Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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The Mystery of Chapter 20

HowardBerkleyHour-1I read The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard‘s only full-length Conan novel, back when I was in high school.
I had found a copy of the 1977 Berkley edition of Howard’s novel, part of the series edited by Karl Edward Wagner that restored the original text, removing Lyon Sprague De camp‘s editorial changes.
It was reading K.E. Wagner’s introduction that I found out the mystery of chapter 20.

It’s not that complicated, mind you.
Quite simply, in The Hour of the Dragon we get from chapter 19 to chapter 21.
There is no Chapter 20.

Now, three hypotheses have been made about this fact. Continue reading →


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When you go fake you never come back

A few years back, my brother, fresh from his Japanese Language Proficiency exam, got in a job interview for a post in which Japanese was a requirement.

“Here it says you know Japanese,” the interviewer said, waving my brother’s CV. “Why should I believe you?”
“I have a Proficiency Certificate.”
“That’s just a piece of paper, for all I know you printed it in your basement.”
“Try me, do you have a text I can translate…?”
“I don’t know Japanese.”
“Well, if your company has Japanese customers, call one up and I’ll be able to talk to him to your satisfaction.”
“I won’t waste an international call for that. I’ll just assume you don’t know Japanese. CVs are always full of bullsh*t, anyway.”

This sort of self-mutilating preventive mistrust is bleeding into the literary scene – authors post artificially pumped-up bios, publishers doctor sales figures, and everybody seems to think positive reviews are fakes.

Now, my own bio is available by clicking on the link up there in the right corner. It’s not been doctored, fixed or pumped up.
And yet… maybe it’s fun.
Yes, It’s certainly fun.
So, why not devote today’s post to my Official Fake Biography?

Let’s see… Continue reading →


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Toads and Ice Magic

chaitea-300x300And so, as the deadine looms closer, I completely scrapped one of the two stories I have to deliver within the week.
Why?
Well, because basically it stank to high heaven.
So I dropped the lot in the waste basket – and wrote 3000 words (out of the planned 6000) of the new take in two hours, plus a small break to eat a croissant and drink a cup of Indian Chai Tea.

Because here’s the interesting fact – when you like what you are writing, you can write it fast.
Or at least, that’s how it works for me.

Which is the reason why I was able to write and clean up the new Aculeo & Amunet story in two days – and the story, tentatively titled The Altar of the Toad (aka “A&A story #8”), is now in the trusted hands of my long suffering editrix. Continue reading →


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GreyWorld.co

I mentioned my work on the new Savage Worlds setting in various previous post.
GreyWorld is a new universe that is being developed for Savage Worlds Italia, and I’m the main developer/content writer/jack-of-all-trades.
We are starting small, but have great plans (don’t we always?)
Today, the official blog for the project is going live…

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GreyWorld.co will be a gaming blog, and it will collect all my game-oriented writing, ramblings and unrequired opinion. Not just GreyWorld news and designer notes, therefore. My hopes is that the blog will take a life of its own as a gaming site, not a project-propaganda site, and I’ll manage it as a personal/author blog of sorts.
GreyWorld will work in parallel with Karavansara, but the two blogs will remain separate and independent.
With the occasional cross-post.

If you are interested, check the blog out, and follow the project on Twitter and on G+.
Thank you!


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Historical details

smitheeI’ve written about historical accuracy and fantasy in the past.
I like doing research for my stories – I happen to read good books and watch interesting video, and have a good excuse to procrastinate, all in the name of quality.

Because if I find absolutely ridiculous the armchair experts on Ancient Warfare or other assorted geeks that evaluate the worth of a story by the serial numbers on the chainmail hauberks, I find equally insufferable the worthless hacks that place Jesuits in the Crusades, or wonder what would have happened had the Egyptians not been defeated by the Roman Empire.
In the age of internet, checking out a few basic facts is pretty easy. Continue reading →