Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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You are not an assassin, you are a critic

I1Ww9Two nights back, in a bout of nostalgia, I spent two hours watching, yet again, The Assassination Bureau, Limited, a fun movie from 1969.
The movie, one of the many proto-steampunk flicks that were produced between the ’60s and the ’70s, was directed by Basil Dearden, and is based on a Jack London novel that was left unfinished at the author’s death.

Whereas London’s book was intended as a straight thriller with philosophical underpinnings, the Dearden movie plays as a comedy, and a wonderful comedy it is. Continue reading →


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Sheathed in a purple bodysuit

Good old Wally Wood

Good old Wally Wood

This is a third installment of what’s becoming a series – it began with the firm-breasted lawyers, it went on with the busty barbarian queens, now the time has come for astronauts sheathed in purple bodysuits.

The offending reference comes from the first lines of a recently-published, Italian science fiction ebook.
The very first line being

Sheathed in a purple bodysuit, So-and-So went to…

And then we are given a pretty insipid list of actions the purple-bodysuited So-and-So does.

Now, let’s make this clear. Continue reading →


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The Ministry of Thunder Scrapbook

As I often mentioned in the past, I use Pinterest as a tool for collecting visual references while writing.
I did so while working on The Ministry of Thunder, setting up a secret Pinboard to keep all my visual references in one place.
Now that the novel is out (both as an ebook and a paperback), I no longer need to keep my reference material secret – so here’s a selection from the aforementioned Pinboard.

Enjoy.


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The Bug in the Ministry, and an apology to my readers

I repost here the official communication from my publisher.
I’ll add a few lines at the bottom.

Dear readers,

like all start-ups, in Acheron we are working 24/7 to keep the artistic and technical quality standards we have set for ourselves. From the early results, we think we are getting a lot of positive feedback from both our readers and the professionals in the field.

And yet, we remain fallible, and we did actually make a mistake. The novel The Ministry of Thunder was published with parts of the text missing. Acheron is a software company, and in software development “bugs” happen.

In this case, the bugs required us to do a new version of the ebook. For this reason, the defective version of the file has already been replaced by a new, bug-free version of The Ministry of Thunder.
We feel it is our duty towards our readers to inform you of these facts.

If you bought your copy of The Ministry of Thunder from an online store before February the 3rd 2015, please get in touch with us at info@acheronbooks.com, and we will replace your ebook. Those of you that bought the ebook on our website at http://buff.ly/16WUaHj will be mailed the correct files in the next few days.

We blundered. This should not have happened, but it did. This is inexcusable, and we want to apologize to our readers. Rest assured that this will only make us more vigilant in order to make this kind of problem impossible from now on.

Acheron Books – the team and the author.

I can only add that I feel personally responsible for this – and that I am extremely sorry that my readers were given a buggy version of my book.

Currently, both the ebook and the paperback are bug-free – and I think anyone that bought the ebook through Amazon may set his file straight by synchronizing it with the latest version. Otherwise, just get in touch with the fine guys at Acheron Books.

As a further way to apologize to my readers, I hope they will accept a free copy of my new story – which was originally intended only for the participants at my Facebook party. It seems to me the least I can do.
I will post a link for the download in a few hours.
Thank you for your patience and support.


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Character Profile – Felice Sabatini

“Don’t overestimate me.”

The Ministry of ThunderThings are moving fast. Time to talk about the hero of The Ministry of Thunder, the big guy himself, Felice Sabatini.

The official version states that the character of Felice Sabatini came to me after I found out about the Chiang Kai-shek government contracting a squadron of Italian fighter pilots in the 1930s, in a strange dress rehersal of what would be the adventure of Claire Chennault‘s Flying Tigers.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it – but it’s only part of the story.

Let’s see… Continue reading →