A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: the blogger Halloween is upon us! And I've been busy doing writing-related projects in relation to the holiday. One is the Halloween edition of my free author's newsletter, "Night Creatures' Call" which is now out. Be sure to check your in-boxes if you haven't done so. If you're not subscribed the newsletter, you can do so here .    Also going on now through the Halloween/Day of the Dead weekend is a sale on my books! You'll find more about that below. But first, I just wanted to share with you a comment of mine to a YouTube video I watched a while back about the extensive commercialisation of Halloween. This time of year offers plenty of opportunity to make a sale (as with my discounted books listed below), but we must remember that the hallowday is primarily about the community, both living and dead.  Blogger's Response to Video,  'Halloween is Dying'   (I encourage you to watch the video at the link above to get a better understa...

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. Well, my challenge to my writing these past couple of weeks has been family gathering. The challenge isn't my relatives themselves, but having to schedule my writing time around them. I'll talk about that in a little bit, but first I'll answer the IWSG optional question for October.  IWSG October 1 Question The question for October is:  What is the most favorite thing you have written, published or not? And why? I really don't have a favourite piece that I've written. I do have plenty of my own stories that I like, published and unpublished. One that comes closest to a favourite, and so that I like very much, is actually a short story I wrote several years ago but have not yet published. I'll publish it ...

This is going to be a short post because I had a family reunion going over the weekend and so have had to really squeeze in my writing time in bits and pieces. "Bad Apps", my upcoming book of short stories has been keeping me busier than ever, especially since I'm coming to the completion of the book. So, I've been having to keep the blog posts down to one a month, with the exception of the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop, in which the next one is coming this Wednesday, October the first. Yes, we will be into the Halloween season in only a couple of days! And to start it off, there will be a re-release of a classic Frankenstein film which will be followed by a new Frankenstein film the following month! I'll talk about those in this post. I also have a little bit of an update for "Bad Apps", so keep reading! Movie poster for "The Curse of Frankenstein"  Credit: Wikimedia Commons 4K Version of Classic Hammer Frankenstein Film Releasi...

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. In this post, I have some progress to report on my book-in-the-making, “Bad Apps”, which is a collection of stories about weird and deadly apps. I’m also answering the IWSG optional question of the month. So, keep reading! The IWSG Monthly Question The IWSG question for September is: What are your thoughts on using AI, such as GPChat, Raptor, and others with your writing? Would you use it for research, storybible, or creating outlines\beats? As I've said in answer to similar questions to in past IWSG blog hops, I don't use generative AI to write my stories. That means I do not use it for the creative process of story writing which starts with the brainstorming of ideas and ends with the conceptual revisions such as deve...

I’ll start this post off with some of the latest on my book progress for my upcoming short story collection, " Bad Apps ". I finished, with the assistance of Grammarly, a round of grammar edits on the last of my stories for the book about a week ago and so was getting ready to do an oral-read revision that weekend. I only read full stories on paper, but my printer ran out of ink. But I bought a fresh ink cartridge and so am in the oral-revision stage where I’m reading it out loud to revise for sentence structure and other grammatical problems. I’m also in the planning stages for the book’s introduction. Pretty soon I’ll just need to get the book formatted and, after that, it should be ready to release for beta reading. If any of you are interested in beta reading "Bad Apps", email me at sarellanoroseATgmaildotcom . My post from 24 July 2022 gives more details about the beta reading.  Besides revising stories for "Bad Apps", I've been trying to catch u...

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. I guess you can say I have one writing insecurity today, more like a guilt: Last month, except for the IWSG blog hop, I did not post anything at A Far Out Fantastic Site. As I had said before, I've been trying to concentrate more on getting "Bad Apps", my book of short stories, done. But I have some good news: Because of the sacrifice of my weekly blog posts (which is only temporary), I have made further progress on "Bad Apps". But some sacrifices are not so good. One is when a publisher publishes work for monetary gain alone, which is what I find a lot of the publishing industry doing today. I'll talk about that more in my answer to the IWSG's optional question of the month. So, keep reading! IWS...