Sac-Con, the Fool's Facebook Page and Gaiman's Tweet Tales

Warning: This post may contain content or links to content considered to be obscene/objectionable by some viewers.

A completed drawing of the cover to The Fool's Illusion. The final version will be digitally enhanced.

Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr.

Another Sac-Con comic book and collectors' show is coming tomorrow (Sunday) here in Sacramento. I will be there and have book marks of The Fool's Illusion at the information table, so if you're in the area, please swing by and pick up a free book mark! It's at the Scottish Rite Center. Admission is only $6 a person (children 8 and under are free) and if you decide to go with the early bird special you can get in at 9 a.m. (regular start time is 10 a.m.) for $10 and receive a free Sac-Con bag! Here's the link for more details: http://www.sac-con.com/.

I was going to make an addition to the book marks. The original copies I made for December's Movies On A Big Screen have the Far Out Fantastic blog address on them. Here's the new news: I was trying to put the address to my new Facebook page for the book on the book marks as well, but I was in so much of a rush to run off copies at the local Office Depot thinking they closed at 5 (it was about a half hour to four when I was trying to make the additions) that I didn't have time to figure out how to add it. Again, I'm not a digital graphic art expert, so I'm a little rusty on the software. But you can visit the new Fool's Illusion Facebook page where you'll find the latest updates there as well as here and possibly more photos and illustrations for the book. So please visit it, leave your comments and Like and follow the page.

I'm now in the process of adding digital effects to the book cover. It's taking me a little longer than anticipated because the desktop publishing software that I have is outdated (it's Pro Publisher 2.0, an ancient old thing) and so it is not very efficient. So I had to download a photo editing app which I am learning to use as I go but am getting the hang of it. Bear in mind, the cover will not be digitally dominated since, to me as an artist, depending 100 percent on digital software to make art is insulting. I believe in freehand art, mechanical/digital art only for commercial lettering. So the figures will be 100 percent the work of yours truly and none of the computer's.

Author Neil Gaiman has been doing a really neat writing project of short stories. He's not only basing each story on the months of the year but is producing them partly through the use of Twitter. It's a kind of crowdsourcing project where he tweets questions based on each month and other Twitter users respond and he develops each story from selected responses. I read his first of these calendar tales, as he calls them, "January". It was really neat. It's one of the few science fiction stories he does. (He writes mostly fantasy, particularly modern fantasy.) It involves time travel. Now he's tweeting questions to fellow Tweeters to do paintings for each story. So you might want to check those out too. There's some really far out ones there!

I'll leave you with that.

Until next time . . .

--Steven Rose, Jr.

Book-To-Movie: Edgar Allan Poe's 'The Black Cat'

Credit: Wikimedia Commons It's another fourth Monday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie (BTM), we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. A few years back, we had a BTM for Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Black Cat" and its movie adaptation. However, the movie we reviewed was actually a segment in Roger Corman’s anthology film, "Tales of Terror", which features three of Poe's short stories, including "Black Cat". And I'll tell you now, I liked that version far more than the version that we're going to review today which is the 1934 Universal adaptation starring Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. I like Corman's version better mostly because it stays more faithful to the original short story than Universal's does. However, even though Universal's "Black Cat", directed by Edgar Ulmer, strays (excuse the pun) far from Poe's short stor...

Book-To-Movie: ‘Journey to the Center of the Earth’

Both the 1959 and the 2008 movies based on Jules Verne's novel, "Journey to the Center of the Earth", feature terrifying monsters such as the ones here in this illustration from an early edition of the book. Credit: Édouard Riou/ Wikimedia Commons Warning: This review may contain spoilers. As I said last post , I’ve postponed the month’s Book-To-Movie review from last week to this week. For those of you who are just tuning into this blog, a Book-To-Movie is when we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. And this weekend’s review is of Jules Verne’s novel, “Journey to the Center of the Earth” and its movie adaptations. There have been several movies based on this novel that was originally published in Paris in 1864 (as “Voyage au Centre de la Terre”). However, most of them have been either made for TV or video. Because I believe movies are best when made for the big screen, I am going to review the theatrical films in which there have been two: the 195...

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...

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