IWSG: Fan Email? and Beta 'Bad Apps'

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop! 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. So far, this week has been one of letter/email writing in regards to my fiction work and not so much of writing or editing the fiction itself. I did complete the first draft of my first short story in two years over the weekend though. But read on for more about that letter-writing to, supposedly, fans. I also answer the optional question of the month and have the latest on the beta version of my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps".

IWSG Question of the Month

Now for the IWSG question for December: As a writer, what was one of the coolest/best gifts you ever received? That's an easy one. The coolest and best gift I've ever gotten as a writer is my talent and inclination to write. Now as far as material gifts go, that's not so easy to answer so I'll just settle for the above.

Author's Fan Email?

I don't get a lot of fan email (much less, fan snail mail), being the obscure writer I am. However, I received a couple of emails over the weekend showing interest in one of my single-short story books, or chapbooks as they used to be called, "Circa Sixty Years Dead". Both emails basically said it should be on top lists in GoodReads and Amazon. The later email seemed legit, especially after I researched the internet for the sender. So, I sent my reply, thanking the sender, in a separate email.

The earlier email, however, did not read so sincere. At first, it struck me as being written by generative AI, but when I put it through Grammerly's AI detector the results indicated that it was written by a live human being. Even so, the email contained far too much flattery and the booklists the sender referred to were almost all non-existent or not known enough to come up on an internet search. So, I didn't respond to that one even in a separate email. If you're not familiar with the fan, you need to take precaution and do your research because there are just too many hackers and scammers from the darkest regions of cyberspace. None of us writers want to end up like Lauren Bacall's character in that '80s movie, "The Fan" or Stephen King’s author protagonist in “Misery”!

'Bad Apps' Beta Release

I started emailing some links to the beta version of "Bad Apps" to some of the people who showed an interest in volunteering to beta read. I'll be sending links to more volunteers. I'm still accepting readers. I'm trying to reach a minimum quota of 10. So, if anyone's interested, please email me at sarellano@gmail.com. For more details on beta reading "Bad Apps", see my post from last week.

Besides distributing links to the "Bad Apps" beta book, I'll be putting together the Holiday Edition of my free author's newsletter, "Night Creatures' Call", which you can subscribe to here if you haven't already. Also, look out for some big discounts on my and hundreds of other indie author's books at the Smashwords End of Year Sale, which starts December 8th!

What was the best or coolest gift you received as a writer? Do you take precaution when responding to an email from a fan you’re not familiar with? Today’s IWSG is brought to you by these super co-hosts: Tara Tyler, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, Liza, and Natalie Aguirre! IWSG was founded by awesome author Alex Cavanaugh, writer of the Cassa Series of novels!

Until next time . . .

Book-To-Movie: Stephen King’s 'The Raft'

Credit: Pixabay.com It's the third Saturday of the month and so that means it's time for another Book-To-Movie ! In a Book-To-Movie we review a book and its movie adaptation. One of the reasons I as a horror fan don’t read a lot of Stephen King’s work is because most of it consists of novels that go more than 400 pages. I have a short attention span when it comes to reading, ironically since I consider myself an avid reader, and so I normally won’t read a work that is much more than the equivalent to a 350-page mass market paperback. The other reason why I don’t read a lot of King’s work is that, as literary scholars will tell you, a lot of his writing is poor. However, he does have some good writing in his works, especially his earlier stuff, including his short horror tales. So if I read anything by Stephen King it’s usually his short stories or novellas. One of his collections I’ve read is Skeleton Crew which includes some of his good, or at least...

Book-To-Movie: ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I apologise for posting outside our regular post-day which is late Saturday night/early Sunday morning. However, I got behind on several things last week and so had to postpone the post to today. I’ve been a reader of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes books ever since I was 11. What I’ve always liked so much about the series is that, like a good horror story, the stories often take place in dark settings and involve bizarre cases. Conan Doyle’s novel, “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, definitely contains these elements. It’s a detective story that crosses over into the gothic horror genre. Several movie adaptations of the novel have been made that go as far back as a 1915 German silent film. In 1959 Hammer Studios released a version starring Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee. As much as I’m a fan of the Hammer horror films, I have not seen that one yet. The only one that I’ve seen so far is the 1939 adaptation starring that other big name in classic...

The Top 5 Book-To-Movie Reviews of 2022

Credit: Pixabay.com Happy New Fear everybody! (Of course, I really mean New Year. I’m a horror writer, so what do you expect?) If you read my Facebook post the other night, you can see that 2022 kind of ended badly for A Far Out Fantastic Site. As I said in the post, our monthly Book-To-Movie reviews have run late into the following month. Well, this is the first time in the series' history, that a Book-To-Movie (BTM) has actually run late into the following year. So, this blog post was originally supposed to be an end-of-year one but the internet in my area went down due to a big New Year's Eve storm. It didn’t go back up until last night. So, consider this post a New Year one even thought we’re going to look back on some BTMs of 2022. In a Book-To-Movie, we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation. However, because this year is just starting, and our BTM was supposed to occur on the last Saturday of December at the latest, and I don’t have a movie ada...

A Far Out Fantastic Site

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