Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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A bit of philosophy

And today I sold a short story. My SF short-short Singularity will be published in a British magazine some time in the future. I found out about the sale this morning, and by lunchtime I had signed the contract.
This is another hit in a string of good turns that happened to me in the last 72 hours – so I think it is just fair mentioning that this morning I also got a rejection slip: sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

The story is a short humorous piece, a club story about The East Wexford Knitting Society that I mentioned last May – as I mentioned in the old post, I expanded it a little for submission, but it’s still under 2000 words.

So to celebrate I took the day off – and I only wrote 500 words on my current novel (title still pending), and then sat down to read The Courage to Be Disliked, a philosophy book by Japanese authors Ichiro Kishimo and Fumitake Koga.

I am not normally much into self-help books (but then again, I’ve been known to read anything, even the back of cornflakes packs) but I had read a lot of reviews of this one, and I had picked up an ebook copy for little more than a buck a few weeks back. Also, the title suggested it could be something I might like reading.

The interesting thing is, the book is built as a dialogue – which makes for easy going – and is about Adlerian psychology as philosophy. A subject I knew nothing about, but that is providing much food for thought – not so much in the helping myself department, as in terms of story ideas and world-building options.

And a good non-fiction book is always a good way to cleanse the synapses after a long bout of writing/editing/worrying-about-stuff.


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Hard Boiled & Pulp: Kiss Me When I’m Dead

Yesterday I finished my final revision of my non fiction book (yeah, I know,I told you that already) and I sold a pitch for another book (I am waiting to sign the contract, so it’s still very hush-hush). So to celebrate I went and bought me a few books, and because sometimes the Amazon algorithm is your friend, I ended up with a Kindle-full of (mostly free) books.
Nice and smooth.

On top of that, I got a bout of insomnia, and so spent the whole night reading, going cover-to-cover through Kiss me when I’m dead, Dominic Piper’s first book in the PI Daniel Beckett series.
And it was quite fun.

Set in contemporary London, the novel follows the former insurance investigator Daniel Becket as he’s hired by an arms dealer to track down his missing daughter, a girl that has a history of drugs and dangerous liaisons.
It won’t be an easy job.

The general set-up is very classic and very pulp-style – Beckett is an ultra-competent guy that pulls all the chicks and kicks ass with the best, and if the tone of the first-person narration is halfway between The Rockford Files and Robert Crais’ Elvis Cole novels, the mood is very much Mickey Spillane, and in terms of action and feats, we are dangerously close to Remo Williams‘ territory.

But Piper manages to pull it, with the simple expedient of making his main character strangely mysterious. Beckett has something to hide, some sort of secret history that colors his background and justifies his exceptional skills without ever explaining anything.
Indeed, we are dragged along the story more by the curiosity of finding out who’s really Beckett than by the actual mystery – that is somewhat easy to patch together.

All in all a solid hard boiled read, with enough stylish violence for those that like that sort of thing, and an entertaining, intriguing main character.


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My non-fiction book is done

One hour ago I put the finishing touches to the final revision of Piemontesi ai confini del mondo (The Piedmontese at the world’s end), a book about 19th and early 20th century travellers, adventurers, explorers and other oddballs from Turin and Piedmont, that is set to be published in time for Christmas by a small but high-quality local interest publisher.

We have treasure-hunters in Egypt, African colonial adventurers, spies and soldiers in the Far East, missionaries, botanists, political mavericks, aristocratic thrill-seekers, polar explorers, painters and photographers, mountain climbers and mariners, spread over five continents, from the very beginning of the 19th century to the World War years. The only common trait, they were born in the industrial towns and the wine country of Piedmont, in Western Italy, right here where I am sitting.
They were all bogianén – the nickname that is usually applied to us Piedmontese, and that means “don’t move”; but it does not mean we stand still, it only means we hold our ground.

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Let’s hope it fails, ’cause we’re True Fans

Of all the movies that have been announced or launched recently, the only one in which I believe I have a proper emotional investment is Dune. I am not a Dune cultist, I have not read all of the books in the series, and I can’t draw you the molecule of the drug Melange like some people I know can, but I always liked Herbert’s novel, and I believe it’s one of the best in the genre.
I did not care much for the Lynch film, I thought the TV series was OK, and I really hope the new movie is as good as promised.

I am also a little worried about what the movie will cause – I’ve seen it happen with other properties. I’ve seen the knuckleheads that started cheering for the “mindless violence, vulgarity and raw sex” in Robert E. Howard after watching Milius’ Conan. I’ve been fending back the dread hordes of the Tolkienoids eager to explain to me a book I had read when they were still in kindergarten. They go hand-in-hand with the guys that will spend half an hour on Youtube to explain Cthulhu and the Lovecraft Mythos to me.

New converts are always insufferable.
No really – look at Sain Paul.
Just sayin’.

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Writer’s enough

My friend Alex, that is locked up her in the same wing of the blogsphere where I am, made a video this morning about the fact that “What do you write?” is quite often a loaded question, and one whose answer must be carefully weighed. In terms of marketing – or just plain old pulling girls – the wrong answer can spell disaster.

In response to Alex’ video, another friend, Flavio, confirmed the suspicion – say you write horror, and they’ll think you’re some kind of psycho that loves blood and mangled corpses, say you write science fiction…

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Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust

Not all fun shows are on Amazon Prime, and in fact last night I spent two hours of fun revisiting Yoshiyaki Kawajiri’s Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, an animated feature from 2000, based on the long-running series of Vampire Hunter D novels by Kikuchi Hideyuki.
The movie can be found on Youtube in high-quality, and is well worth taking a look at if you like dark fantasy, horror, and Dying Earth stories.

Because here’s the fun thing – in building his narrative universe, Kikuchi Hideyuki threw in everything: classical vampires and vampire lore, post-apocalyptic fiction, Dying Earth-style science fiction, melodrama and high-octane action (that the trailer above uses to the hilt), Spaghetti Western. The end result is an original product, in which every tried-and-tested element gets twisted and changed, surprising us every step of the way.

The Kawajiri movie captures the setting, also thanks to the character design based on Yoshitaka Amano’s original illustrations for the novel.
The film is beautiful, the world is intriguing, the story not as silly as it might seem.

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