A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay.com This is supposed to be the happiest time of the year. But, in some cases, it can be the scariest. A year is ending and so that may bring anxiety over the year to come since we don't know what it will bring. It almost feels a bit apocalyptic, doesn’t it? But with the end of the year comes end of the year sales and so you'll find my books at some super discounts at Smashwords which I'll explain more about later. But let’s start off something that goes with the dark winter nights that the Holiday Season, or maybe I should say, the Hallowday Season brings: scary stories. Yes scary, stories of the supernatural. What we call holiday horror stories today, what the Victorian English called Christmas Ghost Stories in the 19th century! And so I have a list of Holiday ghost stories for you below. 5 Ghost Stories for Winter Holiday Reading In general, ghost stories aren't associated with Christmas like they are with Halloween. But because this has been a time of...

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. The challenge to my writing that began last Thursday and lasted through Monday was a cold. That shows us winter is here, doesn’t it? I didn’t want to push myself too hard because I didn’t want to get more sick. If a writer doesn’t take care of their health first then they eventually won’t write well. I did get some work done on my current story that I'm revising for my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps"  but it was very minimal. And I just barely posted my weekly blog post, which happened to be the monthly Book-To-Movie review , Monday evening in which I normally do that by the morning. I’m finally just getting back into my normal routine. IWSG Monthly Question Now for the optional IWSG question of the month: ...

Credit: Pixabay Revised and updated as of 12/15/2024. Well, as I said I would on my Facebook page , I'm running late again with the Book-To-Movie which is normally every fourth Monday of the month. So, today's Book-To-Movie (BTM) is really supposed to be for November. For those who are new to A Far Out Fantastic Site, in a Book-To-Movie we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. I'm keeping this one short because I've had a cold all weekend that's put me back. In fact, I’m still recovering from it. In past BTMs, we've reviewed Bram Stoker's novel, "Dracula", and a few of its movie adaptations. These have included the unofficial original of all of the Dracula film adaptations, the silent "Nosferatu" from 1922 directed by German director F.W. Murnau. During the Thanksgiving week, I finally got a chance to watch the 1979 remake of the latter, "Nosferatu the Vampyre". It's not a bad film, but it has several sh...

Credit: Pixabay Well already Halloween is a week and a half behind us and before we know it, here in the United States, Thanksgiving (or "Fangsgiving", as author Ethan Long might call it), will be upon us! Yet, in my ancestries, we still celebrate our own versions of Halloween the whole month of November (All Souls’ Month, or Days of the Dead) as we invite our dead relatives and ancestors to haunt our homes, to put it a certain way. However, that's a little more of a, uh, mellowed down celebration. So, I decided to share with you a few other events: a talk by a paranormal fiction writer and a psychic that I attended last month; a psychic search engine in one of my stories; and something interesting that I learned about an Edgar Allan Poe quote used in episode 2 of "Wednesday", Netflix's "Addams Family" spinoff. Psychics in Sac, Fiction and Search Engines? Paranormal Romance author Danna Wilberg and psychic Linda Schooler, both local to my home a...

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. 've never actually participated in NaNoWriMo. During the month of November for a couple of years, I did an alternative form of it on my own where I set a goal to write a novella, but I've never done a novel before and after not staying with the novella I don’t’ plan on giving writing a novel a try. When it comes to writing, I am not a novel person; I am a short story one. For me short stories are more manageable but they're still challenging and time consuming to write, as much as I like to write them. I mean look at the set of short stories I'm working on now, "Bad Apps": it consists of only 6 or 7 stories and I've been working on it for over two years!  But there’s some good news: I'm coming to re...

Credit: Pixabay.com I've moved our fourth Monday Book-To-Movie (BTM) again, this time to this 5th Monday of October due to the overloaded schedule of the Halloween season. But, so you can get a groovy Halloween post, I made sure to give it to you before October passes us unlike I did with September’s BTM )! A story by the early 20th century British author, M.R. James, such as "Casting the Runes" probably won't ring a death toll bell as does Edgar Allan Poe’s “Fall of the House of Usher”. And unless you’re a big watcher of b-rated movies like me, not even the 1957 movie adaptation of “Casting”, "Curse of the Demon", will even ring much of a bell. Yet both short story and movie are made really good. One of the biggest changes made to the story for the movie is that the monster is actually shown while, yet, not taking too much away from the suspense of the original short story.  The Short Story: 'Casting the Runes' "Casting the Runes" is abou...

