A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay It's the fourth weekend of the month and so time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation.  When he was a kid, Ray Bradbury was greatly inspired by the giant monsters of mythology and science fiction. His stories reflect this inspiration. One of these is his short work, "The Fog Horn". This story was adapted to film in the 1950s which was titled "The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms". This was actually the original name of Bradbury’s short story. So why the name changes? I’ll explain that in a bit. First, I want to go over the differences in plot between the short story and the movie, one of the biggest being the degree of sympathy for the monster.  'The Fog Horn' In “The Fog Horn”, an assistant to a lighthouse keeper who is also the story's narrator discovers that a prehistoric sea monster annually comes to the lighthouse mistaking it for one of its own kind. Even thoug...

Credit: Pixabay We're already more than midway through November and so Thanksgiving is almost here. Before we know it, it will be Christmas! November is a short month (it has only 30 days unlike October, which as 31). Unfortunately, a short month can bring a short newsletter and so that may have to be the case with this month’s edition of “Night Creatures’ Call”. As with last month, the newsletter will probably not be out until the end of this month. I got a late start on it but I’m going to try to get back on schedule with the December edition and so release that at the beginning of the month. But even though November’s newsletter may be a short one, it will have the latest details on the progress of my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps". So, if you haven't subscribed to “Night Creatures’ Call” yet then you can do so here .  November also means the year's coming closer to its end. One thing I want to do for sure before the year closes is release “Bad App...

Credit: Pixabay I saw "Dune" this past Veterans’ Day. I hadn't been intending to see it when it released late last month. I had been skeptical of it being just another remake for Hollywood to cash in on during this wave of remakes. But I had the day off, and I didn't want to just make it another day of routine even outside of my day job which would've meant that I would've been writing all day, not that I didn't have any to catch up on. (You know me with my latest book project !) I thought Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of the Frank Herbert novel of the same name was made good and personally liked it to a degree. But I wasn't a "Dune' fan from the beginning. I saw only once the 1984 original when I was a kid and just thought it was okay. That was over 30 years ago so I’m not even going to try to compare the two. I've never read the novel and probably never will. It’s a giant thing and I don’t have an attention span for books that go much mo...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG)  post! In an IWSG post, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to offer solutions.  It had a very busy week last week trying to get out the newsletter for the month before Halloween weekend. I didn’t get it out until that Saturday afternoon! That was way too late for me to release an issue of the newsletter. Not only was it too late because I normally release the newsletter around the beginning of the month, but also because it was a special Halloween issue in which I was offering a free Halloween themed book and I normally like to get those things out at least a week before the actual holiday. But I’m still offering the free book in the October newsletter in which the offer is good until the 12th of this month. So, if you haven’t already done so and want a free book, subscribe now . Like the book, the subscr...