A Far Out Fantastic Site

I've been trying to dedicate the weekend to finishing revising my current short story because I plan to include it in my upcoming book of fiction, The Hidden . And can you believe I haven’t even touched the story in all day and it’s already past 10 in the evening? That’s because life in this country is run by an institution that has little concern for the artist as much as he/she is trying to make money off of their work. The institution: the economy. So I’ve been trying to meet that institution’s inevitable demands. And because I’m trying to squeese dedication to my short story into this weekend, I decided to take it a little easy with this week's post and give you some . . . Far Out Fantastic Finds 1)       “ io9 Newsstand: Speculative Fiction Is All AboutKeeping It Real (and Sometimes Surreal) "   2)          Boise Public Library's Comic Con A public library in Boise, Idaho had their annual comic book ...

Sorry for the slight delay with the post. Last week was a big one. I had family up from Fresno and we had a great time. I had to make a few sacrifices such as give up chunks of writing time, but since I don’t see my family from Fresno everyday those are sacrifices I’m willing to make. But one of the best things that happened to me over the week was that my parents brought the new laptop they bought for me. It’s an HP Pavilion 11-k013cl that came with Windows 8 but since my parents bought it during a special deal period it allowed me to download the new Windows 10 for free. My new HP Pavilion 11-k013cl laptop. Photo Credit: Steven Rose, Jr. Word Processor Not Included So far the new laptop has worked really good and the OS has all the necessary tools and apps that Windows 7 on my desktop has. The only drawback is that it doesn’t come with Microsoft Office and so doesn't have Word. This wasn’t a shock to me because I learned early on that most Windows computers no longe...

 Brazilian artist Henrique Avim Correa's  illustration   for a  1906  edition of Wells's War of the Worlds. Photo Credit: Henrique Avim Correa/Wikimedia Commons I said I’ve been wanting to discuss minorities of colour in speculative fiction and what prompted me to do that was this really interesting article entitled “Will It Get Better for Black People In the Horror Genre?” at Blackgirlnerds .com. The author, Valerie Complex, talks about how blacks are often portrayed poorly in horror. She says if they don’t play in stereotypical roles such as maids, janitors and gangbangers in film and television then their characters often get killed off early. I read Complex’s article just after I saw Jurassic World last month, which was a good enough movie considering that it was a popcorn flick. But the article reminded me how annoyed I was with the movie for its treatment of characters of colour because what happens to them is the exact sort of thing C...

Photo Credit: OpenClipart.org Last week I said I would discuss minorities of colour in speculative fiction, but I’m going to hold that off until next week because I felt another issue is of more immediate importance at this time. Several weeks ago while looking for online magazines to submit short stories to, I came across a magazine called Buzzymag .com. I followed a link from the submission guidelines page that took me to a letter by founder Joy Poger. In the letter, Joy talks about how the production of the magazine has slowed down due to her taking time off to seek treatment for her cancer. Joy is a very ambitious, hopeful woman who has put a lot of work into this science fiction/fantasy magazine that shows in its great content. As difficult as cancer is to deal with, Joy is a woman of faith and is determined to pursue her plans for the magazine. But, in order to treat her illness, she has had to put many of these plans on hiatus. How can we support a great wom...

Photo Credit: PDClipart.org It’s been a busier week than usual, both with my writing projects and other aspects of my life, so I’m going to keep this post short. A lot of things piled up on me especially during this weekend. One of those things occurred just this morning: Google announced that European Union laws now require blogs to display a notice that explains to EU blog visitors how cookies are used. Even though Google is nice enough to provide us bloggers this notice, it’s very basic and general. So I have to rewrite the cookie policy for my blog so it can account for its use of social media tools. Because this is high technical matter for lay computer geeks like myself, I have to take the extra time to look over the policies and advice on how to rewrite the notice which I’ll be doing throughout the week. It’s a setback. One that I support. I understand that the EU has laws that better protect the privacy of users than our own U.S.’s do. I’m sorry to say, but our...