Credit: Wikipedia /Netflix I've always loved "The Addams Family" characters ever since I watched reruns of the '60s TV show when I was a kid. I was sure to see the first movie that came out in 1991. However, after seeing the sequel two years later I became skeptical of anything “Addams Family” from there on.  I didn’t like the revived TV series from the late ‘90s and didn't even bother with the two animated movies that came out in 2019 and 2021. Just like I didn’t bother with Netflix's "Wednesday" series as much as it's been a big hit since its debut nearly a year ago. But I got an uptick in my own Addams craze late this past summer as it got closer to my area's production of a live "Addams Family" musical now playing at the Woodland Opera House in Woodland, CA. When I realised I was running out of episodes of the original series to watch on the streaming TV platform, Pluto , I thought I should read the original Charles Addams comic...

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. In my post today, I answer the optional question of the month and I have details on the new deadline for entering the book and gift card giveaway that celebrates "The Fool's Illusion" 's 10th Anniversary!   Generative AI Question of the Month: The topic of AI writing has been heavily debated across the world. According to various sources, generative AI will assist writers, not replace them. What are your thoughts? Like other types of computer technology I've been fascinated with AI ever since I heard about it when I was a kid. As far as generative AI in particular goes, I think it's fascinating that humans can make a computer program that can respond on its own in a way very close to that of humans in wri...

Credit: Wikimedia / New Line Cinema Warning: There is a spoiler in this review. As I mentioned last post , today’s Book-To-Movie (BTM) review is actually for September because I was going to postpone it from its usual fourth Monday time slot. So, there will be an October BTM at the end of this month. For those of you who are new to my blog, in a Book-To-Movie we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. During the past summer, we reviewed in two BTMs H.G. Wells' novel, "The Island of Dr. Moreau", and its movie adaptations starting with the original 1932 film , then continuing with the 1977 one . Today, we're reviewing the 1996 version. This last one released during the 100th anniversary year of the novel’s publication and was intended to be a blockbuster but was, in the eyes of both audiences and critics, a flop. I don’t consider it a flop, but the problem I had with it is that it doesn't convey the horror or dark prophetic story-telling that both ...

Credit: The blogger Updated on 9/18/2023 at 9:50 PM, PST Ten years ago from last Thursday September 14th, I published my first full book of short fiction, "The Fool's Illusion" ! To celebrate the occasion, I'm running a giveaway, which you'll find the details for below! But first, here's a timeline of notable blogposts leading up to the release of "The Fool's Illusion": 'The Fool's Illusion' Timeline: From Book Cover Art Concepts to Book Release March 18, 2012: The Art of Lettering, Illustration and 'Illusion' June 3, 2012: This is Not a Chainsaw July 1, 2012: Concept Sketch for 'Fool's Illusion' Book Cover July 7, 2012: Completed Concept Sketch for 'Fool's Illusion' Book Cover March 24, 2013: A Change in Font Types June 16, 2013: Finalised Version of 'Fool's Illusion Book Cover' August 25, 2013: 'The Fool's Illusion' Book Cover is Completed! September 21, 2013: 'The Fool...

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. To my awareness, this month of September brings us two anniversaries. First is the anniversary of the IWSG which is 12 years old today! Second, is the 10th anniversary of my first full book of short fiction, "The Fool's Illusion" which is coming up next Thursday the 14th! More about that later. For now, I'm going to help celebrate IWSG's 12-year anniversary by answering the question of the month, which is catered for that: The IWSG celebrates 12 years today! When did you discover the IWSG, how do you connect, and how has it helped you?  My Answer to the Question of the Month To tell the truth, I don't really remember when or how I discovered the IWSG. I probably came across it on one of the blogs that I fo...

Credit: Wikipedia /Universal Pictures Warning: A spoiler lurks in this review. I know, the title to this post makes it sound like Dracula's gone Indiana Jones. Although the summer's Dracula film, "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" , can be said to get into the genre of adventure since it takes place on the high seas, it is a very dark and terrifying film and so is horror overall like what any Dracula film should be. It's the fourth Monday of the month and so it's time for another Book-To-Movie (BTM) review in which we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation.  As you may have guessed, for today's BTM we’ll be reviewing Bram Stoker's famous classic vampire novel and its latest movie adaptation. However, the movie's not so much adapted from the overall book as it is from a single chapter and so this is how director Andre Ovredal’s “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” differs from many other Dracula films. There have been a lot of Dracula fi...

Credit: Pixabay Well, we're in the latter half of the summer now, the halfway point having been this past Monday. By the way, there was no blog post then because the previous Wednesday was an Insecure Writers support group (IWSG) blog hop. If you haven’t done so yet, you can read my contribution to it here . However, the summer is really flying by like a trapeeze artist! Speaking of which, my childhood summers were full of circuses. I loved going to the circus! Until I learned of the dark side of many of them. I was eventually disillusioned of the way many of the animals were treated. Still, I can’t help cherishing my memories of visits to the circus.  So, as an adult, I’ve turned to the alternative. One that also often has a dark side but in a different sense: the nouveau cirque (‘new circus’). This type of circus is often inspired by the sideshows, also known as "freakshows", of traditional circuses of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Even so, they tend to have a much...