Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Sunday afternoon

The problem, my brother always tells me, is that in this place we live, all days are absolutely equal. There’s nothing to do, no one to talk to, not even a park bench in the shade where you can go and sit, have a breath of fresh air and maybe read a book.
It’s like being in the damn Devil’s Island. But with vineyards.

Which means I spent most of the day doing research for my next story, and trying to get the selfsame story started… which I did. Three times.
None of those beginnings was any good, but I have the chain of events quite clear in my mind, and now I’m going to put down an outline.
Then I’ll sleep over it, and tomorrow I will start and hopefully finish the first draft, and have the finished work by the end of the month, barring accidents.
This is a fun project, and I really hope to be able to place the story in the market I have in my sights.

Then August will be here, and we’ll see what that brings.
A huge project I was supposed to work on in August shifted to September, so I might be able to finally nail shut the boxes of a couple of stories I have here idling. And maybe start a new pet project of mine – this time, a collaboration.
We’ll see.

Sometimes it’s good to be on the Devil’s Island.


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The outlaws of Sherwood Forest are online

I was doing some preliminary research and warm-up for my next writing project, and as I was looking for online resources, I stumbled on the University of Rochester’s Robbins Library Digital Projects page, which features a number of online collections of texts and materials about – among others – the Crusades, the Matter of Britain, and, to my great pleasure, Robin Hood.

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Triple treat: At the Table of Wolves

If you are reading my blog you know there are a number of things that interest me: pulp fiction old and new, adventure, science fiction and fantasy, history, occasionally comics, caper movies, espionage…
“The kid has too many interests,” as the teachers used to write in their final evaluation … indeed, I was in the third year of university when a teacher levelled at me the old “too many interests” mark of infamy.

But it has worked out fine so far, and sometimes a number of interests of mine collide, and it’s a lot of fun. Case in point, Kay Kenyon’s 2017 novel At the table of wolves, that I have kept on my nightstand for a few months now, and finally started reading seriously at the start of the week, going through it at a fair clip.

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Mutant steampunk rats and a large pizza

I decided to follow my brother’s suggestion.
It’s usually a bad sign when my brother comes up with some suggestion about my mood or my everyday going – because it means that whatever is going bad is showing.
But he had a suggestion, and I followed it.

I’ve been having a hard time writing of late – mostly because after six months of continual writing, revising, re-writing and re-revising for my Client from Hell, and after six months of being spared no disparaging comment about my work, my brain is completely clogged.
I have ideas, I have open calls with deadlines ticking like time-bombs, but I find it extremely hard to write – and so, instead of hammering out 1000 words per hour like I used to do, now I have a hard time putting together 500 words in one afternoon.
This is not good.

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Jane Austen and the Wolfman

It was ten months ago that I mentioned The League of Extraordinary Ladies Writers, a crowdfunding project of the French publisher Les Moutons Electriques – a series of novellas pitching famous writers against classic monsters.
At the time I was too broke to support the crowdfunding, but even without me the project landed 195% of the target figure, and despite some delays due to the COVID-19 thing, now the books have finally hit the shelves.

And how could I resist?
After all, it’s for a good cause – to wit, the improvement of my shaky French skills.
So I went, and bought myself a copy of Jane Austen contre le Loup-garou

And boy do I need exercise!

But the good news is, when the story is intriguing, well-written and smart, we feel compelled to go on even if some words baffle us. Marianne Ciaudo, who wrote this 130-pages romp, is certainly a fine writer.

And so off I am, to 1800 Hampshire, in a story that, for its patently ridiculous premise, is turning out to be tight, suspenseful and scary, with more than a nod at the old Hammer movies.
And a great exercise.
Looks like I’ll have to get the whole series, in the end.
But Jane Austen comes first…