Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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From Lemuria to Opar

I am putting the finishing touches on a 12.000 words novella in what I, being old-fashioned (or just plain old) would call the science fantasy subgenre. It’s something long overdue, that I promised to my Patrons a lifetime ago, and that was caught up in too many complications to write here about.
But now here it is. I have a cover, and I am going through a bout of rewriting – which means the story might end up being longer than planned. I hope nobody will complain.

The novella is basically sword & sorcery with a thin patina of science – I took some inspiration from the Recent Dryas Impact Event and some theories about the extinction of the Clovis culture in the Americas, and then threw in a few neanderthals, a few sabretooth tigers (because I like sabretooth tigers), and some evil “Atlantean” ubermensch.
The idea was to tell a story about a primitive man versus a much more advanced but decadent culture.
Being a paleontologist, I had to censor my internal censor – this is fantasy, not a textbook!

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Back to Lemuria with Varla of Valkarth

51ys2qfwzqlSometimes words are complicated.
For instance, I had a hoot reading Varla of Valkarth by Glen M. Usher and Steve Lines, published by Rainfall Books.
It’s a fun story – the first in a series – set in Lemuria, and directly referencing, from the cover on, the old stories about Thongor, Lin carter’s barbarian swordsman.
The old Thongor stories were not highly sophisticated, but were fast, furious and fun, and Varla of Valkarth follows in Thongor’s footsteps: it’s good unsophisticated fun.
And I realize that unsophisticated sounds like a negative word, but really it is not – not in this case, at least Continue reading