A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay I know, I’m posting this first weekly post of the year very late and I apologise. I did post earlier in the month, but that was for the monthly Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop . If you haven't had a chance to look at it, please do so. I talk a little about working on my writing over the holidays and how you can be a beta reader for “Bad Apps” , my upcoming book of short fiction! [link]  After that posting, I had a sinus infection that was keeping me awake too many nights and so was not up to writing as frequently as I normally do. My doctor subscribed me some meds, and so I’m doing much better.  For today’s post, I have my new year’s writing resolutions and a list of 13 science fiction and fantasy movie adaptations of books releasing in theatres in 2025! 2 New Year’s Writer’s Resolutions of 2025 In this new year of 2025, one resolution I’m trying to make is coming up with a clear schedule of all my writing projects, and that includes “Bad Apps”. I’ve b...

Disney has not been typically known for horror movies. However, it’s made a few. When I say “horror”, I don't mean any of Disney’s comedies based on the genre or any of its Mickey mouse haunted house cartoons or monster parodies. So, Eddie Murphy's “The Haunted Mansion” and the “Hocus Pocus” movies don't count here. What I mean by “horror” is straight, live-action horror. I'm also not including today's movies made by Disney-acquired properties such as “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Meyers” which was made by Miramax, or “The Omen” which was produced by 20th Century Fox. I'm talking about horror produced by Disney Studios itself.  The first Disney horror film made by Disney Studios with live actors and for the big screen was a 1980s movie called "The Watcher in the Woods". It was based on a young adult novel by Florence Engel Randall. I haven't read the novel, so I'm not going to talk about it here. If I would have read it, this post would be a...

Credit: Pixabay Summer is almost here! And in my region June is typically the beginning of the season. Many people look forward to the pool or beach. Most of us don’t look forward to the excessive heat. And so many of us look forward to lounging in air-conditioned movie theatres watching the next flick that's intended to be a blockbuster. I'm definitely in this last category but the movie doesn't have to be a blockbuster for me to enjoy, although I'll take one if it seems to be good beyond action and special effects. Summer 2022 looks like it has some promising, new sci-fi and fantasy movies as well as ones that aren't so promising although that can be simply a matter of opinion or taste. So, I conjured up two movie lists for you.  One list consists of films that are definitely science fiction, fantasy or horror. The other list consists of movies that some people may consider as falling into any of these genres but that others, myself included, can just as easily co...

Credit: Pixabay We're already more than midway through November and so Thanksgiving is almost here. Before we know it, it will be Christmas! November is a short month (it has only 30 days unlike October, which as 31). Unfortunately, a short month can bring a short newsletter and so that may have to be the case with this month’s edition of “Night Creatures’ Call”. As with last month, the newsletter will probably not be out until the end of this month. I got a late start on it but I’m going to try to get back on schedule with the December edition and so release that at the beginning of the month. But even though November’s newsletter may be a short one, it will have the latest details on the progress of my upcoming short story collection, "Bad Apps". So, if you haven't subscribed to “Night Creatures’ Call” yet then you can do so here .  November also means the year's coming closer to its end. One thing I want to do for sure before the year closes is release “Bad App...

Credit: Pixabay I'm running late with the October issue of my author’s newsletter, “Night Creatures’ Call”. I've been loaded with getting the short story collection, "Bad Apps", together. I meant to release the collection this month but am going to have to push it to next month or maybe even December. There are still several more stories for it to put through critique and revise and I want to do a beta release of it as well. But it hasn't been so much the book that has put me behind in this month’s newsletter than myself.  October’s Issue of ‘Night Creatures’ Call’ I purposefully put off this month’s newsletter because I want to include in it an offer for a free book that I’ve already had out. But to do that, I have to publish the book to Smashwords because Amazon won’t let you offer discounts or free books if you don’t participate in their Kindle Select program in which I no longer participate. In order to participate in it you can’t have your books at Smashwords...

Credit: Wikimedia Commons Well, finally, I'm back from that hiatus that I had said I was going to take. With the nice help of family, I got my bedroom cleaned of the paper clutter that dominated it. But that wasn't the only thing I was busy with that kept me from my regular writing schedule. I was in the hospital for three weeks, a follow-up from the last time I was there. The doctors had to remove the benign tumor they had found in me the time before. They had to take me apart, limbs, head and torso, and stitch me back together again like Frankenstein's monster. Okay, I'm exaggerating. Like really exaggerating. They only had to make one incision that they had to stitch up (with staples). The surgery lasted one day but the recovery lasted three weeks. I still have to limit my activity here at home, but I've been feeling well and enthused enough to at least give you this Book-To-Movie review for the month!  I decided to take a deviation from our usual Book-To-Movie...

Credit: Pixabay To find out how you can read this post without ads, visit my Patreon page !   We’re well into the Holiday Season and the end of the year is coming. Although this year has been one of the most uncertain and scariest ever, the Holidays always bring hope of some sort. Besides, there’s never such a thing as a totally bad year. All years and eras have something good in them. And one of those good things are the best of something of the year. In this case, many blogs and publications over the internet will bring you a list of the best movies of the year or the best books of the year. On December 8th the book recommendation website, GoodReads, brought us the latter through its annual Choice Awards . The best books of 2020 were selected across 20 categories which ranged from general fiction to general non-fiction, from science fiction and fantasy to memoir and biography. Nearly half of these 20 books were speculative fiction or at least related to it.  So, yours truly ...

