A Far Out Fantastic Site

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 I'm still trying to finish revising the story I was telling you about last time, the one that I said was due on Halloween. I had said I'm trying to avoid having to submit it on that day but it looks like that won't happen. But as long as I have it revised by Monday then I should be okay. It shouldn't take that long to submit it for the anthology that it's for. I probably would have had a great deal more of it done but I "had" to go to that Halloween Comics Fest sale at Comics & Collectibles in Sacramento. Maybe it's a good thing I did because, besides getting free comics like Hellboy  and other horror-types, I came across a new one: Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter . Vampire Hunters Captain Kronos is based on a 1974 Hammer horror flick of the same name. I missed issue number one, so I had to settle for purchasing and joining in on number two. However, aesthetically-speaking, I prefer issue number two over number o...

I'm sorry I'm running late again with the post for the week. I was busy with the Halloween decorating and still haven't finished. I've also been trying to revise a short story for an anthology submission that's due on Halloween night and have another that I have yet to start that needs to be done for a party I'm attending this week! So I'm going to keep this post short. Although most of my Halloween outings won't fall on October 31st, I'm trying to avoid having to submit the story for the anthology on that night. Part of the reason is that I will be staying in to participate in the Trick-or-Treat Book Blog Hop! For the Trick-or-Treat Book Blog Hop I will be giving away one of my books instead of candy! Talk about eye-candy! Consider it candy you can read which, as much as I love confections--especially chocolate--I'll take books over candy anytime if given a choice. Credit: Pixabay.com I will post a link to my book on my Facebook pag...

I wish this were only an April Fool’s joke: the print edition of “Circa Sixty Years Dead” is not ready. Earlier in the week I started transferring the story to the manuscript template but then found out that there were some technical problems. The template was made for a book divided into chapters. I don’t use chapters in “Circa” since it’s a short work. But problems like these can easily be fixed. I simply placed the cursor of my mouse on the first tab of a chapter’s opening page. Then I back-spaced until I got rid of the chapter heading as well as the page break. The page breaks are often used so the next chapter won’t begin on the same page as the end of the previous one. I did this for the first page of each chapter. Now I have to see if there are any other technical challenges in the template but I won’t be able to tell until I start pasting my story’s text to the template. Unless you’re an expert at book design, which I’m not, formatting your own book is really all abo...

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com Update, October  31,  2015, 10:00 PM: Because the sweepstakes deadline has been extended (see below), the winner will not be announced until next weekend's blog post but he/she will be notified before that at the contact information they provided. Update, October  30,  2015, 10:59 PM: The sweepstakes below has been extended to midnight, November 1 (PST)! What do you get when you put witches’ brooms together with vampire hunters’ and witch hunters’ artillery? You get sweep stakes , or more like sweepstakes . That is, the Far Out Fantastic Halloween Sweepstakes that you can enter for a chance to win a big treat! No purchase necessary. The treat: a three-book set consisting of a copy of the short fiction collection, The Fool’sIllusion , and two novels! This set approximately totals an original retail value of $33. All you need to do to enter is answer the question at the end of this post. This giveaway begins at...

A Change In Offerings I got so tired of waiting for Amazon to reflect the reduced price for the hardcopy of Fool's Illusion that I decided to change the 2 nd Anniversary offer to an ebook giveaway. So between now and 11:59 PM Tuesday the 3rd of October you can download a free digital copy of The Fool'sIllusion . You do not need a Kindle device to download or read. If you click on the link that says “Read On Any Device” at the book’s Amazon page, you can download a free app that allows you to read the book on your desktop, laptop or any handheld device the app supports.   A Change In Topics: Sci Fact In Sci Fi Photo Credit: PDClipart.org   Last week  I said that I might discuss my options for publishing my upcoming book, The Hidden . However, I decided to switch topics and discuss science fact in science fiction, which I kind of went over last time, particularly in relation to the story I'm presently working on . But I thought I would go into a littl...

I can’t believe it will have already been one year this Monday, September 22 nd , since the publishing of The Fool’s Illusion ! Although the self-publishing process felt like it took several years. I was new to self-publishing when I started FI on its journey to publication two years ago and so knew very little about what was coming up after each step or two of the process. When I thought I had come to the final destination, it turned out that I had several more miles to go. For example, once I finished the book cover, I didn’t realise until after that I couldn’t just submit my manuscript to Amazon’s Create Space so they could format it for print. I had to format it myself. Fortunately, by that time, Create Space offered their free print format template and so I didn’t have to worry about taking measurements or setting tabs. However, because of relatively slight compatibility issues between my version of Word and the template’s, I still had to grope my way through the darkness of...