Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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On the road to find out

Sometimes, I think I mentioned this in the past, the best way to relax, for me, is just to fire up a Scrivener file and start typing, letting the ideas flow. A character – or two – some snippet of dialogue, a place, an idea. Just to get back the pleasure of imagining and putting in words a scene.
Yeah, I know, I’m weird.

That’s what I did this morning, because I knew I would spend the afternoon working on a dead end project (but it’s paid, so OK), and I wanted to enjoy my vacation a little more.

So, as a result, by the end of the morning I found myself with 3000 words of a new story, the general outline of a 40.000-words novella (but it’s likely to get longer), a working title, a list of characters, some reference images and I found the time to research…

  • casting calls for actors and for dancers
  • bra cup sizes and their differences between UK and US
  • the career of V.C. Andrews and her post-mortem career (and her incredibly expensive ebooks)
  • witchcraft in 20th century America
  • TV advertisement practices in the early 2000s
  • burlesque and exotic dancing
  • architectural terms

And it was a smash.

And while I have a lot of stuff in my file, part of the fun of this thing is that I am making it up as I go along, letting events branch out, and giving my characters ample manoeuvring space.
It’s like following a road just to see where it leads.
And right now it saeems to be leading in a fun, unusual direction.

So now I’m planning to write this baby, in my spare time, and with half a mind of getting it out for Halloween – this being a Gothic ghost story and all that – self-published, maybe both in Italian and English (I am writing it in English) possibly under a nom-de-plume.

Nothing very hush-hush – I might even go for “Davide Mana writing as … “
Because it’s a Gothic Ghost Story but it’s my sort of G.G.S.

But on second thought, not straight away. I’ll save that for the second edition – let’s give time to my anti-fans to buy the book and rave about its quality, maybe even post a few reviews and try to get in touch with my alter-ego to ask for (unpaid) stories. It happened in the past.
And then let them find out…


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Getting ready for Lovecraft Country

How wise is Amazon sometimes!
A lot wiser than we mere humans, indeed, and with a longer memory.
Yesterday I decided to buy me a copy of Matt Ruff’s novel Lovecraft Country. The HBO series starts tonight, and I’m very curious about it, so I thought – while I wait for the series, why not bring myself up to speed and check out the source material?

And so I went to Amazon, where I quickly found out that…

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The reader’s block

Yesterday I wrote 12.000 words – yes, OK, I cheated, because I recycled 5000 words from an unfinished work I had here sleeping on my hard disc, but anyway, 7000 words in one day, during which I also managed to read a few chapters of a book, cook dinner and prepare a special dessert this being the 15th of August… well, it perfectly shows how a lack of stress can benefit us all.
Because yesterday I wrote 12.000 words (OK, OK, 7000) because the day before yesterday I delivered the final chunk of my Ghostwriting Job from Hell, and I was told to take two days off “before the next rewrite”.

Having other things on our mind is a source of stress, and it can make it difficult, almost impossible sometimes, to do what we actually like a lot.
And we’ve all had a lot of things on our minds, these last few months.

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A bit of pulp detection

One of the things that have helped me remain sane in the last few months is the weekly podcast I record with my friend Lucy.
It’s a simple thing, in Italian, that we started because we were isolating at home 500 kms apart, and were both feeling stressed – so we meet virtually once a week, and we talk about old horror movies. We would have done it anyway, as a way to keep a hold on our sanity, but then we said … why not turn it into a podcast?

So far we’ve discussed films new and old, from Carpenter’s The Fog to he classic post-apocalyptic Doomsday from 2008, and then Bride of Frankenstein and A Chinese Ghost Story, and so on and so forth. We have a pretty loose definition of horror, and we expand on SF, adventure, disaster movies, even comedies. We are currently about to record the 16th episode, and we are already working on the 17th.

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Four days out of the mines

I just delivered a new chapter in the ghostwriting job from hell, and so I am now free for at least four days. Which is good, because I have stories to work on, and tonight I am planning the traditional Mana Bros Chili Con Carne that’s sort of a mid-summer tradition here in our house.
The stormy weather sort of fits a hearty dinner.

I am also reading – after all I asked my readers for a choice between books, and it looks like I’ll be reading Stefan Buczacki’s Earth to Earth, a Natural History of Churchyards.
Quite the sort of cheerful book I need to recharge my batteries.

And as we are at it, to all those that asked if, after In the House of Vezzanius we would be seeing Bélise Nine-Fingers again… rejoice.
Bélise is on the road again.
Or on the rooftops.
Or in the sewers.
Anyway, she’s coming, in a new, possibly heftier story.
Watch this space.


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Learning from anime

I’ve had this idea, about a series of posts about what I learned about storytelling from various media I used to spend my time with as a kid. This was in part inspired by a chat I had this morning with my friend Lucy, but it’s a little more complicated than that.
As a kid I watched a lot of movies and TV series, cartoons both western and Japanese, I read comics, I read novels and short stories and non fiction… each of these shaped the way I think about stories, and I think it might be fun to try and take a look at all these influences.

And I’m starting with anime because… ah, because we need to start somewhere, right?

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