Credit: Pixabay Last post I had a cover reveal for the illustration itself. In this week’s post I have what I call a full cover reveal and so a cover that includes both illustration and lettering! Again, this is a new cover for my speculative fiction short story collection, “The Fool’s Illusion”, which turned 7 years old last month ! (No new internal content at this time. Sorry. Maybe on the book’s tenth birthday in 2023.) And my Patreon page is getting closer to launch! I made a schedule of Patreon benefits for the month of October! Full Cover Reveal for ‘The Fool’s Illusion’ Credit: The blogger/ Alex Vintagee Synopsis: Here is a collection of dark fantastic events and terrifying scientific phenomena. It contains stories of deadly creatures, including vampires and other undead things, and adventures into the unknown and terrible--tales that brew to the bursting point. This book will not fail to fool you with its terrifying visions of events that could be and ones that are impossible ...

 It’s been a hard week, as fast as it went. Although it’s let up in the last couple of days, the smoke from the not too distant fires was so badly infesting my area that people were forced to leave work early, outdoor events have been getting canceled, and the blogger’s had a bad headache all week from breathing it in. I’m just grateful that those fires didn’t reach us but I feel bad for the people in the areas of our state that it did reach. I really hope these fires will be under control soon and that the firefighters will come out of it alive and unharmed. I can’t say enough how grateful I am for the huge risk that they take to protect everyone from these blazes. Yet, through all this apocalyptic chaos, I’ve been keeping myself busier than usual by creating a Patreon page. This past week, I had been working on the “About” statement of my Patreon page. In this statement I introduce myself as an author of science fiction and horror and I list the benefits of becoming a Patreon mem...

Credit: Pixabay I can’t believe this is already the third Saturday of the month! I only realised it earlier this week. Because it came up so quickly, I’m going to again postpone the Book-To-Movie  review for the month until next weekend. I know, it seems like I’ve been doing this regularly since the pandemic started in March (at least that’s when it started for my area). Well, as the news media outlets have been recently hollering about society as a whole, this is the new norm. I tried getting a Book-To-Movie together for this weekend but didn’t come up with anything until Thursday in which I viewed the movie adaptation that evening and then read the short story original only yesterday. I’m not going to tell you what the story or its movie adaptation is, though. To find out you will have to tune in here next week. For this week . . .  Harlan Ellison’s Wife Susan Dies at 60 Shockingly, the late Harlan Ellison’s wife, Susan Ellison, died the first of this month. She passed away ...

A vampire similar to the ones in 2008's "I Am Legend" which starred Will Smith. Credit: Pixabay.com It’s time for another Book-To-Movie review! In a Book-To-Movie, I review a book and its movie adaptations. This month’s book and its movies based on it is I Am Legend by Richard Matheson. While vampires were no longer in in the American pop culture of the the 1950s, science fiction horror in general was. So Matheson’s I Am Legend brought the scientificising of vampires into the pulp literary scene of that era. Not too long after, in the early ‘60s, the first of three book-to-movie adaptions appeared and was renamed The Last Man On Earth which starred Vincent Price. The other two were The Omega Man starring Charlton Heston in the ‘70s and I Am Legend starring Will Smith in the 2001s. Even though each one debunked the myth of the vampire as a supernatural being, each had its own depiction of the creature. ‘I Am Legend’, The Book Set in a near post-apocalyptic fu...

Well it’s already the first week of the month and so that means it’s time for another Insecure Writer’s Group (IWSG) post! IWSG is a monthly blog hop that occurs every first Wednesday of the month where we writers talk about the challenges in writing and how to resolve them. Each month the blog hop offers an optional question for us to answer, in which I have opted to answer this month’s. The question is “Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in and why?” My answer: horror and sci fi. As for the why: I’ve been a longtime lover of the unknown which science fiction and horror expresses. Horror and sci fi appealed to me most ever since I was a kid, almost since I learned to walk! I guess you can say I got into those genres because several members of my family were sci fi and/or horror fans, especially on my mom’s side (though my mom herself wasn’t a fan) but my dad also watched a lot of the two genres. I got hooked to sci fi early w...

Credit: Pixabay.com I have some Lightning News Flashes for this post. The month of April has sadly seen the loss of two science fiction writers but it’s also seen some good news, too. N ew TV shows based on science fiction and fantasy novels have been announced as being in the works and also an Edgar Allen Poe Museum ha s acquired a genuine letter written by Poe. For longer versions of these stories, click on the links below. Obituaries Science fiction and fantasy author Vonda McIntyre passed away at age 70 on the first of the month. She wrote several Star Trek books, including the novel adaptations of movies ST II: The Wrath of Khan and ST III: The Search for Spock . Her 1978 novel, Dreamsnake , had won both a Hugo and a Nebula. According to Geekwire .com, McIntyre started the Clarion West writers’ workshop in Seattle in 1971. Geekwire also says she completed her last novel, Curve of the World , “in less than two weeks before her death” from pancreatic ...