Aculeo | Karavansara

16 August 2014
by Davide Mana 1 Comment

Choreographing violence in stories

I said I was going to take the day off, but in the end I spent a fair part of yesterday afternoon planning and choreographing a big complicated action scene in the next Aculeo & Amunet story.

The hardest part, for me, when writing A&A, is the part about the fights.
Maybe I already mentioned this.

Fact is, I don’t like violence that much, and I’m not very good at describing it in an entertaining way because… well, because I don’t find it entertaining, I guess.
With some exceptions.

And yet, considering my Aculeo & Amunet stories are sword & sorcery, there are to be swords in there somewhere, and someone got to use’em.
And Aculeo, being a soldier, is supposed to be the one trained in the use of swords (Amunet takes care of sorcery – nice and smooth). Continue reading →

19 January 2014
by Davide Mana 9 Comments

Lair of the White Ape

Lair of the White Ape, the new Aculeo & Amunet novelette, is finally available!

“Soon after the last of their Mediterranean adventures, Aculeo and Amunet leave Tarsus and the agents of the Cult of Isfet behind, and ride north into the Caucasus, seeking a safe place in which to winter. This is the bailiwick of the Twelfth Imperial Legion – Duodecima Fulminata… “

Continue reading →

9 November 2013
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

Bride of the LEGO God

Giacomo Dacarro, the webmaster of the blog Trasmutazioni and my long-suffering cover artist Giordano Efrodini had a go at a LEGO version of Bride of the Swamp God.
It’s great, and I think the world needs to see it.
My series work has just begun, and already I have fan-art and action figures!

LEGO Wedding Dress: Do You Take This Brick? (technabob.com)
LEGO Movie (chinabambi.wordpress.com)
Ron Burgundy LEGO Minifigure (firewireblog.com)
20 Things You Might Not Know About LEGO (buzzfeed.com)
Bride of the Swamp God! (karavansara.wordpress.com)

25 September 2013
by Davide Mana 11 Comments

Bride of the Swamp God!

Bride of the Swamp God

It’s 276 AD, in the Roman province of Aegypt.
And in a late summer night, the stars are coming right.
In the swamps of the Nile’s delta, after strange aeons the sleeping Isfet is about to wake.
Young and ambitious, Aegyptian princess Amunet is here to become theBride of the God.
But she is not alone, as she descends in the depth of the lost temple: many are seeking the power of Betentacled Isfet to make it their own.
Sestus Cornelius Aculeo, centurion of the Second Traian Legion, is not one of them.
His problems are simple, their solution is equally simple.
But before the sun rises, Isfet will meet its Bride – and the problems of Aculeo & Amunet will become very complicated.

Sword & sorcery done the old way, Bride of the Swamp God is the first story in the adventures of Aculeo & Amunet.

Available now everywhere, through Amazon, in DRM-Free Kindle format.