Two for the price of one…
I just found out this piece of music, which works great as an ideal part of a soundtrack for my Acueleo & Amunet stories.
And the video serves as research for my next story, currently being outlined.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opgD0aI4Rdc
The next Aculeo & Amunet story will be called All the Roads to Nineveh, and despite an echo of Zelazny, the title comes from an observation from my editrix, Marina (Thanks! 😉 )
In the meantime, enjoy the music!
Reading Yellow Peril! – An Archive of Anti-Asian Fear, by John Kuo Wei Tchen and Dylan Yeats, is a weird experience.
As the sub-title points out, this big book is a huge collection of texts and images mapping the relationship between the East and the West.
The East as imagined by the West, to be exact.
The effect can be shocking.
Especially for someone who grew up in a generally liberal household, in a country which had not (at the time) any experience with foreign immigration, reading old pulps – that’s me.
Understanding the actual racism behind some classic genre tropes is eye-opening, and helps put in perspective a number of cliches and stereotypes.
This is an important book, and highly recommended – but will raise a number of issues with the reader.
Which is a good thing, if not overly comfortable.
Let’s amp the hype – or something.
In the very end I found a good title for the new Aculeo & Amunet story – which is currently being lovingly dissected by my editors.
They cut it with their steely knives
but they just can’t kill the beast
And here’s a cover preview. Continue reading
Today I’ll mix nostalgia with hype, if you don’t mind.
When I was a kid, say 15 years old, I discovered Robert E. Howard and Conan the Barbarian through the Italian editions of the Lancer Books collections edited by Lyon Sprague de Camp.
My first was Conan the Adventurer, and I was hooked.
Also, I decided this was the sort of stuff I wanted to read, and possibly to write.
The little hardback book had a wonderful dust jacket (by Dutch artist Karel Thole), and it came with a gorgeous map of the Hyborian world.
Then there was a fun introduction by Italian critic and translator Riccardo Valla, and then the stories.
And each story was introduced by a snippet of text by L. Sprague de Camp, providing some sort of continuity to the series.
Stuff like…
After escaping from Xapur, Conan builds his Kozaki and pirate raiders into such a formidable threat that King Yezdigerd devotes all his forces to their destruction. After a devastating defeat, the kozaki scatter, and Conan retreats southward to take service in the light cavalry of Kobad Shah, King of Iranistan.
It was fun, it gave me a sense of history. Continue reading
Today’s media-related post requires a little bit of introduction.
Jane‘s Journal, Or the Diary of a Bright Young Thing was a pretty risque British comic strip in the thirties, designed by Norman Pett.
Basically, stories about an ingenue that would be shown as often as possible in her underwear.
The author used his wife as a model for the character.
But, with the Second World War, Jane took a more active role in the conflict, and was now based on Crystabel Leighton-Porter (who would later reprise the role, live, for a quite popular… strip show). Continue reading
And so 2014 is here.
Last night, while I was browsing lists of Parthian names – don’t ask – we reached 20.000 visits here at Kravansara.
It’s a big number, especially for a small-time blog in its first year of life, and I’m very happy and proud of this result.
I hope the new year will bring more contents, more ideas, more fun for all my readers.
Thank you!
Saw this again last night and…
OK, you judge for yourself.
Danny Kaye, in The Court Jester, 1955.
Karavansara 