Karavansara

31 March 2013
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

Night-owl

I should be sleeping in the afternoon.

The recent incident with my leg, which forced me to wear a thick bandage on the shin and rest in a rather absurd position, caused me to spend long hours in the night fully awake, with the sole company of the Doobie Brothers, my books and my PC.
And tea.

And it provided yet another proof of the fact that I work best at night, when the countryside is silent (well, except for the Doobies on the stereo, if that’s the way I feel like) and nothing interferes with my brainwaves.
A sleepless night can mean two 200-pages books read from cover to cover, and maybe three or four posts written and scheduled for my blogs. Continue reading →

29 March 2013
by Davide Mana 8 Comments

Celebrating the Shadows – a feast of imagination

Because horror, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

Peter Cushing was born on the 26th of May (1913).
Vincent Price was born on the 27th of May (1911).
Christopher Lee was born on the 27th of May (1922).
(*)

Three actors, three multi-talented artists, three men of sharp wit and vivid, ample culture, three great human beings.
Three persons that spared no opportunity to champion the dignity and the intellectual significance of horror and fantasy fiction.

Now, consider how the literature and art of the imagination – call it fantasy, horror, weird or any other way you please – often suffers from bad press and serious snubs.
And yet, it is in fantasies that all that is high and low in our culture – or across cultures – can mingle, cross-breed and grow.
Science can investigate only what the human mind can imagine.

But imagination is often seen as childish, silly, improper.
Stop dreaming and grow up.

Now, Italian author and critic Franco Pezzini and movie director Max Ferro are suggesting we make the 26th and 27th of may – or, why not, the night in-between – the Feast of Long Shadows.
A celebration of the creative strength and cultural import of the arts of imagination, of horror and wonder.

The web is not new at this sort of initiative – from the deadly serious (the Earth Day) to the highly frivolous (the Talk like a Pirate Day), the web has seen many similar initiatives.
The Feast of Long Shadow will debut on the 26th and 27th of May 2013.

If you feel like supporting the plan – be it by posting on your blog about the dignity of fantasy fiction, by setting up a screening of some old horror with some friends, or by giving a learned lecture in a library – welcome in the fold!
At the moment there’s just a reference page (in Italian) and a simple logo/badge.
More stuff will follow.
Watch this space for news.

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* Incidentally, yes, I was born on the 29th of May (1967).
No, ok, I know, just a statistical glitch.

28 March 2013
by Davide Mana 3 Comments

The Far East for Gamers

I’m experimenting, here – two reviews, one here in English, one in Italian on my other blog, strategie evolutive.

And I’ll review a game accessory.
I’ve been playing roleplaying games since the dim and distant past, and I find gaming an interesting alternative to writing.

Recently, I’ve been highly impressed by Paul Wiggy Wade-Williams’ Leagues of Adventure, a tabletop, pen-and-paper game of exploration and adventure set in Victorian times which is refreshingly steampunk-free, and based on the highly flexible, and entertaining Ubiquity System.
The game is a gorgeous hardback that aims at recreating the setting and mood of stories from Rider-Haggard, Conan Doyle, Kipling and other greats.
Maybe with a wink at Burroughs and Verne. Continue reading →

27 March 2013
by Davide Mana 6 Comments

Writing with Pinterest

As I mentioned a few days back, I’m exploring Pinterest as a tool for writers.
And as we know, the Pinterest nation is 70% women – this already makes Pinterest attractive, but let’s not talk about looking for a girlfriend…

For the uninitiated: Pinterest is a social media and tool based on the pinboard metaphore.
You collect items of interest around the web, and organize them in graphical, themed pinboards – providing images, videos and sounds, text (Pinterest allows for 500 characters comments), links.
You can share your pins, collaborate on pins with other pinners, and “steal” pins from other boards.

An early attempt at putting together a writing-oriented pinboard was the Mock Elizabethan board I manage together with my friend Chiara.
We both share a passion for the Elizabethan Era, and it seemed a fun project collecting weird and unusual modern Elizabethan references in one place – as a game, but also, who knows, as a source of inspiration for future writing project, maybe even the joint project we’ve been talking about for years now, and still haven’t found the time to get going.

Continue reading →

25 March 2013
by Davide Mana 5 Comments

Translating myself – slowly

Back in 2009 I planned, almost completed and partially published a cycle of three alternate history stories centered on the character of Robert E. Howard, with H.P. Lovecraft as a co-star.

In The Ballad of Bobbie Howard, I imagined a universe in which both the author of Conan and the Providence Recluse are women.

Then, in The Shape of Things to Come (yes, I know, not very original, as a title), I imagined a universe in which both Howard and Lovecraft surviving their early demises, and living a long and productive life – REH as a Hollywood screenwriter and HPL as the director of Weird Tales.

Finally, in Lone Star, I wrote about a balkanizad post-depression America, in which Texas rebels led by Howard face their final showdown against the troops of President Lovecraft, leader of the pretty fascistic Eastern Coalition. Continue reading →

23 March 2013
by Davide Mana 7 Comments

There’s no conspiracy

There’s a thing I do on my Italian blog, which I call the Pork Chop Express – yes, like the Big Trouble in Little China thing (I love that movie).
Pork Chop Express is the tag I use when I want to inflict my admittedly dubious wisdom on the innocent surfers.
When I want to play Mister Know-It-All.
And I thought – why not on Karavansara, too?
The world gotta know, right?

So, here it is – the first Pork Chop Express of my English-language blog.
And it goes more or less like this… Continue reading →

23 March 2013
by Davide Mana 7 Comments

John Blofeld

His father was the inspiration for the James Bond villain.

I discovered John Blofeld‘s The Secret and the Sublime when I was sixteen.
The book, in its gaudy, cheap Italian paperback edition, was interesting for two reasons.
First, because it connected with my growing interest for zen and taoism.
Second, because it promised to reveal Taoist Mysteries and Magic – which was extremely good, because I was tired of the standard, psaeudo-celtic, or D&D-derived magic in fantasy stories, and was looking for some off-beat inspiration*.

In the end, the book was useless in developing my own magic system – but in retrospect, it was probably instrumental in convincing me that “magic system” is the wrong idea when writing fantasy.
Magic should be magic – and sure as hell it feels that way in Blofeld’s book.
On the other hand, Blofeld’s book fueled my interest in the East, which is one of the reasons I’m writing this blog, and I still feel a strong affection for this small book. Continue reading →