Christmas | Karavansara

Christmas Surprise

25 December 2015 by Davide Mana Leave a comment

29 December 2014
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

I often remark on my lack of skill when it comes to drawing.
Apart from some personal “problems” – my hand tends to be heavy – I think any artistic proficiency I had was fully eradicated in primary school: much as I loved dabbling with pencils and paper when I was a kid, the first two years of school were totally language-oriented. Sketching or “fooling around with pencils” was actively discouraged.
As a result, I’m good at words, but I can’t draw to save my life.

And yet…
Back when I worked in a call center, to pass the long idle hours of the night shift, I got me a handbook – the ten times excellent Keys to Drawing, by Bert Dodson ¹ – a drawing block and some pencils, and in a few months I went from completely helpless to not half bad at drawing still lifes and quick scenes.
Nothing worth writing home about, but from the absolute nothing that had characterized my life for twenty-odd years, it was certainly an improvement. Continue reading →

22 December 2014
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

Christmas Idleness

This is the Christmas week, and Karavansara will slow down a bit – we’ll stick to schedule, with little variations or extras.

All things considered, I’m pretty tired, and I’ll take the opportunity to shut down all unnecessary systems, lay low, and try to recharge my batteries.

So, as for the next ten days, I will… Continue reading →

25 October 2014
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

Planning for 2015

I was reading this interesting post on Percival Constantine’s blog, the other day.

Now, I’m always thinking in serials, when I write.
Granted, I wrote a few one shots, but – probably due to my preferences in reading – I tend to prefer short fiction that goes in series.

Right now I’m working on my first English-language novel (I know, I know, I told you so already, ad nauseam), and I’m thinking of it in terms of the first episode in a serial.
I’ve two other stories featuring the same character – both currently in the form of a logline, but promising.
Then, of course, we’ll see what the publisher and the readers have to say about that.

As soon as I deliver the finished novel, I’ll start on my next project – once again, a serial. Continue reading →

26 May 2014
by Davide Mana 2 Comments

You don’t know Jack… but you will

Many years ago I spent a long night with some friends, eating Chinese and talking writing.
Fueled by Cantonese Rice and Flambé Dumplings, we came to the conclusion that the best ideas are those that feel completely crazy, and that make us a little scared, a little uneasy.
Not so much scared as in a John Carpenter movie, more scared as in “heck, how am I going to pull this one?”

If you can answer that question, you’ve got a good story idea in your hands.

So each one of us, that night, set down his own impossible story idea, and the morning after, these were forgotten.
Or at least tucked away in some dark corner of our memory.

That night, I invented Jack Nada. Continue reading →

25 December 2013
by Davide Mana Leave a comment

The Abode of Snow

What’s Christmas without snow?
Should snow be scarce – just as it is where I am sitting right now – we can always find it in a good book.

Scotsman Andrew Wilson was a Journalist for the Bombay Times and later with the China Mail, in the second half of the 19th century.
Later still he became editor for the Times of India and the Bombay Gazette.
He chronicled the campaigns of Colonel Gordon in China, but his literary fame rests on a collection of travel writings that goes under the title of The Abode of Snow: Observations on a Journey from Chinese Tibet to the Indian Caucasus through the Upper Valleys of the Himalaya.