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IWSG: Making the Protagonist Go to the Extreme

It’s the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG) post! 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. Question of the Month The optional question of the month for April is: Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work? Overall, I’m already set in my own style of writing which I can’t really define, it’s just that it’s my own personal style. So, I wouldn’t say I normally take risks. There are times where I will go to an extreme in writing a scene, making it perhaps more sexual or more graphically violent than I normally would. However, I think the most risks, or what comes close to them, that I take in my fiction is with my protagonists. I’ll sometimes have them do anti-heroic things just to develop the character and so make it more believable. But

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting outside our regular post-day which is late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. However, I got behind on several things last week and so had to postpone the post to today. I’ve been a reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books ever since I was 11. What I’ve always liked so much about the series is that, like a good horror story, the stories often take place in dark settings and involve bizarre cases. Conan Doyle’s novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, definitely contains these elements. It’s a detective story that crosses over into the gothic horror genre. Several movie adaptations of the novel have been made that go as far back as a 1915 German silent film. In 1959 Hammer Studios released a version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As much as I’m a fan of the Hammer horror films, I have not seen that one yet. The only one that I’ve seen so far is the 1939 adaptation starring that other big name in classic Bri

The Blogger was Out and Under for 2 Weeks

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for missing posting the last two weeks but yours truly was out and under during that time. That is as in under the weather and not necessarily unconscious, although he was that a few times too. I was in the hospital for nearly two weeks and wasn’t discharged until a week ago this past Friday. It was the first of the month when I had went into the hospital. It was near or just after the witching hour when I went to the kitchen to get some ice peach tea. After taking two sips I became really nauseated so I walked to my bedroom to lie down. Before I could make it to the bed I collapsed onto a bag of books on the floor. I called 9-1-1. Sometime between then and when I got home almost two weeks later, I learned that Frankenstein’s Monster partly saved me from my fall. The Doritos/Pepsi cardboard cut-out ad of Universal’s classic monster is still leaning, partly bent, in the corner of my room where I fell. I think I can smooth it back into its original form; the

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons /Harry Clarke Warning: There are unavoidable spoilers in this review. The only way to avoid them is not to read the review (until you’ve read the book and seen the movie, of course). Edgar Allen Poe is not only known as an early author of American horror but also America’s first detective writer. His short story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, combine elements of horror and detective fiction. The story contains gothic elements, a killer ape and methodical crime investigation. The earliest full-length movie adaptation of the story is Universal’s 1932 version directed by Robert Florey. In this movie adaptation a mad scientist is added to the story who does more of the killing than the ape, yet the original basic plot is maintained. The Short Story Poe’s “Murders in the Rue Morgue” involves a couple of gothic amateur detectives, one by the name of Auguste Dupin and the other the narrator who, as with many of Poe’s stories, is mostly left unnamed. The two men

From Sci Fi To Sci Fact: Ferret Cloned; “The Running Man” Remake

Credit: Pixabay.com Cloning has been a theme in a lot of science fiction and horror. However, it became a reality more than ever during the past week with a ferret clone. Also new this week is the announcement of a remake of the ‘80s movie, “The Running Man”. (Yes, another remake. Or is it?) Dead Ferret Cloned Into a Live One This week the ideas of “Frankenstein” and “Jurassic Park” became more science fact than science fiction. Thursday, the US Fish and Wildlife Services (FWS) disclosed to the world that they successfully cloned a black-footed ferret that had been dead for more than 30 years. The ferret’s cells had been frozen through the decades. Then, recently, scientists developed an embryo from them and placed it in a living ferret that, in turn, gave birth to the clone Elizabeth Ann. She is the first clone of an endangered North American species. CNN says that scientists cloned the dead ferret for reasons of rescuing the black-footed species from going extinct. FWS plans to pro

Science Fiction Author Said to Have Inspired SETI Dies

Credit: Pixabay/Alexas_Fotos During the week, people the world over have been partying like mad for Mardi Gras/Carnival. At least as much as the plague (Covid-19) will allow. And, depending on where they can gather, this year everybody celebrating is probably required to wear masks (if you know what I mean). Myself, instead of partying like mad, has been working like mad to catch up on some projects such as my newsletter and one of the short stories that I plan to include in my upcoming book of short fiction. More on that in a bit. But I wanted to talk about an author who died in late December who I just discovered and found really fascinating--James E. Gunn. James E. Gunn Although many media outlets announced it only earlier this week, James E. Gunn died back on 23 December 2020 in Lawrence, Kansas. He is not to be confused with the director of “Guardians of the Galaxy” who also holds the same name only without the middle initial “E.”. James E. Gunn, the author, was best known for