… And here’s the new cover for Aculeo & Amunet’s first collection of short stories, once again the work of the extraordinary Luca Morandi.
Tag Archives: Aculeo & Amunet
The White Ape is back…
The new cover for Aculeo & Amunet’s second outing, again by the fantastic Luca Morandi.
New covers for Aculeo & Amunet
One of the best features offered by ebooks is the option of updating the files.
In the last few days we’ve been hard at work on some new covers for my Aculeo & Amunet ebooks.
Reader feedback has been pretty consistent in the past months – the readers love the stories, but they don’t like the covers.
And we know it’s the covers that sell the stories.
So, in a few hours the ebooks will be up with new artwork1 – the work of Italian graphic master, Luca Morandi.
And the readers of Karavansara can take a glimpse at the first of the three new covers, right here and now.
Riding the Leviathan
World-building.
So far I’ve had it easy – most of my fantasy is historical fantasy, after all, and the action takes place in historical settings or pretty close to them.
World-building means a good history reference book (or five) and a few pages of notes on what’s hiding in the cracks of what we consider historical.
I’ve worked like that on the Aculeo & Amunet stories (set in the Third Century AD), on my novel The Ministry of Thunder (set in 1936 China), and on my current Le Corsaire project (set in the Mediterranean area, in the 1950s).
And the Corsair stories are not even fantasy – they are action thrillers.
Yes, even on my science fiction novel, The Hunt for Tethys1, I did most of my worldbuilding on a handful of post-its. Continue reading
Talk like a Roman
A great vlog post by the esteemed Lindybeige about language in Ancient Rome – a post that has a very close connection with my Aculeo & Amunet stories1 – and also has a certain connection whit the Great Swape Debate.
Enjoy.
Related articles
- yes, I still remember the guy that said a Roman centurion would never use the expression “cuckold“ ↩
Two voices
One thing I’ve mentioned already, I think, is how, writing in both Italian and English, my writing changes.
Clearly, the two languages syntaxes are different, but it’s also my way of building phrases, and the rhythm of the phrases.
The dialogues change, the interplay between characters.
It’s not like I’m two different writers but, well, almost.
It’s clearly two different voices I’m dealing with – voices that go deeper than the tone and language of the individual stories. Continue reading
What do they take home at the end?
I’ve been thinking about what a reader takes home, so to speak, from a story.
Now, while I do not put much stock into message-laden stories, stories that push agendas and so on, I know that when I write I have a few things I’d like my readers to get: the attitude of my characters to certain issues.
I was pretty surprised, for instance, when a review was posted, way back, of one of the Aculeo & Amunet stories, the reviewer commenting passingly, and enthusiastically, on the lead’s breasts1.
The review was very positive, and it was pretty obvious the reader had enjoyed my story very much.
And I’m very happy and proud of this.
And yet I was surprised because I did not think I had placed that much attention, writing the story, on certain details of the lead’s anatomy, nor I ever described Amunet’s … ehm, physical assets as particularly impressive2: Amunet’s striking in many ways, and she’s certainly fascinating and attractive, but, well, her chest is not… ok, you catch my drift. Continue reading
Karavansara 