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Showing posts from June, 2012

A Eulogy to My Maternal Grandmother

(Photo removed for reasons of copyright.) A Mexican Tree of Life Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Alejandro Linares Garcia   June has been a month of deaths not just among great authors such as Ray Bradbury, but even in my own family. My grandmother on my mom's side passed away later during the week I posted my last article here. She was 89. It was sad but it was expected since she had been slowing down a lot for the last year and was bed ridden since the beginning of the year. So it has been a very busy last couple of weeks for me with the planning and contributing to the funerary events. That's why I have been off the blog for the last couple weeks. (By the way, that's why I decided to write this entry this evening, Monday, instead of my usual scheduled day of late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. I didn't want to go much longer than two weeks without posting. I don't like leaving my readers hanging in mid air.) What did Ray Bradbury and my ...

R.I.P. Ray Bradbury: A Very Sad Loss to Science Fiction/Fantasy

Photo Credit: Alan Light/Wikimedia Commons  It's been a sad week for many of us sci fi/fantasy fans since one of the greatest writers ever in the two genres passed away this past Tuesday--Ray Bradbury. Ray Bradbury was one of the first science fiction writers who I seriously read. The very first novel by him that I purchased and read was The Martian Chronicles when I was a senior in high school. From then on I was hooked. I've read and collected nearly all his books of fiction and although I haven't read as much of his nonfiction books, the few that I did are totally awsome! Other fiction of his that I've read have been, Fahrenheit 451 , the second book that I read, and The Toynbee Convector which I bought the summer immediately after my high school graduation and just before I entered my freshman year of college. Later I collected and read The October Country , a collection of his dark fiction, his dark fantasy novel Something Wicked This Way Comes , The Illu...

This Is Not A Chainsaw

This is not a chainsaw. Can you turn it on? Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Pearson Scott Foresman I was going to post a concept sketch of the cover illustration for my upcoming fiction collection, The Fool's Illusion , but had to look for a chainsaw online. No, I haven't taken up woodwork. Actually, I was only looking for an image of a chainsaw to sketch from because one of the characters on the cover is supposed to use one.  He hasn't taken up woodwork either.  I write horror, as many of you probably already know and so that should tell you enough what the character on the cover is using the chainsaw for. For now, anyway. You'll see the rest when I post the concept sketch next week and after I've mastered the art of drawing chainsaws within the art of drawing period. Researching the details of a chainsaw for a story illustration reminded me of Stephen King's advice that he gives in his book, On Writing : research for a story is back story in which ...

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Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least...

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...

Return to Fiction Writing; Graphic Novel Based on Lost Horror Film

Credit: Wikimedia Commons Some of you may had noticed that I skipped posting back on the 4th of the month, as far as Monday posting goes. I posted for the IWSG blog hop that Wednesday and it didn't make up for that Monday's missed post since I said I had to keep it short. I had to reduce the writing during that week because, as I also said in that IWSG post, my mom passed away back in October and so that was the week of her funeral. I just got back on track earlier last week (Wednesday I think it was) and so that included returning to working on my fiction projects, namely my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps". Needless to say, I'm back on track with my weekly blog posts. So, I have some about my latest progress on "Bad Apps" and, in sci fi/fantasy news, about an upcoming graphic novel adaptation of a lost silent horror film that starred Lon Chaney Sr. Back On Track with ‘Bad Apps’ My short hiatus from my fiction writing wasn't really a ful...