IWSG; Newsletter Update; 'Genre-bending' Stephen King Movie Coming

I have a double-post for you today, since I missed posting Monday for the I don't know what nth time! So, I have the make-up post for this past Monday and Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG) post for this first Wednesday of the month—a two-in-one post. Every first Wednesday, we writers bring our writing challenges and problems to this monthly blog hop to share with each other and try to offer solutions. I also have an update on the upcoming newsletter and a little about an upcoming Stephen King movie. 

IWSG: Being With the Characters in Books, TV and Movies

Let's start with the IWSG post which mostly consists of my answer to the optional monthly question. So, the question for April is What fantasy character would you like to fight, go on a quest with, or have a beer/glass of wine with? I really can't think of a character who I would like to do any of these things with. Although I imagine myself in the stories that I read, I don't really fantasise about interacting with the characters. I'm more of a "stand-by observer" when it comes to fantasizing about doing anything with a character that I read in any of the fantasy genres that I read in which, for me, is not only high fantasy but also includes horror and science fiction. 

However, it was a slightly different scenario when I was around six-years-old to about when I was a teenager. As many kids did my age and probably still do today, I always fantasised about going on adventures with my favourite TV and movie heroes from such shows and movies as "Lost and Space", "Ultraman", "Batman", “Star Trek” and “Star Wars”. 

Then when I got to be around 10 and started reading more voraciously, I would imagine myself interacting with the characters in the stories I was reading. A lot of this kind of fantasising was influenced by the "Choose Your Own Adventure" series of books that I read at that age. These books were told in the second-person point-of-view, and you would have to choose from two or more questions after reading a scene as if you were the starring character or hero making the decision. 

“Choose Your Own Adventure” books were pretty neat until I got into my teens. By then, I wanted to be the reader reading about the main character and not being told that I was the main character. That's when I started seeing fiction as art and not just entertainment. So, then I started "walking" with the characters and observing their actions, if you will. 

Credit: Pixabay

A carry-over from my childhood fantasies of going on adventures with my favourite characters is in the fiction I write. I try to see myself involved with the events of the stories that I write and in that way going on a quest with the characters I create. That helps me believe in the worlds that I create and the people that I create within them. That goes along with my belief in writing, especially fiction, as a journey--you don't really know what's going to come next in the story until you write it.  And I’m sure that the “Choose Your Own Adventure” books led me to this belief. 

Now for the make-up post for this past Monday . . . 

Newsletter

I said in my previous post that I hoped to release the newest edition of “Night Creatures’ Call”, my free author’s newsletter, by last weekend. However, as some of you may have noticed, I'm running late with it. Last week was exhausting, and so I didn't get the best of rest throughout it probably due to allergies which I get really bad this time of year. I'm working on the Book-In-Progress section where I talk about the latest progress of my upcoming book which is, in this case, "Bad Apps". 

However, there’s another reason I'm running late with the newsletter. You may also find it to be a better reason. It recently occurred to me that “Night Creatures’ Call” would be a great place to reveal the new background I’ve been working on for the blog. I'm going to try to get most of the background done by this weekend so I can include an image of it in the upcoming edition. So, if you subscribe to my free author's newsletter, you'll see the new background there first. If you don't subscribe, then you can do so here. 

Upcoming Stephen King Movie Adaptation: 'The Life of Chuck'

Back at the beginning of the year, I thought I listed all the movies on the 2025 list of sci fi/fantasy movie adaptations of books. However, only about a week ago, I found out that I missed one. Maybe I overlooked this movie because the title, "The Life of Chuck", doesn't sound like science fiction or fantasy. It sounds more biographical in which this movie based on a Stephen King novella of the same name is in its style. According to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB), the movie is a genre-bender that presents three chapters in reverse order in the life of "an ordinary man named Charles Krantz." "Ordinary" yet IMDB classifies it as both science fiction and fantasy. Still, as a ScreenRant article puts it, the movie lacks "much of King's conventional horror storytelling . . . [and] instead relies on [his] amazing work with character." It looks like it could be a good movie within itself, just not my kind. "The Life of Chuck" is directed by Mike Flanagan, and stars Karen Gillan, Tom Hiddleston, Matthew Lillard and Mark Hamill ("Star Wars"). It's set to release June 6 of this year.

Do you fantasise about being with characters in stories? Do you plan to see Stephen King's "The Life of Chuck"? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Jennifer Lane, L Diane Wolfe, Jenni Enzor, and Natalie Aguirre! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!

Until next time . . .