I already mentioned how writing my first Aculeo & Amunet story in Italian was a weird experience – how the characters changed, how their speech patterns altered.
How, in the end, the characters changed because of the language.
Now, I’m translating the story for my English-language readers.
Only, I’m not. Continue reading
And so it started: my first expedition in the uncharted territory of other people’s pulp, my first non-Anglocentric (?) pulp read is a free ebook published in 2013 by Dlorean Ediciones.
It’s in Spanish.
It’s steampunkish.
It’s part of a series.
And it’s called La Isla de la Muerte.
And c’mon – how can anyone restist a story called The Island of Death, and featuring a great cover graced by a scantly clad woman wielding two katanas, standing on the shoulder of a giant ape?
Today’s visual prompt comes complete with (at least a bit of) explanatory text – and I hope my friends that love military SF will be inspired by this.
Today, just a quick image – which I guess my friend Claire will appreciate.
There’s a lot of fun to be had writing historical fantasy.
For instance – in my Aculeo and Amunet stories, Amunet tends to be pretty sharp-tongued.
She’s nasty, arrogant, and swears a lot – especially in the earlier stories.
Now, I’m no fan of gratuitous profanity, and yet as everything else in a story, profanity too can be used to define a character, to underscore a scene or situation.
It’s a tool, just like any other.
And because Amunet is a lady – and as somebody said, I fancy her a lot – I like to use this tool in a somewhat elegant, classy, lady-like fashion.
So, how does one go about making his female character say “F*ck!” a lot, but with class and elegance? Continue reading
What’s life without a good, large, massive, impossible project?
I was sitting quietly during a discussion about the good and the bad of New Pulp, the other night
Yes, those who know me will realize that this is unusual – I do not normally sit quietly during discussions… I pace about and talk a lot.
But when I have the opportunity to sit and listen while some of the best in the field discuss the field, well, I keep mum and take notes.
Then I made an observation*. Continue reading
Yesterday I wrote great writers are those that can actually write down what we feel, but we so far have been unable to express with the same economy and focus.
Here’s John D. Macdonald, from the introduction to his short story collection, The Good Old Stuff.
First, there has to be a strong sense of story. I want to be intrigued by wondering what is going to happen next. I want the people that I read about to be in difficulties–emotional, moral, spiritual, whatever, and I want to live with them while they’re finding their way out of these difficulties. Second, I want the writer to make me suspend my disbelief…. I want to be in some other place and scene of the writer’s devising. Next, I want him to have a bit of magic in his prose style, a bit of unobtrusive poetry. I want to have words and phrases really sing. And I like an attitude of wryness, realism, the sense of inevitability. I think that writing–good writing– should be like listening to music, where you pick out the themes, you see what the composer is doing with those themes, and then, just when you think you have him properly analyzed, and his method identified, he will put in a little quirk, a little twist, that will be so unexpected that you read it with a sens of glee, a sense of joy, because of its aptness, even though it may be a very dire and bloody part of the book. So I want story, wit, music, wryness, color, and a sense of reality in what I read, and I try to get it in what I write.
He makes it sound almost easy.
Karavansara 