Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Playing with the Puppy

Acer-Aspire-One-Netbook1My old netbook has been with me through many years of freelance lecturing and then for four years as a PhD student.
It’s an old Acer Aspire One and it has served well – it gave me problems with its battery and HD, but I was able to solve them pretty easily.
I used to run Linux Mint on it.
Some mishap with my luggage during one of the more recent trips caused the solid-state HD (basically, an USB drive) to finally kick the bucket.
The machine is still working great – but the HD is broken.
Replacing it is beyond my tech skills, and having it replaced by a technician would cost me little less than buying a new netbook.
I can’t afford it at the moment.

And yet, the machine would be pretty damn handy for writing on the road – it was before, it would be great should it be again.
So, I looked around and tried to find a way, at my skill level, to fix it. Continue reading →


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And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

Get the full article here.


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The Shanghai Gesture

shanghai

Our story has nothing to do with the present.

There is this card, at the very beginning of Joseph von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Gesture – a simple card, that shifts the action of this unusual pulpish noir shot in 1941 from the real world to a parallel dimension.
The card was placed there upon request by the censors – that were afraid the movie could have some bad effects on the morale of the men fighting in the Pacific.
It was 1941.

That card is one – but only one – of the many elements that make it one of the films I like to re-watch.
It’s stylish, cruel, as dark and as they come, and wildly exotic.

Continue reading →


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Planning for 2015

sextantI was reading this interesting post on Percival Constantine’s blog, the other day.

Now, I’m always thinking in serials, when I write.
Granted, I wrote a few one shots, but – probably due to my preferences in reading – I tend to prefer short fiction that goes in series.

Right now I’m working on my first English-language novel (I know, I know, I told you so already, ad nauseam), and I’m thinking of it in terms of the first episode in a serial.
I’ve two other stories featuring the same character – both currently in the form of a logline, but promising.
Then, of course, we’ll see what the publisher and the readers have to say about that.

As soon as I deliver the finished novel, I’ll start on my next project – once again, a serial. Continue reading →