Countess Maxime de la Falaise, in Schiaparelli, Paris, 1950 // Photo by Gordon Parks
Here’s a nice character.
Write her story in the comments.
Writing Prompt – La Comtesse
Running on ice
What a week! What a month!
Bad health, broken PC, various mishaps, then…
Just out of the easter weekend, I had to take a quick jaunt in Milan to give y lecture about writing and gaming, then back – two days to finish the complete draft of my novel (that still misses a proper title! Damn!!), then I’ll hop on not one, not two, but three trains to get me to Modena for the Play Festival, where I will spend two days (and one night, probably) gaming.
Then back – to see if a project that I finally was able to get underway this morning is giving any fruit, and to plan future conquests.
And work on my writing den – which will mean redesign and refurbish a room here in my old house – and do it at zero cost.
Then, a little peace.
Until the 24th of April, that is – when I’ll be giving a presentation about my non-fiction books here at the Castelnuovo Belbo Library.
And then back to Milan on the 28th, for the final lesson in the Acheron Books Writing Course (that has been so far a success, thanks to great teachers and students).
And then May will loom on the horizon.
A few nights back a friend was asking how I manage.
The answer, plain and simple, is – I wing it.
Am I getting anywhere?
Well, hopefully yes.
And if sometimes feels like I’m running on ice, well, it’s still a good way to keep in shape.
I promise I’ll post more coherent contents in a few hours.
A somewhat pagan Easter…
OK, this will sound weird, but it’s not that weird.
Well, maybe a bit. You judge for yourself.
For Easter, I got a gift – a well thumbed second hand copy of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Wicca and Witchcraft.
See?
Told you it would sound weird.
I mean, it’s Easter!
Witchcraft? Wicca?
C’mon!
But the thing does make a weird sort of sense: Continue reading
City Beneath the Sea
Underwater action.
That’s what’s happening in my novel as I’m finally in sight of the finish line, and that’s what Irwin Allen was specialized in.
So here’s as a good luck token for my story, a pilot for a series called City Beneath the Sea, that sadly never happened.
It’s garish, somewhat preposterous and strongly influenced by classic Star Trek.
And yet, it’s pretty fun1.
Enjoy!
- and I must admit I’m intrigued by Cecile Ozorio as the security officer. ↩
Pre-Code Blogathon – (the return of) Madam Satan
The Pre-Code Blogathon is an online event hosted by the blogs pre-code.com and Shadows and Satin – a number of blogs are taking part, each one posting about a pre-Code movie or related topic.
Karavansara is taking part in this game by looking back (again) at that weird Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza – Madam Satan.
Click on the banner for a full list of the blogs participating in the event
But first, a quick recap about the Code – the Hays Code was enforced in the 1930s, as a response to the wild, unchecked and scandal-ridden image Hollywood had acquired in the 1920s.
Will H. Hays, the czar of all the rushes had been appointed guardian of Hollywoodland’s morality, and the guidelines – very strict guidelines – that his office enforced on behalf of the production companies themselves: the movie moguls had in fact decided that a central censorship system was probably better than the previous practice of state-by-state censorship regulations.
But between the founding of the Hays Office and the actual application of the rules, there was a brief time in which deregulation was (supposedly) absolute – the Pre-Code era.
When Hollywood was wild – and when Cecil B. DeMille was asked by Louis B. Mayer to do a musical, and he produced a movie called Madam Satan.
Friday Prompt – Wreckage
I like this picture quite a lot – and I’m sure there’s a story in there!
Slapdash & Sorcery
I’m back online for good, and to celebrate I’m doing three related posts on my three blogs.
The first post is already up on GreyWorld, the next is going up later, in Italian, on strategie evolutive.
Let’s say I’m doing a blog tour of my own blogs.
And I mentioned the late Sir Terry Pratchett, on GreyWorld.
I love Pratchett’s Discworld novels – I loved them ever since I read about Pratchett in Michael Moorcock‘s Wizardry and Wild Romance, and decided to check this new writer out.
And if it’s true that the Italian versions of The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic were seriously unfunny due to some translation problems, as soon as I started reading Terry Pratchett in English, it was a cartload of laughs.
But not only that.
Which leads to the true topic of this post. Continue reading
Karavansara 