A Far Out Fantastic Site

Credit: Pixabay   This has been a very hectic week for me. I’ve had technological problems to deal with in areas outside of my writing and art. They’ve been burning me out like the fires here in California have been burning out the forests. Even so, I continued working on my writing projects, especially the two that are most important at this time: my Patreon page and a new book cover for my short fiction collection, “The Fool’s Illusion”.  Author’s Patreon Page I spent my evenings this week creating the “tiers” and the benefits that they will offer on my Patreon page. A Patreon  page often features several levels, or tiers, of membership to choose from. Mine will offer three. The membership benefits will range from exclusive book discounts to fiction-in-progress and concept art for book covers. The top-most tier will also offer more in-depth articles on science fiction and fantasy of the past, present and future! I have only a little more to do with the page until its la...

Credit: Pixabay.com I know, it’s the third Saturday of the month and that we are supposed to have our Book-To-Movie this evening. It was supposed to be a review of “The Invisible Man” and its movie adaptations, including the new one that released at the end of last month . However, I wanted to refresh myself on the 1930s original and had to request my nearest library to order it on loan. But when it came I wasn’t able to pick it up because the library closed to take precaution against the Coronavirus. So I’m postponing the Book-To-Movie until the library re-opens which is impossible to say when that will be. I may, however, do a Book-To-Movie for another book in the next week or two, so keep tuning in here. Well, a book and movie review isn’t the only thing that’s being cancelled due to today’s version of the black plague. Because so many cities, ones here in the Sacramento region included, are going on shelter-in-place, sci fi and fantasy conventions are getting cancelled e...

Credit: Pixabay.com Not only are sci fi and fantasy taking over television and movie theatres but, thanks to internet, there are more magazines in these two genres than ever. And their readership continues to grow. Science fiction author Jason Sanford reflects this rise in speculative fiction magazines and readership in his report, “The State of Genre Magazines” , published just before the new year. He says, “There are more SF/F magazines today than at any single time in the genre’s history.” However, he also points out that although the number of magazines and their readers have gone up the payment for most publishers’ staffs who put out the magazines hasn’t. They get little to no pay. He quotes Scott Andrews, editor-in-chief of speculative fiction magazine “Beneath Ceaseless Skies”, saying that the majority of the few that do get paid do so because the chief editors go without pay! Why Sci Fi and Fantasy Magazine Circulation Is So High But Revenue So Low So then why so ha...

It’s time for another Insecure Writers Support Group (IWSG)  post! Every first Wednesday of the month we writers bring our writing challenges and problems out into the open to share with each other and try to come up with solutions. This month has been an exception to the schedule because the first Wednesday was New Year’s Day and so many of us were still trying to get through the busy-ness of the holiday season. Speaking of that, I hope all of you had a good one. Mine was fantastic! The IWSG question of the month:  What started you on your writing journey? Was it a particular book, movie, story, or series? Was it a teacher/coach/spouse/friend/parent? Did you just "know" suddenly you wanted to write? I would have to say my writing journey started in the 5th grade. I really got into the creative writing assignments our teacher would give us. I particularly loved writing comical stories which the class laughed over and applauded after each one was read. By the 6th grad...

Credit: Pixabay.com We’re already a little more than a month into the new year. Even though a new year is supposed to be a time of hope and improvement in our lives and society, many people would say the near future does not look as such especially during this time of increasing climate change, racial injustice, a ruler in our nation who can hardly be called a president in the true sense, and reoccurring massive violence. I mean, since Sandy Hook, if not before, there’s been a mass shooting almost as frequently as movies are changed in theatres! And it’s no joke. This year sadly began with a sniper randomly shooting in public in Davis CA, not much more than ten miles from where I live. Still, it doesn’t matter. Since in order to solve these problems we need to hope for the future, both near and distant, even in the face of despair. In fact, it’s because of those causes of a dark future is why we have to look toward hope. So if there’s anytime we should promote hope for a be...

Credit: Pixabay.com Happy New Year, everybody! Sorry for missing last week but I was burning out from both writing and my day job so much that I needed that break. But here I am again. In the last post I said that I will have more Book-To-Movie reviews and previews in 2019. Well, 2019 offers some interesting, if not all particularly good, TV series and movies based on sci fi and fantasy books. So I made a couple of lists: one for TV adaptations and the other for movie adaptations. 2019 TV Series Adapted from Books I have not read any of the books that the TV series listed below are based on. With the exception of one of these, I don’t plan on reading any soon in time to watch the TV series mainly because many of them are in the horror genre and I’m not a big fan of horror TV series. I’ve noticed that many horror TV series--unlike most movies in the genre--that are based on novels, especially gothic horror, tend to go too much the way of the soap opera al...

Credit: Pixabay.com Well, we’re coming to the end of 2018. As with any year, we get both the good moments and not-so-good moments. Still, the not-so-good moments often have a valuable impact on our lives. So I decided to list the greatest moments of this year. “Greatest” is defined here not so much as good or joyful as it is significantly impacting. Sometimes the events we don’t wish to see help us see the good ones better. We love it when we make accomplishments, publish a story we wrote, read a story we really enjoyed, or see a movie that we really liked. We don’t love it so much when we lose something or someone important to us. Sadly, 2018 saw the passing away of my maternal grandfather, God rest his soul. But that sad moment also made me and my family remember some of the best times we had with him. In the community of science fiction and fantasy, 2018 saw the passing away of some of the best creators in the genre. Even though those are moments we don’t like...

Credit: Pixabay.com I got most of my Christmas shopping done. All I have to shop for is a white elephant gift for a cousin’s Christmas Eve party that I’m going to attend. So I’ve been looking for ideas for a “dumb” or weird (as I prefer to say) gift. And it’s just about as hard shopping for that kind of gift as it is a “decent” one. But as I was looking for ideas at Amazon, I came across some things that might be suitable for a white elephant gift exchange. In fact, these items probably make more-than-suitable gifts. They are so weird, so crazy and/or so hilarious that they’re almost frightening! Because of that, I call them f right elephant gift ideas. In case you still need to do that last minute shopping for that white elephant gift you were asked to bring to a holiday party, I put together for this post a Holiday Fright Elephant Gift Guide. Since this is a sci fi and fantasy blog, this guide emphasises gifts in the speculative genres. So even if the party you’re a...