A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay You're probably surprised to see me posting so early in the month. For at least since the beginning of the year, I've been posting at the end of each month. But I thought I should post something now to keep everyone updated on my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps". Since I'm not a deadline-oriented person, I try to keep people updated as much as possible on my book projects so they can have a sense of how close I am to publishing it. And it is a lot closer yet! "Bad Apps" Blurb "Bad Apps" is a collection of techno-horror short stories. They explore mobile device apps that are strange, sinister, and deadly. Many of these stories encounter the weirdly scientific while others go right to the brink of the supernatural. Some of the stories blur the lines between reality and virtual reality, others feature handheld devices that connect to parallel universes and alternative timelines. One story involves a young woman who discov...

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and so it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) monthly 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. The last few days have been exhausting for me. I've been trying to keep everyone updated here at my blog on the progress of my upcoming book, "Bad Apps", preparing the manuscript for upload to Kindle Direct, and working with the illustrator on the book's cover. Plus it's been in the triple digits here in Sacramento, California which I've had to walk through and wait in for the public transportation that I take to and from my day job of library tech. So, the last couple of days have been so exhausting to the point where I've nearly fallen asleep over the computer and so would end up conking out on the couch for the rest of the night.  Yet I've been working around all that. Even though I was ...

It's not only the first of the month but the first Wednesday of the month! So it’s time for the Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) monthly 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.  Challenges There've been a couple challenges I've had to deal with in my writing, especially in preparing my newest book of short fiction, " Bad Apps ", for publication. That's been especially the case with finding a designer for my book's cover, in which I was about to hire one last week until there was a disagreement with the pricing. You can read that in more detail in my latest blog post outside of IWSG which I published (can you believe it?) only last night! So, that was kind of my other writing challenge that I had: my blog posts' schedules got backed up and so I've been trying to cram in both. I think a lot of it had to do with some bad sleep I was g...

Credit: Pixabay.com Update: The Alt text for the illustration at the top of this post has had a slight phrase-change as of 7/3/2026. Whereas the phrase used to read as "a gorilla", it has now been changed to "an ape".  During all of June, I’ve seemed to have been possessed by the Spirit of ’76. I had been staying up nights hunting on internet for and collecting US 250th anniversary  commemorative coins and even some American Bicentennial artifacts from a year that celebrated a revolution while social and cultural revolutions were currently going. This Fourth of July here in the US we’ll be celebrating 250 years of our nation’s freedom, or at least some level of freedom. And, like what the many of the computer hobbyists believed in the 1970s, and to quote a 1984 phrase by Stewart Brand , “information wants to be free.” And it’s because of them that information became free, at least to some extent. It’s way more easily accessible than it used to be. We can fit persona...

Credit: Pixabay The last four or so weeks have been a time of making revisions suggested by beta readers to my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps". Those revisions are almost complete. This past week, specifically, has been a time of revising the book’s blurb. The most important change I made to the blurb has to do with genre classification. But first let me mention some of the notable changes to the book itself. Latest Revisions to 'Bad Apps' The most notable of the latest revisions I made to "Bad Apps" is actually a small one, yet a very important one. One of the beta readers had suggested that I mention AI in one of the stories. I had already referred to artificial intelligence in the book’s introduction and in a few of the other stories. In fact, in one it’s the deadly antagonist. However, I needed to reflect AI in another story because that one involves a search engine—one that can read the user's mind.  When I had first wrote this story a f...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for another I nsecure 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 materia...

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. 2024 was an upside down year for me with my mom having passed away back in October (God, rest her soul) and so I had to ease off of most of my writing projects due to that. So, things got backed up a little at the end of last year and the beginning of this year. Plus, I had to ease off the regular writing routine for the holiday season. So, below is the current status of my overall writing activity. I normally answer the Question of the month which this month's is Describe someone you admired when you were a child. Did your opinion of that person change when you grew up?  However, I'm going to skip this one because, even though I admired a lot of people when I was a child--from my own dad and grandfathers to uncles and e...