11 Saturday Nov 2017
Do you remember when I told you about my copper mask – oh well, the Chorus’ copper mask in Shakespeare in Words? And how my friend Davide – he of Karavansara – said there was a story in there, and he’d write it for Halloween?
Well, he’s done it.
Not that I’m terribly surprised, mind: the man has proved again and again that he can put together a good story by whatever deadline he gives himself – and so a Halloween story it was… Continue reading
02 Tuesday Aug 2016
Posted in Things
Ah, the joys and sorrows of research…
We all know how it goes. A story – be it a trilogy of door-stoppers, a play or a tiny short – is a world, and, to misquote Benedick, the world must be researched. And you can not find the stuff you need, or you can find too much and get lost in the meanders of it, or you can think you found the right stuff – and painfully discover later that you didn’t… Continue reading
07 Thursday Jul 2016
Posted in Things
Tags
adventure, alternate history, Davide Mana, GG Studio, Hope and Glory, Role Playing Game, Savage Worlds, Short Stories, steampunk
Alberto Bontempi
And today for something different – as in no theatre and no Elizabethana…
Hope and Glory is a role-playing game setting for Savage Worlds – but also a collection of stories set in what will be the game’s world.
What world, you ask? Continue reading
06 Saturday Sep 2014
Posted in History
Tags
Aculeo & Amunet, Davide Mana, Historical fiction, Karavansara, Lindybeige, Schola gladiatoria, Skallagrim
This is from Karavansara, my friend Davide Mana’s great blog of pulp and historical adventure, with an Asian slant. It’s not for nothing that Davide subtitled the thing “East of Constantinople, West of Shangai.”
While doing research for his wonderful Aculeo and Amunet stories (check them out, if you’ve never read them), he stumbled across some great video resources about ancient weaponry, and collected a few in this post.
When you are writing historical fiction (or historical adventure), you never have enough of this sort of things – because it’s damnably easy to mess up… And of course, a novel is a novel, and not a treatise on ancient hoplology – but it’s so much better if, while providing great characters engaged in interesting action and meaningful stories, you also get your swords right, isn’t it?
