A Far Out Fantastic Site

To close this month of May, I have another Book-To-Movie review for you and the latest on my upcoming book of sci-fi horror short stories, “Bad Apps”! In case, you’re new to A Far Out Fantastic Site, well, first of all welcome! Second, you should know that a Book-To-Movie is where we review a work of prose fiction and its movie adaptation, usually in the science fiction, horror, or fantasy genres. Book-To-Movie Review: 'Trucks' / 'Maximum Overdrive' Credit: Wikipedia Warning: There are spoilers throughout this review. Our first Book-To-Movie (BTM) of the year reviewed a bad Stephen King short story and its almost equally bad movie adaptation. (In fact, the movie was worse, even if just by a bit.) Today’s BTM is reviewing another bad film but one based on a way better short story by King. The movie is “Maximum Overdrive”; the story it’s based on is “Trucks”.  King’s “Trucks” is concisely written with a prophetic warning against the overuse of technology. However, the ...

It's the first Wednesday of the month and so it’s time for the 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 apologise for missing last month. That month kind of got off to a bad start. That week after Easter Sunday I had allergy attacks and a bad cough, the latter which I'm still trying to recover from even though I've been doing way better. I talk more about this in my post from last week , which is also the Book-To-Movie review post for April. So, check that out if you haven't already.  I'm going to skip the optional IWSG question of the month which is What was the most inspiring feedback you received from readers, including agents, editors, and beta readers?  I've gotten a lot of helpful and inspiring feedback from people who've read my work that I just can't remember a specific instance at this time.  Boo...

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 this new year of 2026! That means it’s time for the first monthly Insecure Writer’s Support Group (IWSG) blog hop of the year!  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 hope everyone had an enjoyable holiday season! I have, although its been a busy one, and so I've had to slow down on the writing projects some but not too much. I'm just now getting back into the routine and that includes finishing up the final touches on my upcoming book of short fiction, "Bad Apps", and that's making way for myself to return to a monthly series here at A Far Out Fantastic Site! So, keep reading to find out the details! The optional IWSG question for January has been perfect timing for me! The question: Is there anything in your writing plans for 2026 that you are going to do that you couldn't get done in 2025? Yes, two things. F...

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...

Credit: Pixabay I said last time  that I would have a list of horror films for your Halloween viewing and so I have that for you today. I wanted to do a list of horror movies based on books or short stories that are currently streaming for free. However, there are just too many of them out there to do in one post, and so I had to narrow it down to original movies that are either based on Stephen King’s fiction or that’s screenplays were written by him. I also have some of the latest progress made on my upcoming book of short fiction, “Bad Apps”. But let’s start with the list of movies.  8 Original Stephen King Movies Online that are Free to Watch Like Edgar Allen Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, Stephen King is an author and filmmaker who has become an icon for Halloween. For years, people have gathered on or around October 31st to watch such classics as “Carrie” and “The Shining” at adult parties, college campus movie nights and, relatively more recently, virtual watch parties online....

Dunking for "Apps" instead of apples this Halloween!  Image Credit: Pixabay I was going to have for you a list of movies for watching this Halloween season. I was also going to include the countdown to the number of stories left to revise for my upcoming collection of short fiction, "Bad Apps". However, I, embarrassing as it is to admit, couldn't even remember the total number of stories that I was going to include in the book, not counting the bonus story that I announced in my last newsletter, “Night Creatures’ Call”. In that issue, I said the total number of stories to be collected in "Bad Apps", including the bonus, would be eight. Well, I combed through several papers in my writing folders and filing cabinet Saturday evening looking for the book’s written plan to find the exact number of stories. I couldn't find the plan anywhere. I don't know what the hell happened to it. It probably just got lost in the piles, possibly during that time I...

No, the headline to this post is not a tabloid. This is not rag or sensationalist journalism. Even though mulit-award-winning author Harlan Ellison passed away six years ago, an anthology edited by him is posthumously coming out very soon. I’ve read all of Ellison’s anthology of dark and disturbing science fiction, "Dangerous Visions", and almost ever since his final and third book in the “Dangerous Visions” trilogy was announced as a Patreon-backed project in 2020 , I had been looking for my used paperback copy of the second volume, "Again, Dangerous Visions". I knew it sat buried, untouched and unread by yours truly among many other books of science fiction, horror and other genres, somewhere in my bedroom closet.  It was only a little over a week ago that I finally found it, and it wasn’t as buried away in my closet as much as I had thought. After opening coffins and treasure chests of books and not finding it, I found it stashed away behind a row of several oth...

  Credit: Pixabay I said last week that I may have to have a special blog post and so a post outside of the usual Monday posting schedule because I was running late with the cover reveal for my short-read book, “The Trespassers”. I had told the artist doing the illustration for the cover to make some changes. Then she began to run late on the changes and even seemed to, at one point, have forgotten about them altogether. So, I was hoping I could just go ahead and do the book cover reveal here today. Unfortunately, the illustrator has not sent me back anything and so it looks like I’m going to have to do a special blog post after all.  So, the best thing for you to do is to keep checking throughout the week here, at my Facebook page or my Instagram page .  In the meantime, I've been working with the tools at Draft 2 Digital which are new to me and in doing so I've uploaded the manuscript this past Friday. That's for the ebook version; I'll be working on uploading the ma...