This picture was posted yesterday on my Facebook wall.
I’ve yet to decide if it was somebody’s idea of a joke – but I did nor consider it particularly funny1.
Maybe comes from the fact that I write instead of posing at being a writer, but experience has taught me there is no magical artifact.
The only magic formula is
shut up and write
Which is what I will do.
I’m having a lot of fun – and I’m learning a lot – with the first of the two reprint volumes of Blood’n’Thunder.
For the uninitiated – but then, why are you here? – Blood’n’Thunder is one of the most respected, if not the most respected fanzine dedicated to the world of pulps, serials, radio dramas and related topics.
Edited by Ed Hulse (whose Guide to the Pulps is the definitive resource on the subject), and published by Murania Press, the magazine has always been a sort of Sacred Grail for me here in the back of beyond.
The red-covered trade paperback volume called The Best of Blood’n’Thunder collects articles from the long lost first ten issues of the magazine, and it is a veritable treasure trove of information, analysis and surprises. Continue reading
Last week, we started discussing the strange legacy of the pulps, of German Kriminalfilm and of Italian Giallo on the development of slasher movies.
Lucia Patrizi, webmistress of the blog Il Giorno degli Zombi1, horror expert and an accomplished writer on her own right, is giving us a preview of her forthcoming essay on slasher cinema.
In case you missed the first installment, you can find it here.
Nowe, it’s time to meet the Master – and see how Mario Bava created a whole new genre of cinema.
Enjoy!
Considering yesterday was the Talk like a Pirate Day (and it still is, somewhere in the world, for a few minutes), today here’s a selection of highlights from the 1976 movie Swashbuckler, still one of my favorite pirate movies.
Great music.
Enjoy!
Blister me if it ain’t the blasted Talk like a Pirate Day in this Year of Our Lord 2015!
Forsooth, there ain’t a better way to toast the Coastwise Brotherhood, than sharing with the crew a gallery of paintings (stolen, for sure) by that masterful pyratical scallywag, master Don Maitz.
An’ that’s a true word!
Talking of masterless men, last week, I was reminded of this poem by Jia Dao, a Chinese poet from the Tang Dynasty.
For ten years I have been polishing this sword;
Its ice-sharp edge has never been put to the test.
Now I am holding it and showing it to you, sir:
Is there anyone suffering from injustice?
It sort of gets you in the mood for a story, right?
Something with action and elegance, maybe?
And so I became a guinea pig.
Unsurprising, some of you might say.
Ok, ok.
It went like this…
I already mentioned, ad nauseam, that I love MOOCs and online learning – to me, taking part in a MOOC is a great way to do research at university level, to tickle my curiosity1, and to spend my free time here in the desert hills of Astigianistan.
This autumn, I’ve enrolled in a MOOC, hosted by FutureLearn, about mindfulness. Continue reading
Karavansara 