkien-esque chore of spending thirty years drawing maps and noting down Elvish irregular verbs, but also quite simply the task of providing vivid and active detail to your story.
Or game.
Or whatever.

Check the page out.
If you have any suggestions, if there’s anything you think I left out, please use the comments on that page to give me a pointer.

I’ll post updates to this Feature occasionally.


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Writing marathon

Here is what I’ll do…

No, ok, let me explain.
I’ve just finished the first Hope & Glory novelette, a 12.000-words thing that goes under the title of Glass Houses.
This is actually the second story in this new steampunk series, as I’ve yet to finish the first (somewhere in the fist week of May). There’s a total of six novelettes planned – I’ll write the lot, and then start publishing them with a regular, monthly schedule.

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But that’s not what I wanted to talk about now. Continue reading