A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay.com Like in many parts of the state, Northern California has been having its summer wild fire problem. Even though Sacramento hasn’t been hit by any of the flames (the closest fire has been in Redding) the smoke blows over to here. Even so, and even though it’s been frying in the triple digits, I put on my gas mask (okay, my clinical anti-germ mask)  Saturday afternoon  and braved the extreme heat to take advantage of a sale at one of the comic book stores. It almost wasn’t worth it. I kind of thought maybe the time would have been better spent continuing to work on a short story that will probably take more than three months to complete because it involves inter-dimensional time travel. So this is a story that I have to bring all kinds of quantum mechanical concepts into and I’m no astrophysicist. Worldbuilding To Create Aliens However, I’m done with the worldbuilding part of the story, unless future drafts prove otherwise. What helped me...

Credit: Pixabay.com California’s primary elections are this Tuesday but the voting doesn’t stop there in my home state. In fact, it doesn’t even stop with California. No, I’m not talking about the other states’ elections or the national elections in November. I’m talking about the elections for the Hugo Awards! The Hugo Awards are taking votes from now until the end of July and the winners will be presented their awards at WorldCon 76 in San Jose, California. As much as I’m “next door” to the location of this world science fiction convention (I live in Sacramento) I found out about it only a couple of days ago. And it’s this August 16 through 20! So if you’re interested in attending, I suggest you get your tickets and accommodations fast. Nearby hotels are already booked! What makes this con so big is that it presents the Hugo Awards which many world famous science fiction and fantasy authors and artists have been awarded. If you register for WorldCon ,   you m...

Last week was really busy, so I apologise for posting late again. But I wanted to show you a major alteration I made to my business card (besides the contact info I added). Last post I showed the card bearing the name of my imprint which is “Far Out Phantastic Press”. Or at least that was the name. After doing some research, I discovered that to put that name on a business card may require me to register it with my home city or county and that would cost more than what I am willing to spend right now on promoting my work. Here in California, at least, you can use your personal name as for a sole entrepreneurship and not have to register it. So, for the time being at least, I had to replace my imprint name with my personal name on the card. So here is the revised version: Credit: Steven Rose Jr. As you can see everything else on my business card has pretty much stayed the same. Now I just have to have prints of it made by the end of the week because I will ne...

Credit: Pixabay.com It’s that time of year again for Intergalactic Expo , one of Sacramento’s biggest local sci fi cons. I was trying to rent table space there to sell my books but unfortunately it didn’t work out, mostly due to pricing and lack of space. Let alone lack of tables. I told the facilitators of the con that I would be willing to bring my own blanket and lay it out on the floor or lawn somewhere along with my merchandise like they do at middle eastern and North African bazaars but they said it would demean the con’s reputation. Good grief! It’s a sci fi con, anything should go! Well okay, almost anything. They can’t have real light saber duels or somebody could get hurt, not to mention that there probably isn’t a way to make real light sabers yet. So, Star Wars fans, you’ll have to settle for glass and plastic ones. I just thought my suggestion of the blanket would add to the exoticism of the con’s theme. So you won’t see me there. Or at least not as pr...

Last Saturday’s Toy Game and Pop Culture Expo held at Sacramento’s Great Escape Games wasn’t quite all fun and games. It was fun, games, books and their authors. Local authors Nicholas Grabowsky (who wrote the novel adaptation of Halloween IV ) and Angelique Anderson (writer of YA sci fi and fantasy) were displaying their books for sale. I had a great time talking with both of them. Nick talked about his plans to present at more cons after having taken a hiatus. I talked to him about my current projects: my most recently published ebook, “Circa Sixty Years Dead” ,   and the print and photo-real cover editions in progress. The great thing about talking with authors such as he and Angelique is that when you’re sliding down the hill, like I’ve been ever since I started my day job as library technician back in September, you get motivated and more focused on your own writing. That’s among other great things like the generous offers Nick gave me such as a free copy, signed by h...

Photo Credit: West Sacramento's May the Fourth Be With You I hate to say this, but I’m going to have to put off the article on older sci fi another week. It’s been a very long, insane Saturday and so I didn’t have time to finishthe article. But I did say last week that I would talk a little about Intergalactic Expo and so since I won’t be sharing the article at this time, I’ll talk more about Intergalactic Expo even though there’s not much more I can talk about than originally anticipated. That’s because I arrived there way later than intended. I meant to arrive there by 3 PM at the latest but all because the bus driver did not stop at the stop we were waiting at in downtown Sacramento, my cousin and I had to walk more than three miles from there to the West Sacramento Civic Center where the con was held and so we didn’t get their until 4! That’s the problem with the bus system in Sacramento: compared to many other metropolitans in the nation, it is not reliable. W...

 Warning:  This post may contain content or links to content considered to be obscene/objectionable by some viewers. I know I said I would try to have a review of Sleepy Hollow for you last time, but I haven't gotten a chance to write it. I wanted to watch the second episode first and, like the first one, I taped it but haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet. I'd like to talk about where the series seems to be going and in order to do that I feel that it's best to watch at least one episode beyond that of the debut. So I'll have a review of it here next week. The good news is that for those of you who are like me and prefer the full reading experience by turning real pages in a bound book, the print version of Fool's Illusion is now available at Amazon . In fact, I updated my promotional bookmarks for its print release today and will have several of them at tomorrow's Super Sac-Con . So if you're in the area you might want to consider drop...