A Far Out Fantastic Site

I apologise for not posting last week. I was unusually busy with other things. But this week author Christine Rains has been very kind to allow me to guest-blog at her site . Because my post is already live there, I’m going to keep the one here short and take a break on this Carnival/Mardi Gras of madness Saturday night by finishing up a card game of Arkham Horror and then watching some horror(ible) flicks! Credit: Pixabay.com Speaking of games, for the past month or so Miss Rains has been featuring articles about the similarities between role playing games, also known as RPGs, and fiction writing and how the two influence each other. So my article there discusses the topic, particularly in light of live action RPGs (also known as LARPs). So please head on over to Christine’s blog and take a look at the article. Any comments you might have you may post in her box there. I’ll check for them periodically. Until next time . . .  

The question many authors, myself included, get tired of hearing from people is “Where do you get your ideas?” Neil Gaiman said in a talk that Harlan Ellison used to answer the question by saying he “gets them from a little idea shop . . . .” In this same interview Neil said that he knew a writer who said he gets his ideas “from the idea of the month club.”  My answer to that question: Life. That’s what all art is based on in one sense or another, life as the artist sees it. The ideas come from the artist’s own experiences, including the books that have influenced him or her. Each of us, writers and non-writers, has a story behind us. Our entire lives are stories. But not everyone is inclined to write their life stories down whether for their own personal records or for an audience. But even us writers are prone to forgetting when great ideas and impressions come to us, and so we carry a journal with us everywhere we go. Some of the most popular and creative story...

Victor Frankenstein in many film versions of Frankenstein had to steal body parts from graveyards for his creation. Like him, there are creeps out there who feel they have to do the same with images when it comes to creating their art, only they don’t go to graveyards but more so go to websites. But there’s a legal and ethical way to grab the parts you need in order to make your graphic creation and that’s by going to public domain sources. That’s what I’ve been doing for the photo-real book cover illustration for “Circa Sixty Years Dead” . To gather the images I need, I’ve been turning to Pixabay .com.   If you ever look at the images that I display in my weekly posts here, that name probably sounds familiar to you. Pixabay is a really great source for graphic projects, including book covers. All their images are in the public domain and so you don’t have to worry about copyright infringement. Their contributors have been so generous with allowing free usage of their...