Yesterday’s writing prompt reminded me of Yellowthread Street – a series of crime novels by Australian author William Leonard Marshall.
And I don’t know if Marshall being an Australian this qualifies as Other People’s Pulp, but I thought I’d do a post on the subject just in case.
After all, the theme of the novels fits the theme of this blog, so… Continue reading
Now this would be an excellent opening shot for a hard-boiled story…
(the image is credited to Christophe Jacrot)
Italy is not a country for pulps.
Maybe it’s because when the pulp era was at its peak, the Fascist Regime was at its peak, too, and it enforced a strict censorship on American fiction.
Characters like Doc Savage or Conan would arrive in Italy only in the ’70s, and we complitely missed The Shadow and The Spider, and all the other heroes.
Burroughs was somewhat luckier – because his novels hit the shelves before Mussolini’s rise to power.
And movies and comics fared better, too – because they could be translated and adapted: there’s the old story about Mandrake working with the Nazis, in his Italian version.
With Mandrake, Flash Gordon, the Phantom (known in Italy as “L’Uomo Mascherato”), Tarzan and many others, pulp tropes percolated in the Italian comic industry.
So it was in original comics that Italy gave its greatest contribution to the pulp genre – with original characters like Dick Fulmine (we’ll talk about him) and, somewhat later, with Pantera Bionda. Continue reading
A few days back, writer John Connolly tweeted the following…
Something has gone very wrong if we’ll pay $5 for a greeting card, $3 for gift wrap, but resent paying more than $2.99 for a book.
I just wanted to share it here on Karavansara.
I see the problem not so much with the price of books, but with the value that is given to creative work – any kind of creative work.
When the product of your workday is not material – when you have a story or a theory and not a chunk of stuff – paying you is considered a strange eccentricity.
After all, you could find yourself an honest job, and then do your creative thingies in your spare time, right?
And there’s no viable solution in sight.
Yes, it’s that depressing.
Last Saturday I did something I should have done one year ago: I broke open a new IKEA copybook (white pages, sturdy cardboard cover, rubber band strap to keep it closed), and a new BIC black-ink pen, and I started writing down everything I know about my Aculeo & Amunet stories.
Everything.
A timeline for the stories written and being developed.
Another timeline for historical events and characters.
A short but thorough fact-file for each major character.
A list of locations.
Notes on stuff like currencies and other odds and ends. Continue reading
Trust good old Suetonius…
Its vestibule was large enough to contain a colossal statue of the emperor a hundred and twenty feet high; and it was so extensive that it had a triple colonnade a mile long. There was a pond too, like a sea, surrounded with buildings to represent cities, besides tracts of country, varied by tilled fields, vineyards, pastures and woods, with great numbers of wild and domestic animals. In the rest of the house all parts were overlaid with gold and adorned with gems and mother-of-pearl. There were dining-rooms with fretted ceils of ivory, whose panels could turn and shower down flowers and were fitted with pipes for sprinkling the guests with perfumes. The main banquet hall was circular and constantly revolved day and night, like the heavens. He had baths supplied with sea water and sulphur water. When the edifice was finished in this style and he dedicated it, he deigned to say nothing more in the way of approval than that he was at last beginning to be housed like a human being.
Now turns (…) out the story about the revolving room was true.
More details here.
This is a request post.
The first in a series of request posts – or better still, the start of a side-project which started as a request post.
Complicated…
I was talking, a few days back, with my friend Claire, and we hit on the idea of the Mysterious West, or, if you prefer, the West as seen through the eyes of Eastern Fantasy.
We were discussing the fascination the Japanese seem to have for European historical settings and melodrama – from the middle ages to the very early 20th century, references are quite frequent, in anime, manga, narrative.
Our chat started because of Takarazuka, really.
So, Claire said, why not explore this idea, this concept of the Mysterious West? Continue reading
Karavansara 