Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai

Tag Archives: postaweek


by 3 Comments

Music for Writing

Music was mentioned in a comment to one of my rambling “I’a writer, look at the way I do it!” posts a few weeks back.
I said I’ll write more on the subject of music and writing.
Here we go.
While it is not one of my favorite writing tools, I do use music when writing.

Music has, for me, three main functions :

  • as a distraction filter (for me, it works far better than Focus Writer and other such software)
  • as a soundtrack for my stories and for specific scenes
  • and as a tool to help me define characters.

Let’s see… Continue reading →


by 2 Comments

How I became a hack, part two

I’m stealing a leaf from Barry Reese here*.
In yesterday’s post on his blog, Mr Reese posted the first two episode of the old 1964 Hanna & Barbera series, Johnny Quest – and he sent me down memory lane, big time.

So I dug around the web, and found out a 2 hours 20 minutes documentary on that old series that enthralled me as a kid.
The thing is available in small installments on YouTube.
And it’s great.
And I’m posting the link here.

Continue reading →


by 1 Comment

Jotting down notes for future stories

It’s been a while since I have been writing regularly, but things are looking if not up, at least relatively level, so I’m slowly getting back on track.
Lots of dead weight to drop, gotta find new horizons, thatsort of stuff…

Right now, apart from working on two non-fiction projects, I’m looking for possible markets, and preparing to contribute to the second season of the collective Italian web-novel 2 Minutes to Midnight.
It’s fun, and it’s a great exercise, working on a round robin.

AND, I’m jotting down notes for a one shot modern horror tale, and for what could turn out as a series.

I was revising my hypothetical series stuff, before I started writing this post.
A series.
Adventuring, swashbuckling, some yog-sothoteries.
In other words, sword & sorcery.
Two main characters, moving from Alexandria (Aegypt) towards the heart of Central Asia, in the 4th century.
HIstory used as a generic backdrop, not as a central issue – so I’ll be playing fast and loose if the need be.
I’d like to set the earlier stories in the Mediterranean area. Continue reading →


by Leave a comment

A Scotsman in the Great Kahn’s Court

Short and fun, tonight.
In 1938, actor Gary Cooper starred in a movie very loosely based on Marco Polo’s Il Milione.

The movie, The Adventures of Marco Polo, also featured Basil Rathbone as the weasely Ahmed, and a young Lana Turner in a small role.
It was an average adventure movie, with a great poster.

The_Adventures_of_Marco_Polo-634349137-large

BUT… Continue reading →


by 1 Comment

Characters – a Handbook

cover26776-mediumI’ll admit it – I’m a sucker for a good book about writing.
I find writing manuals and books about the craft hugely entertaining.
There’s always something good to be learned, always some bit that can spark a whole new line of thought.
In this sense, my latest catch is exactly the sort of book about writing I love.

The Art of Character, by David Corbett (Penguin, 2013), is both an entertaining read, and the sort of book I’ll go back to in the future, and which will have me thinking as I read, write, watch movies.
This book hits deep.
Continue reading →


by 4 Comments

The Master of Dragons

Henry Bedford-Jones was known as King of the Pulps – the sort of man that writes two novels at the same time, working on two typewriters*.
Bedford-Jones loved Dumas, and if historical adventure was probably is preferred field, he also wrote any other kind of story he was able to sell to the pulps.
A real pulp writer, he had a dozen pen names.

One of the best, earlier finds of this year is the reprints of H. Bedford-Jones stories by pulp specialists Black Dog Books, which complement the meagre selection of stories in the public domain found through the Gutenberg Project and its Australian counterpart.

The Master of Dragons collects the stories starring O’Neil and Burke, two American adventurers that find themselves in the employ of the self-styled Governor of Szechwan in the 1920s. Continue reading →


by 4 Comments

The Treasure Hunter (2009)

Set in “the great desert northwest of China”, The Treasure Hunter, a Taiwanese fantasy adventure feature from 2009, is a fun movie with some minor drawbacks.

The story steals happily from a number of classics – from Indiana Jones movies and the Mummy franchise (unscrupulous archeologists, lost cities), with major nods towards Romancing the Stone (the shy woman involved in an outrageous plot), Highlander (some pretty Kurgan-ish warriors), the old Army of Darkness (a certain Raimi-esque use of camerawork), to old Spaghetti-western (costumes, sets). Continue reading →