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. This weekend is also Mardi Gras/Carnival weekend! That’s the weekend before Shrove Tuesday which is the day many parts of the world, especially the west and Latin America, celebrate with big parties, dancing and total weirdsville, far out costumes. And in Stephen King’s classic book, "The Shining" and the Stanley Kubrick movie adaptation, you get some of that. Both book and movie have ghosts partying the night away and a lot of literal carnival. After all, “carnival” derives from the Latin word for flesh. And in this story a lot of that flesh is human and diced, if you know what I mean. The book and movie don’t only make great reading and viewing for a Carnival weekend, but also for a cold, winter night. The story is set during the freezing season.  Both “The Shining” novel and movie probably co...

Credit: Pixabay The topic for this post is kind of last minute because I had mistaken this weekend for the weekend that we have our Book-To-Movie review but that’s not until next Saturday. So, I spent the majority of the time getting everything together for that. But for this post, I have for you something kind of like a Book-To-Movie. It's more of a book-to-TV. It’s TV anthologies.  Anthology series are one of the latest trends in streaming television. This is especially so in the horror genre. Although I'm not one for horror television like I am with movies of the genre, I do make an exception when it comes to anthology series. I've always enjoyed the horror that the shows of the 1960s such as “The Twilight Zone” and “The Outer Limits” came out with. So, I'm always willing to give a TV horror anthology a try. The TV streaming service, Shudder, is loaded with horror anthology series. After all, horror is its specialty! One of the most popular of these series has been ...

Credit: Pixabay I apologise for not posting last weekend. I was going through a stressful week which gave me a writer’s block. But after taking some time off, I’m now back on track. February is Black History Month, when we in the US honor and celebrate the great achievements African-Americans have made through the centuries. It’s also a time to make ourselves more aware of these achievements and how they’ve contributed to society in our nation. Many of these include the horror fiction of Black authors which are important to acknowledge because, for far too long, people of colour have been left out of the history of horror in the US. Many of us who are fans of the genre like to be scared. We like to see characters that we care about and can identify with in threatening situations that we normally wouldn't want to be in. This desire to be scared for entertainment is common among people of all races and cultures. However, horror fiction has mostly been written by white authors. Tradit...

  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.  I apologies, but it's been a long day, I'm really tired out, and so I'm going to keep this post short by just answering he IWSG question of the month. And that question is: Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn't around anymore? Anyone you miss? Although I've only met each of them in person once, I miss the writers Ray Bradbury and Harlan Ellison. I miss new writing by them and talks that they did at sci fi/fantasy conventions. They were writers with two different styles yet with similar intentions for their readers and those intentions mostly had to do with getting the reader to see things in ways he/she never did before. Bradbury did this with an optimistic style that celebrated l...