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I have the latest update for the upcoming release of the paperback edition of my book of YA horror, "The Boo Brothers" , and a Lightning News Flash of a new Dracula graphic novel starring Bela Lugosi! “What?” you say. How can the long-dead actor of the famous Universal undead vampire play a role in a comic book? Read on to find out! ‘Boo Brothers’ Paperback I had my manuscript for the paperback edition of "Boo Brothers", my book of two short YA horror stories, formatted  and uploaded to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) during the week. I also uploaded the cover and reviewed the book on the website with the online previewer that allows a person to see what his/her work would look like in its final product form. And mine all looks good. Now I just have to price it and then have Amazon approve it as meeting their guidelines. I can't say for sure right now, but I may just price it at a discount off the market price (which I have not decided on yet) as a...

Credit: Pixabay.com It’s time for some Lightning News Flashes ! Lightning News Flashes are, here at the Fantastic Site, searing news bits and bites in the science fiction and fantasy scene especially in relation to books in the genres. Tonight’s news flashes: a space opera novel by Catherynne Valente that will be adapted to film; the young adult series of horror novels, Ameri-Scares , that will be adapted for television; and a rising demand in the horror fiction market. Screenwriter Selected for Film Adaptation of Funny Sci Fi Novel   According to Deadline , Universal has selected Joe Epstein to write the screenplay to Catherynne Valente’s funny sci fi novel, Space Opera . The plan is to give the movie a music theme, which makes sense: the novel’s story involves a galactic music competition. The story’s heroes are Decibel Jones and his band, the Absolute Zeroes, who represent Earth in the competition. The prize?  The winner’s species will be held in high honour....

Credit: Pixabay.com Most of us have our childhood memories of sitting in a warm, dark movie theater on a cold weekend afternoon during the holiday season, watching a movie that really impressed us. One of the memories that stand out most for me was when I saw Star Trek the Motion Picture when it released during the Christmas season of 1979. I hated it. But still, it impressed me with it’s cinematography and special effects likened to those of Star Wars, the movie that Motion Picture ’ s producers were competing with during that space opera craze. I would come to actually like this film several years later, especially when I got into my Star Trek fan phase in high school. In fact, and I don’t care if anyone attempts to stone me for it, it’s my favourite of the Star Trek movies for reasons that I’m not going to go into here. But perhaps, one very tiny reason is nostalgia. And for the past three holiday seasons we’ve had Star Wars films releasing which will probably b...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons I hope you all had a groovy Halloween and are having an awesome Day of the Dead weekend. Some of you may be asking, “What is Day of the Dead?” To get the answer to that question, check out the short documentary below. It’s an oldie but goodie since the narrator seems to be well informed for the time it was made in (the 1950s). It gives at least the basics of this holiday which is, contrary to many of the people’s belief in my own Latino culture, similar to Halloween although it has it’s own unique flavour. Speaking about flavour, like on Halloween people who celebrate Day of the Dead hand out candy, particularly candy skulls. Are they candy-covered, real human skulls? Well, watch the video and find out! Speaking about skulls, that’s one unique difference between Mexico’s holiday and the U.S.’s (not to mention Northern Europe’s) holiday—whereas Halloween uses a Jack-o-lantern as its holiday icon a skull serves that purpose for Day of the Dead. Like H...

Credit: Pixabay.com Well, my newest book, “The Boo Brothers: Two Tales of Terror” is somewhere floating around in book limbo. However, my book cover illustration is here in completion. So I decided to do a cover reveal for you today. I just submitted “The Boo Brothers . . .” this afternoon after going through all the technical procedures and setting it up using the Kindle Creator. Kindle Creator is a new free tool provided by Kindle Direct Publishing that makes it much easier to format your e-book for publication. Much easier, that is, if you know how to use it. Because this was my first time working with it, I was familiarising myself with it for the past two days. But even learning how to use it isn’t that tough compared to other types of software. So, my book is at Amazon only not live. According to Amazon, it can take up to 72 hours for an e-book to appear in the Amazon store although most of the time that I’ve self-published a book it’s taken less. Ei...

Credit: Pixabay.com Before director Eli Roth adapted it to film, th e closest that John Bellair’s YA novel, The House With a Clock In Its Walls , came to a movie was as a short film featured in a made-for-TV Halloween special. T hat was back in the ‘70s, not too long after the book had released. E ntitled Once Upon a Midnight Scary, i t was an hour-long anthology featuring three short films, the last being “ The House With a Clock In Its Walls”, narrated by Vincent Price who encouraged young viewers to read the books these films were based on. That encouragement definitely worked with me. I saw it when I was around 9 and read House With a Clock when I was about 25. Okay, so that encouragement didn’t work the first time but did work the second time, when I saw the Vincent Price special on VHS. I’ve read the book at least twice and loved it. So when September’s release of the big screen adaptation was announced back in the summer I was like “Yeah! Finally!” Well, I saw The Hou...

I know I said that I would have a review of A House With a Clock In Its Walls here this week but, unfortunately, I have to postpone it until next. I apologise for that. It took me longer than I thought it would to work on a bookmark promoting my new book of horror fiction that's coming out this month. And I've come up with a name for the book: "The Boo Brothers". As I said last week , this Halloween horror book will consists of two YA short stories and be available in ebook format. I was focusing on making the bookmark yesterday and today because I needed to have it done by at least the last day of October's two-day Sinister Creature Con which is tomorrow. If you're in the Sacramento area you should check out this convention that offers a variety of horror art and entertainment. I've been to it several times before and it's far out! So, I'll have my bookmarks at tomorrow's con. But if you can't make it, you don't have to miss out ...

Credit: Pixabay.com I apologise for not posting the last two weeks. I was busy getting an early start on celebrating Halloween--Southern California style. Well, in a sense. The amusement parks like Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm celebrate the holiday early due to the tourists who come from all over the world. So Disneyland, Disney California Adventure and Knott’s—all parks that I visited with family from Fresno last week—were set up for Halloween with Jack-o-lanterns and skeletons depicting the parks’ characters. And of course, the major attraction at Disneyland this time of year is the Haunted Mansion, seasonally renamed the Haunted Holiday Mansion and so includes characters from The Nightmare Before Christmas . I prefer the year-round version of this dark ride that’s always been a favourite of mine. It’s scarier whereas the one during the Halloween season tends to be a bit too comical, even if in a dark sense, because of the nature of Tim Burton’s Nightmare characters...