A Far Out Fantastic Site

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. May raced by and so we're already in June! I always look forward to summer as it approaches. I really don't know why since I hate the excessive heat it brings. (It’s gotten to the one-hundred tens in Northern California where I live!) Maybe it's just the thrill of upcoming summer movie releases or making a reading list. I do read slightly different types of books in my genre, speculative fiction, in the summer than I do at other times of the year. But my summer reading list I’ll save for another post. For this post I answer the optional monthly IWSG question which emphasises books and reading. I also have some latest progress on my current writing projects. So, keep on readin'! IWSG  Question for June The IWSG qu...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons Sorry for posting so late in the week. But I thought I would time the release of this post perfectly by releasing it on the birthday of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, most famously known for his Sherlock Holmes stories and books. And I timed it perfectly just in time: it was only this morning that I found out today was his birthday, a day popularly known as "Sherlock Holmes Day"!  Sir Doyle was born May 22, 1859 in Edinburgh, Scotland. Although he was best known for his Holmes detective stories, he also wrote several works of science fiction and even some horror. His most famous work of science fiction is the novel, "The Lost World" (1912), the first book of the Professor Challenger trilogy. The other two are "The Poison Belt" (1913) and "The Land of Mist" (1926). His horror includes short story "Adventure of the Sussex Vampire" (1924) and novel "The Hound of the Baskervilles" (1901).  Here at the Fan...

  It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions. I apologise for posting so late again and having to double-up again between the IWSG entry and the weekly entry for A Far Out Fantastic Site. My excuse this time is that I had family from out of town visiting all week last week and so I got very little writing done. I was fortunate to fit in the little time that I had to at least plan this post and get some typing of revisions done for “Virtual Voodoo”, one of the many short stories to be included in my upcoming book, " Bad Apps "! I’ll talk about that story and the problem with long endings in a little bit. First let me start with the IWSG part of the post, which mostly consists of my response to the optional monthly question, in case anyone out there is not a scien...

Credit: Pixabay I've lately been working on the last of my revisions for "Virtual Voodoo", one of the short stories to be included in my upcoming collection, " Bad Apps ". I had rewritten the ending a while back which I presented to my writer’s critique group last Tuesday evening. Some people told me to make changes apparently forgetting what genre the story falls within. "Virtual Voodoo" is a science fiction horror story about a teenager who, with help from an app, abuses the Voodoo religion.  What ‘Virtual Voodoo’ Isn’t  Some of the critique group’s comments were basically calling for the story to be written in other genres. One such comment was that the Voodoo was misrepresented. I had researched the religion and went through extra means to clarify in the story that the religion was being misused by a disturbed youth who is motivated by Hollywood horror myths and stereotypes. Still, I was basically told that I the author was portraying the religion ...

I have a double-post for you today, since I missed posting Monday for the I don't know what n th time! So, I have the make-up post for this past Monday and Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) post for this first Wednesday of the month—a two-in-one post. Every first Wednesday, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems to this monthly blog hop to share with each other and try to offer solutions. I also have an update on the upcoming newsletter and a little about an upcoming Stephen King movie.  IWSG: Being With the Characters in Books, TV and Movies Let's start with the IWSG post which mostly consists of my answer to the optional monthly question. So, the question for April is What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with? I really can't think of a character who I would like to do any of these things with. Although I imagine myself in the stories that I read, I don't really fantasise about interac...

Credit: Pixabay.com Updated at 6:53 PM on 3/21/2025 I won't be wishing anyone a Happy St. Patrick's Day here since it was originally a Catholic festival and so I try not to mix my religious beliefs with my blog posts, and I don't celebrate the commercialized, secular version of it. (I barely celebrate the religious version, unorthodox Catholic that I am.) Moving on ... The Author's Guild has come up with a service that helps consumers distinguish human authored books from AI authored ones. Paula Cappa discusses this in detail at her blog , which my comment on is below. I also have a mini movie review of "Mickey 17", which I saw over the weekend. So, read on!  Certification of Human-Authored Books The problem with books that are written by artificial intelligence (AI) is that they can hide the human-authored ones on the market and, in doing so, demean the human characteristic called creativity. A market bombarded with AI-written books would basically say that h...