Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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… and it was the wrong cover!

No, I know – you won’t believe it.
I mean, I would not believe it, were I in your place.
It must be a ploy, a trick, a stunt to increase the hype, right?

Well, it’s not so – it’s just that I posted the wrong cover for the preview two days back.
Yep – wrong cover.
The one I posted earlier was an alternative take we finally decided to ditch.
The definitive differs from that one in some minimal but significant ways.
So I’ll post the right one here… you can use the two images to play “spot the difference“… Continue reading →


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A roguish kickstarter

I’ve backed an interesting Kickstarter, yesterday, and I thought I might as well give a shout-out to my readers, becose it’s the sort of thing that might interest you. WP won’t let me share the widget-thingie they do in Kickstarter, so we’ll have to make do with a picture

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The Blackguards anthology features many fine authors, and collects stories dedicated to rogues.
And yes, I’ve a thing for rogues that goes back to my dim and distant D&D days.

So, check it out – it’s worth your money.
There’s still 20 days to go – and the basic 15 bucks slot is just sweet.
Also, if they hit the 24K goal, they are going to give a raise to the authors – that’s something I like quite a lot!


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Manly advice

Cover of "The Art of Manliness: Classic S...

A few years back, when my brother went to live on his own, I bought him two books as house-warming presents – a book about vintage-style bachelor-pad lifestyle (lots of tikis and cocktails and lounge music), and a copy of a book called The Art of Manliness.

For the uninitiated, The Art of Manliness is a “a blog dedicated to uncovering the lost art of being a man”, founded by Brett McKay in 2008.
I used to read it occasionally – I love their posts about campfire cuisine – and while some of the topics are baffling to my old European mind, I find the blog generally entertaining and often informative.

The book compiled by the blog’s contributors looked like a nice tongue-in-cheek gift – and being the curious sort myself, I got me a copy, too*. Continue reading →


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The Hand of Isfet (the cover)

The Hand of Isfet, my new collection of stories about Aculeo & Amunet will be released in ebook form on the 22nd of September (as you can see from the nifty count-down thingie here in the sidebar) – but it can be pre-ordered through Amazon as of now (and you save a buck on the final retail price).

The book has been long in the coming, but I’m quite proud of the final result.
It features a great cover, and it lines up five good tales (if I say so myself).

I’ll do a pair of posts on the stories, the characters and all the rest, but for starters, here’s the cover… Continue reading →


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Swords (and much more)

researchI’m doing a quick post, here, to point out to interested parties three excellent resources I found about ancient (and not-so-ancient) combat.
Swords.
But also shields and daggers and polearms.

I believe in plausibility when writing my stories – plausibility over overkill.
I’m not writing handbooks, I’m writing fiction – and I want my stories to be believable without clobbering my readers with too much detail.

One thing I learned is, listening to someone passionate about a subject is often better than going through arid web-pages and treaties.
And mind you, I love doing research for my stories, but as I said in the past, there is such a thing as too much research.
So I apply the old Doc Savage methods for becoming an instant expert. Continue reading →