Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Learning Editing for the Wrong Reason

The Dawn Patrol (1938 film)

The Dawn Patrol (1938 film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Its’ very late (4 am) and I’m very tired, having spent the day editing two scenarios for a roleplaying game, for a total of 15.000 words.

My brother helped me – we traded texts so that we would not suffer from “copy blindness”, but it’s been tough anyway.

And while I edited, I started thinking about some weird stuff going on in the heads of the people around here.

Last week a guy selling his services as an editor (in a rather unprofessional way – in my opinion, but that’s another matter) claimed many of his clients are not writers, but actually readers, in search of an approach to narrative which will allow them to understand if the book they are reading is worth their time.

Now, this idea is so mindboggingly stupid that I still want to believe it’s just a plain lie.

But just think about it for a second – people learning editing (which is something that requires long time and extensive practice, and there’s not two editors alike anyway) to be able to decide if they like what they are reading.

Based on the same principle, I should take a flying licence to watch The Dawn Patrol or study direction and composition to decide whether I like Dave Brubeck‘s music or not.

It’s demented.

And yet, there is this feeling, a lot of readers out there are not reading anymore, but they wish to wrestle with the story, outwit the author, and probably show they are better than him.
As if it was a video game, in which you need to outwit the programmers in order win.
And yet, you don’t need to get adegree in programming to play Monkey Island and have fun.

Weird people.

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Raiders from 1981

PBS on Raiders of the Lost Ark, 1981.
The overall quality is very low, but the content is gold.
Just what I needed upon learmning that the Cult of the Rat God just acquired the rights to the Indiana Jones franchise (shudder).

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The Fantasy Guilt Trip

2dw9ugiA rambling post, tonight.
A friend of mine just posted a long and rather disquieting (to me) piece on his blog, about the systematic harassing of women that seems to be an established element in what I’ll call, to be brief, “fantasy fandom” (which to me includes SF, comics, games, the works).
You find it here – it’s in Italian.
The author, Elvezio Sciallis, is an independent journalist and a fine critic.

Now, the idea of women being harassed and discriminated in what I consider my community scares me and pains me on two levels.
The first is, such behavior is not something I can accept – the examples cited really hit me hard.
I hate these guys.
The second level is possibly even harder to stomach – my experience of science fiction and fantasy fandom never caused me to think such problems were in any way widespread, or something more than an occasional asshole to be rounded up and isolated.
Therefore, now I ask myself: have I been lucky, distracted or, damn, part of the problem myself?

Does the fact that I read old pulps and fantasy and SF make me a sexist, racist individual?
Am I instinctively what I hate intellectually?
And as I normally do nowadays, I’m writing to set my thoughts straight – and you are reading my ramblings.
Continue reading →


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“I’ve suffered from my share of personal disasters: the loss of love, the death of a wife, the failure to realize in my writing the high aspiration of my intentions. But these misfortunes can be borne. There is a certain animal vitality in most of us which carries us through any trouble but the absolutely overwhelming. Only a fool has no sorrow, only an idiot has no grief—but then only a fool and an idiot will let grief and sorrow ride him down into the grave. So, I’ve been lucky, as most people are lucky; the animal in each of us has a lot more sense than our brains.” [Edward Abbey]


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Historical Fantasy – Fleshing Out the Background

Sometimes being too clever is not so clever in the long run.
When I first sketched my characters of Aculeo and Amunet, I was not actually writing a story.
I was explaining how to play fast and loose when putting together a very basic sword & sorcery plot.

So, when sketching Aculeo, it felt like a good idea to make him a veteran of the Siege of Palmyra, AD 272.
Sounded cool.

revolt_barbariansFast forward 12 months, and Aculeo & Amunet had their own story – which is set in a swamp somewhere north of Menphis and south-east of Alexandria, Aegypt, AD 276.
Total background research required – one afternoon, plus one evening watching two old peplum movies.
Nice and smooth.

Another six months, and my heroes have their first ebook, a number of nice reviews, and their own series, with two other stories being written.

And here’s the problem – because it’s all right playing fast and loose when you are writing a one-shot short story.
But when you start handling a series, and your characters start exploring their world, you need to put down something more than six paragraphs of notes. Especially if you are using a psaeudo-historical setting.
The historical part is the one which requires some care – you can still improvise in the psaeudo- sections*.

And here’s the big surprise – choosing the Third Century AD in the Mediterranean area was either very smart or very stupid on my part. Continue reading →