A Far Out Fantastic Site

(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 ...

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. 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 ...